Take Me On

Chapter 64

West

I changed into jeans and a T-shirt before driving to the bar. The private-school dress code would get my ass handed to me by a mob of angry laid-off union workers. Though getting the shit kicked out of me by a mob doesn’t sound like a bad idea. It could possibly hurt less than the memory of breaking not only my heart, but the heart of the only girl I’ve ever loved: Haley.

A few guys play poker at a table in the corner. It’s sad I’ve grown fond of the sour stench of spilled beer. Like always, Denny hovers over a laptop near the end of the bar. “You’re late.”

Worthington starts an hour later than public schools. I glance around. It kills me how much pride I’ve got in the dump. The tables and chairs I fixed, the mounting of the speakers, the woodwork along the bar. I finally found something I’m talented at and it all goes down the drain.

I suck in air to keep my fists from closing. I’m not reacting anymore. I’m thinking and I’m giving Haley what she needs. “Thanks for the opportunity, but I’m quitting.”

My boss’s muscles ripple as he straightens. Denny’s the most peculiar person I’ve met: a big-ass man who feeds a stray drug dealer and gives a job to a throwaway. “You crawled back to Daddy after all. I thought you had grown a fucking pair of balls.”

I never told him I was the rich boy. “You’re talking about stuff you don’t know about.”

He crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m talking about shit I’ve known about since your momma was in damned diapers. Sit you sorry ass down and wait.”

It’s like I’ve been absorbed in a tunnel when Denny shuts his laptop and heads into the back. All the sights and sounds and smells of the bar fade away as I sink onto a stool. Thoughts race in my mind... The months of wondering why my mother comes here... Was she having an affair... Abby telling me she came to see her brother...and as Denny slips out of the back with an overstuffed scrapbook in his hand, the horror of the truth makes me dizzy.

“You can still walk away.” Abby slinks up next to me. Doing something she’s never done before, she touches my arm. Nudges it and tilts her head to the exit at the same time. “It’s okay to not want to know some truths. Pretending is much easier. Trust me on this.”

I’m slow meeting her eyes. “Did you lie to me about why she came here?”

“I lie.” The confession with no apology. “It’s what I do to survive and every now and then I do it to help others survive. I need all the good karma I can get.”

The door to the entrance is propped open by a wedge of wood. I could leave and return to my old life like Dad suggested. So many routes to take: head to the party tonight at Mike’s, fill out the new paperwork for the University of Louisville or stay. Leaving could be blissful—to remain ignorant of things that I have no doubt will change me.

Denny drops the scrapbook onto the bar and the sound awakens the drunks and me. Like it’s a spell book that contains magic that can alter history, my hand hovers over the cover, fingertips barely brushing the edge.

“There’s no going back after this,” says Abby. “No take backs.”

There was no going back the moment I met Haley. Regardless of what’s in this book, I’m changed for good. I open it and close my eyes. It’s me— It’s a fucking picture of me. My body convulses like I’ve been shot multiple times.

I reopen my eyes at the sound of pouring liquid. Denny fills two shot glasses with straight Maker’s. He inches one to me and toasts me with the other. “To family and whatever the fuck that means.”

He swigs the shot. I stare at mine, half thinking the burn of bourbon will erase the information, but I made my bed... I chuckle... No, Mom made her bed and now I’m lying in it.

“Dad said they didn’t meet in college.” But even when he said that, I assumed Dad was the one who messed up, not Mom.

“Tell you that, did he?” Denny laughs like one of us told a joke. “That man’s a real piece of work.”

“Mom said she made mistakes.” Especially when she grieves over Colleen. Mom would sit in a ball on the floor of Colleen’s room and wonder if her death was the punishment for Mom’s past unknown crimes. I imagined the worst thing she did was speed on the freeway.

Denny pours himself another drink. “She made a mistake by screwing a Young and accepting his marriage proposal over mine. Colleen wasn’t a mistake, even if she was biologically a Young. You weren’t a mistake, either. You were a glimpse of what Miriam and I should have had to begin with.”

The world loses focus and I rip out the picture of me as an infant in this very fucking bar. “I was conceived to save Colleen, so this is bullshit.”

“That idea only occurred to your mom after the stick turned blue. Half genes had to count, right? Your mom was born and bred in this neighborhood. She always thought fast on her feet in order to survive. Except when that Young decided to flip off his parents by slumming it on our side of town. She couldn’t see straight when he showed.”

“They met at a bar?”

“This bar. My dad owned it then.” His eyes flicker to Abby, who’s stayed unusually silent. “Dad also had a habit of taking care of those who needed it.”

“How long has the affair been going on between you and Mom?”

He smirks. “The one your mom had when she cheated on me with your father and got pregnant with Colleen, or the one night your mother and I spent together when she found out Colleen’s cancer progressed to stage four and your father took a business phone call after getting the news?”

Mom’s from this neighborhood.

Mom’s from this neighborhood and her boyfriend used to be the guy in front of me. Dad said that he went wild when he was younger. I guess this is where he ended up. In this bar, hitting on my mother and they created Colleen. Then they got married and lied to us.

They lied.

They lied because everything with the Youngs is about image.

When life became complicated, after my parents had built a marriage with three children, they buckled under the weight of a sick child and my mother came here...to Denny... She returned to what she knew and she made me.

“Sounds like he’s not my father.”

“He gave you what I couldn’t.” Denny stretches his arms wide. “You’re looking at my palace. Screams day care, doesn’t it?”

I shove the picture into my back pocket. “Don’t fuck with me. I know she comes here on the third Friday of every month.”

Abby reaches over and flips the album to the middle and there are more pictures of me. “She comes to bring him pictures. It’s what he asked for when he gave up rights.”

“Why not mail them?” I push. “She visits because you two are still involved.”

Denny shakes his head. “If I had to give you up, your mother had to show here once a month and face the decisions she made. She has to look me in the eye, knowing what she’s denying me. Me and Miriam, it didn’t continue. Even after that night we spent together, she still belonged to your dad. That was never a question.”

What was he forcing her to face? That I wasn’t in his life or that she wasn’t? But the question stays internal.

“Here’s the truth.” He shuts the album. “Your mom and dad made mistakes and so have I. We were young and didn’t know who the fuck we were. I’ve seen you change over the last two months. You can go back to that huge house and play marionette for the Youngs just like your mom and dad did or you can break the chains and make your own decisions.”

I jump off the stool, then kick it out of the way as I step into his space. The stool snaps and rattles against the ground. “You don’t know what I’m up against.”

“If it’s the Youngs, it contains control and money. Just a tidbit of fatherly advice—once you start down that path, it’s like entering a savage garden. It’s beautiful until the vines tear you apart. Your mom used to be a different person. She used to be full of life.”

I loathe the pity flowing out of Abby’s eyes and I suddenly understand why she hates it. “Why the hell am I listening to you? You gave me up.”

“Funny,” says Denny, “how you still ended up here. The kid who walked in here two months ago thought being a man meant calling out every asshole on the block. Tell me, are you the same stupid kid or have you figured out what being a man truly means?”