Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 89145 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89145 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
I didn’t know who the fuck CJ was.
Alfie hollered in the background, saying it was time to go.
“We’ll talk another time,” I told Trip. “I love you, son. Tell your sister I love her too, please.”
“Okay, I will. Love you, bye!”
The line went dead, and I sighed heavily.
This couldn’t go on. Fuck Alfie and all his lies; I was by no means ready to deal with that mess, but I needed to get some control back. I deserved to know who my own children called family.
At noon, I walked over to my parents’ house three blocks away.
If I wanted answers, I had to at least confront my old man.
That part of Alfie’s texts bothered me greatly.
You know deep down that I never fit in, and your family didn’t want me to. So yeah, I changed.
What could I say to that? I…
I released a breath and checked my phone for no reason at all.
I wanted to ask, define fitting in? But was that a cop-out? If I needed to ask, didn’t that mean Alfie had a point? Because of course I’d always known he wasn’t like anyone else in my family. I’d fallen for him for those differences. He’d been so real, so vivid, so unforgettable.
Not unlike how he’d carried himself the last couple of times I’d seen him.
“Excuse me, sir!”
I walked closer to the hedge as a young boy on his bike drove past me.
On multiple occasions, I’d told Alfie how much I loved that he wasn’t like the people I’d grown up with. And when we’d decided to move back here and I’d started showing him listings of houses, he’d wondered how far my love extended. I’d wanted his differences but not the neighborhood that’d made him who he was. I’d wanted his crude sense of humor, his unpolished self…in a nice suburb where the opposite thrived.
To this day, I had no good response to that.
My priority had been Trip and Ellie. Wanting them to have a safe upbringing, in a good school district, and while that wasn’t wrong, I felt like a hypocrite. It was one of those things I’d brought up with Evan and Malina, whose marriage shared some similarities to mine and Alfie’s. Evan had been born into wealth, while Malina was from South Philly, not too far from where Alfie had grown up.
Unlike me, Evan had wanted to get a house closer to Malina’s family. She, however, had wanted to get out of the city. But, either way, she’d understood my worries about the hypocrisy as well as my well-founded concerns about safety. She’d joked and called me a slum tourist.
“You want a piece of the ghetto in the safety of your own backyard with the pool and everything.”
Then she’d added, “But you know what, West? I don’t want my daughters near where I grew up. I get it.”
I was still conflicted about it all, and despite my anger toward Alfie, it would kill me if I’d subjected him to judgment and alienation because I’d convinced him to go with a house in my world.
Frankly, it also killed me that we’d ever left LA. We hadn’t had many problems out there. The life we’d created for ourselves had fit us, both of us, and we’d hardly ever fought. Not until we’d eventually decided to move back east.
I strode up the driveway to my parents’ house, idly wondering if they were going to move at some point—though, probably not. My mother was already struggling to walk up and down the stairs, but they’d undoubtedly install a lift. I couldn’t image her leaving.
This was, ironically, my mother’s version of slumming it. A three-story New England dream in Ardmore.
I walked up the steps to the front door and rang the doorbell.
Right then and there, I didn’t know what outcome I wanted. I was angry enough to wanna be able to tell Alfie to fuck off and go choke on his bullshit, at the same time as I loved him too much. I was fucking broken. Why else was I unable to move on?
Fuck, I needed to move on.
Perhaps I should give Lance another chance.
To my surprise, it was my youngest sister who opened the door.
“Oh—hey, you!” She smiled.
“Hey. What’re you doing here?” I walked in and welcomed the onslaught of the AC.
“Just drove Mom home after our water aerobics,” Linda replied. “My baby pooch is almost gone, and Mom’s feeling more flexible. You should try it!”
Thanks, but I made do with golf and lifting weights. I loathed cardio.
“I should not,” I said. “Where are they?”
She gestured toward the living room. “Out on the terrace having lunch. I’m having lunch with Sabrina.”
Perfect. Dad was in a better mood once he’d eaten.
“By the way,” Linda said. “Say I have a friend whose daughter is looking for an internship—”
“Tell her to submit an application like all the others,” I replied, cocking a brow. We weren’t having this discussion again.