Chapter 4
Cara had hitched a ride with a friend, and when I got home from detention, she said Momma wanted me to call her. Of course, that had been Cara’s scheming way of getting me to talk to her.
Momma hadn’t wanted shit. She never did anymore.
“Your daddy already called and bitched about getting interrupted at work. I really don’t want to hear about it anymore,” she said by way of a greeting when she answered.
It hadn’t always been like this. I’d swear somewhere I could dig up memories of laughing with her or hugs with Daddy.
When the divorce came, it was as if they wanted everyone around them to be just as miserable, just as hateful.
So if they wanted to spread around a big “fuck you,” then I reckoned I would too.
At least, that was how it seemed to come out more often than not.
“Oh, hello, Momma. It sure has been a minute since our last obligatory phone call. I can’t for the life of me think why.”
“Don’t take that tone with me, Calvin. I’m barely in from work, haven’t even had a chance to take my shoes off yet, and here you call me to what?” Expecting her to tell me, I waited, but she only asked again, “What, Cal? What do you want?”
I didn’t have an answer. Talking to Momma had become a chore I dreaded sometimes more than Daddy.
At least Daddy had kept Cara and me because he could afford us.
Momma just fucking left. She hadn’t even cried.
She’d been too busy arguing with Daddy the whole way out to her car before speeding off with her clothes.
I wasn’t Daddy, though. I wasn’t the marriage she neglected or the person she’d cheated on. I was the kid, the one she left. What was my fault in all this shit? But I only said, “Nothin’. Just figured I should tell you about school today, but I guess Daddy handled it.”
Momma sighed, and a heavy thwap sounded in the background, as if she’d sat down too hard on something. “They called while I was at work. I couldn’t drop everything, Cal. Do you understand? I’m new at this place. I don’t want them to think I’m gonna handle personal business while on the clock.”
The call had been for a good reason, but I didn’t want to remind her I was in trouble.
“Your daddy said he spoke with them. Don’t let him guilt you for that. He wouldn’t have been able to answer their call if he’d really been in the middle of somethin’. He just likes everyone to think he’s important.”
I rolled my eyes and settled on the edge of my bed while Momma went on about what a horrible person Daddy was and why she’d made the best decision to leave him, but I heard us.
Whatever had gone on between them was their problem, so I tuned it out, hating both of them for involving Cara and me in any of it.
Momma finally hung up, mumbling something about dinner plans, and I breathed easily again, but not for long.
“Calvin!”
Fighting for composure with a slow exhale, I dropped my head between my shoulders, then surged to my feet, leaving my homework where it sat on my desk, nearly completed, and hurried downstairs before Daddy had to call my name again.
Between my parents, I couldn’t decide which one I currently hated more. Daddy for his way of making me feel like a disappointment at every turn or Momma for her dismissal of us.
“Yes, Daddy?” I said when I slipped into his home office.
He had a near constant frown etched on his face, making him seem angry all the time, which he probably was.
At my height, he might’ve had my same larger build if he’d ever work out.
I got my blond hair and blue eyes from Momma, but everything from my features to my darker skin I got from Granny, Daddy’s momma.
He dropped the mail he’d been sifting through and narrowed a cutting glare on me before he flipped the sides of his suit jacket out to brace his hands on his hips and paced.
“Why did I get a call from the school today about you being in some sort of fight, Calvin?”
“I dunno.” I shrugged, unsure how to answer. Would he really want to know what happened? Or had that been rhetorical?
He stopped with a squeak of his oxfords on the hardwood and faced me. “Why didn’t they call your momma?”
Oh, that was what he meant? I shrugged again and mumbled, “She said she’d been busy.” I hated to admit it because of how he’d respond. He’d probably asked her earlier, and she wouldn’t tell him, so he’d used me to get the information, only so he could get pissed about it all over again.
“Of course she was. Too busy kissing some other man’s ass to be bothered with her own son.” He sighed.
My parents’ divorce was nearly a year old, but that whole time heals garbage hadn’t kicked in yet.
At this point, I wasn’t even sure why Daddy was so pissed at her.
They hadn’t been in love for a while, according to their many arguments on the matter.
Momma had cheated on him, which I understood him being pissed over, but she’d claimed Daddy had cheated on her long ago when he took over as head trauma surgeon.
His job became his mistress, and the rest of us got pushed out. I understood that too.
What I didn’t get was why they even cared any longer. Just let it go. Let it the fuck die already.
Daddy pinched the bridge of his nose. “I count on you, Cal, to be a responsible adult. I’m busy, and you know this. I don’t ask a lot from you, and this is what I get in return?”
Didn’t ask a lot? Fucking bullshit. He asked everything.
I practically ran the house now that Momma had moved out.
I took care of my younger sister, the dog, and the grocery shopping.
Thank fuck we had a cleaning service that came by once a week because I didn’t have time for it.
Not with football and homework, keeping my GPA high enough for college, laundry, and carting around Cara to her friend’s or practice or everywhere.
Jesus, I couldn’t wait until she turned sixteen and got her license.
And why the fuck should I even have such a care?
Because of my absentee parents, that was why.
I hadn’t asked Daddy for help in researching colleges or figuring out what was needed to get into schools with technical programs as prestigious as MIT—if I could make the cut there—because he’d never have time for it. He’d never had time for it, and Momma had never understood it.
In ninth grade, we’d had a computer programming class one semester as an elective.
The first time I’d fumbled through writing a line of code that duplicated a long string of text across the screen, I’d known that was what I wanted to do.
I still had no clue in what industry I wanted to do it, but I had a starting point, a general direction, a dream.
Daddy didn’t care about dreams, though, and Momma didn’t believe in them any longer. When they’d given up on their marriage, they’d given up on Cara and me. I’d be damned if I’d ever leave Cara without my support the way they’d left us without theirs.
But none of that made it out of my mouth.
“Fighting, Cal? Really?” His tone implied his disappointment, but the scoff he added pissed me off.
“It wasn’t a fight,” I gritted out.
“I doubt the school has you in detention all week for no reason.”
I scrubbed a hand through my hair, the frustration of this moment compounding with the frustration of my earlier run-ins with Jack fucking Rutledge, the reason I was right here, right now.
“Look,” I started, which had Daddy widening his eyes at my disrespectful tone. Much more evenly, I said, “It’s not just me. The football and soccer teams hate each other.”
“Then why are you getting in trouble? Huh?” He waved behind him as if the team stood there. “Why weren’t thirty other parents interrupted today to be told their kids were caught fighting at school?”
“It’s complicated, okay?”
Daddy snorted. “Nothing is complicated at eighteen.”
Of course he didn’t want to listen. He didn’t want to know what drove this. He just wanted to bitch about it. I squared my shoulders, pulling myself to my full height, which made Daddy do the same.
“I’m sorry I disappointed you,” I said. And it was the truth, as badly as I hated to admit it. Still, it’d have been nice if he’d just listen for once.
He exhaled with a quick sigh, then waved at his office door. “You’re grounded.”
I nodded without a word and turned to leave.
Daddy stopped me before I took one step. “I can’t take your truck or phone because of your sister, but you’re to stay at home unless you’re at school or running an errand for me. Got it?”
I nodded again, not asking any particulars, like for how long, and piss him off more.
“The correct answer is ‘yes, sir,’ Calvin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. And this had better be the end of this shit. You’re not a troublemaker, so start acting like an adult. Or kiss those dreams of college goodbye.”
How would he even know about my college dreams?
And what if I were a troublemaker? What if I was the bad boy for a change instead of the always smiling, always available to help, always taking it on the chin Cal Winters? What then? I didn’t ask, of course, just left him to be pissed in the lonely world he’d created for himself.
I skipped dinner and finished my homework in no time at all. Exhausted, depressed, I ignored texts from Sasha, letting that be tomorrow’s problem, and thankfully passed the fuck out for the night.
Only to be shown how sadistic our teachers could be on day two of my punishment with Jack.