Page 93 of Never Have I Ever
I curse at the screen and shove my phone into my back pocket, turning on the faucet and cooling my face off. I head out of the bathroom, debating whether I should leave or go back in there.
“You can’t keep bringing this up, Frank.” I hear my mother say.
I stand in the corner of the dining room, trying to listen in to what my father will say. She told me to come here to make amends with him, and he’s been holding the front door open since I got here.
“I don’t have to do anything with the likes of him. He’s no son of mine.” I roll my eyes. Hearing him say that puts the nail in the coffin. He doesn’t think of me as a son. He doesn’t want anything to do with me. I just wish I knew why.
“It’s bad enough you opened your legs to my brother and birthed that son of a bitch, I don’t have to stand by and hear him disrespect me too.”
I freeze at the doorway. What?
“Keep your voice down.”
“Why?” my father says, slurring his words a bit. “You don’t want him to hear how much of a slut you are?”
“Frank,” my mother says more harshly.
He laughs bitterly. “I have no need for a wife,” he says. “I haven’t for a long time. I have other women willing to do your job.”
Bile rises in my throat, remembering the times I walked in on him with his assistants. I was crushed knowing he cheated on my mom, and now I know my mom cheated on him too.
This is why I can’t imagine a world where love exists. How the hell did two people get married and devote their lives to each other and go behind their backs and betray each other? It’s fucking stupid to think that would equate to something as fabricated as love.
“That son of a bitch has his face. He’s living evidence of your betrayal to me, to this family, to my legacy,” he says. “How am I supposed to forget that?”
I almost snort. His legacy. The one he built with my mother’s money. My father’s company is nothing but a way to appease himself that he’s the breadwinner when we all know she is. My mother has been a famous designer for as long as I’ve been alive, and I’ve been nothing but proud of her.
But the same can’t be said for my father. I always felt like he was jealous of her success, that he felt emasculated by her wealth. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was the affair she had.
“You promised me you would let it go. I can’t keep doing this with you,” my mother replies.
“I can’t forget it. He’s a reminder of your betrayal. That asshole is nothing but a disappointment. I was willing to raise him as my own, but then he went and murdered my brother.”
My jaw clenches, and my palms itch to go in there and throw a fucking punch in his face.
I don’t need to be here. I stumble backwards into the statue behind me, causing the dining room to fall silent.
“Grayson?” My mother calls out.
I step into the dining room, seeing my mother with a red face and my… father? Uncle? Frank, with a disgusted expression I’ve been on the receiving end of my whole life, at least now I know why.
“What the hell were you doing?” Frank asks. “Were you eavesdropping?”
“About how Uncle Gary was actually my dad? Yeah, I heard that.”
“Bout time you knew,” he spits back, taking a sip from his whiskey.
I snort out a laugh. “Now I know why you never liked me.”
He gives me a glance, repulsion painted on his face. “You have his face,” he says. “I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out. Never took you for a dumb fuck.”
Frank and my uncle didn’t share a lot of similarities. Frank was rich, my uncle was not. Frank has a receding hairline, and my uncle had a full head of hair. They might not have been similar, but they were still brothers. They shared DNA. I ignore his statement. I’m not dumb. I know that. He knows that. I don’t even bother replying to him as I turn to face my mother. “Did he know?” I ask her.
“Grayson,” my mother starts.
I shake my head. I don’t want to hear any excuses. “Did he know?” I ask her again.
She lets out a breath, a sympathetic look on her face. She shakes her head. “No, he didn’t know.”
