Page 37 of Wreckage of My Life
I’ve been sittingin this mother fucking chair for the last two hours, mulling things over. Thoughts of Becca unsettle me in ways I never imagined or expected. It’s like I just can’t let go of her. She’s in my blood. A huge problem with that is that I don’t want her out. My life is a giant dumpster fire, and she is just adding fuel to the never ending flame that’s threatening to burn me alive.
Noise from the front door brings my head back to my other situation I am being confronted with. My son. I just can’t process the fact that I am now officially responsible for another human being. By law, no less. What the fuck am I gonna do with this kid?
“Hello?” I call out when nobody’s coming through to the living room where I’m camped out.
“It’s us,” my brother’s voice echoes through, followed by some rustling as he seems to be heading for the kitchen. “And we brought sustenance, too.” Now that he said it, the smell of food is wafting into the living room.
“What about my boy? Did you bring him?” My voice catches at the end. I am shocked by the rush of emotion invading my senses. It doesn’t matter that I saw him before. This is the first time we’re meeting where he is solely mine.
“Here he is,” Alison sing songs as she walks into the room, the boy hanging off her for his life and refusing to let go.
“What’s the matter with him?” I bark out when I see that any attempt of hers to put him down just won’t work. He won’t even look at me.
“Hey, Ethan,” Alison tries again to coax him from where he’s got his face tucked into her neck. “Don’t you want to say hi to your daddy?”
The boy shakes his head no, and I feel my heart freezing in my chest while also beating erratically. I knew this would be a cluster.
Wyatt busts into the room, his voice all cheery and without a care in the world. I am reminded yet again how much I hate him for having had the freedom to leave the club when he did. I was never given the choice, and while I love my brother, the resentment I feel toward him is almost blinding me right now.
To add more to my despair, he seems to be a natural with my son. He teases him mercilessly, then picks him up from Alison’s arms and turns around to present him to me. His woman is watching me with worry in her eyes, acting almost as skittish as the boy.
“I need to take a piss,” I say through clenched teeth when I can’t deal anymore with the picture perfect family they make, all three of them. Withmykid.
Wyatt raises an eyebrow at me in challenge when I stare at him, waiting for him to help me out of this fucking chair. He’s not doing anything though. I turn my head to look at Alison, and enjoy the way she gets flustered every time I watch her without speaking.
“Uh, I have to get the table ready,” she mumbles and skips out of the room. Few seconds later, we hear the sliding door to the back of the house opening and closing, her voice echoing from the deck Wyatt has out there, like she’s talking on the phone.
“You gonna help me, or just stare at me?” I challenge Wyatt. In the end, he’s got too good of a heart to watch me suffer. He would’ve been dead in no time had he not jumped ship, I realize with an amused chuckle that only causes my ribcage to constrict in a painful way.
The boy just watches me with big eyes, never moving from where Wyatt set him earlier. I’m no expert, but that can’t be normal.
The trip to the bathroom is so painful, I have to stop and lean against the walls couple of times as I try to catch my breath.
“You gonna make it?” Wyatt’s amused voice startles me from behind. I am definitely not on my A-game here.
“Fuck off,” I growl at him, then force myself to take the two extra steps required to finally make it to the bathroom. I slam the door behind me and fall back.
I need to take a couple more pain pills as soon as I make it back to that fucking chair. The pain is unbearable.
My mind goes back to the way Becca’s voice sounded the last time I talked to her. I miss hearing it, and I’d give everything to call her again. That shit can’t happen though. I need to block her number. Change the name in my Contacts to Do-Not-Fucking-Call-This-Number.
With a heavy sigh, I push myself off the bathroom door and open it to go back. I didn’t really need to go to the bathroom. I just needed to be away from the domestic scene Wyatt, Alison and Ethan were making. That will never be my life, and I can admit, if only to myself, that I am bitter. Jealous. Out of my fucking mind jealous.
“We’re ready to eat,” Alison smiles at me when she sees me walking down the hallway. “You hungry?”
Nois on the tip of my tongue. But then my eyes slide to the boy’s face. He is sitting next to her and across from the only empty chair at the table. My seat, I presume. I hobble there and drop in it, then try to pretend for the next fifteen minutes that I don’t want to get high. That’s the only thing that would help with the pain at this point.
I make it back to my recliner where I pop two strong pain pills, washing them down with cold beer. Whiskey would’ve been better, but Wyatt thought that’d be too much.
“You think he’s slow?” I drop my head back and listen in on the one sided conversation coming from the guest bathroom where Alison is washing the boy up. She is talking away, but I don’t hear a peep out of him.
Wyatt seems to be surprised by my question. “What do you mean?” Maybe he’s slow, too. Shit must be running in the family.
“Why is he not talking?” I decide to skip over that part and indulge him. “Aren’t kids this age supposed to talk a mile a minute?” At least the kids running around at the club do. I don’t know how old they are, now that I think about it.
“Fuck if I know,” Wyatt looks completely startled by my questions. “Did you google it?”
What the hell is the fucker talking about? “Google what?”
