10. Eli
10
ELI
I tried not to let my annoyance over Haley’s dismissal ruin the rest of my day.
Sure, in some stupid fantasy, I imagined that she’d be grateful. That when I sat with her at the food court, she would appreciate not being alone for once. And that when those bitchy girls teased her and talked shit about her, she’d admire me for standing up for her and coming to her defense.
I was wrong.
She was more of a loner than I realized.
And she was way too jaded and skeptical to believe that I’d come to her defense out of the goodness of my heart.
Damn you.
Of course, she wouldn’t be fooled so easily.
I hadn’t approached her to be nice. Going to sit and eat with her was my first idea of trying to get her to warm up to me so I could save my ass.
If Preston tells his parents I ruined that car…
I blew out a deep breath and walked into my dorm room to change for my mom’s birthday dinner. Now that I was finally done with the day, I couldn’t even count on relaxing here.
All I wanted to do was sleep. A full load of attending classes and staying awake during lectures wore me out when I hardly slept last night. And I was hungover, too. My headache faded with water and painkillers for a while, but it was back with a vengeance.
I sighed, hating the idea of having to spend more time than was necessary with my dad, but I didn’t want to mooch off Finn for a ride to the restaurant. He had a date with Britney later, and he was already nervous and getting his reading and homework done before getting ready for it.
Eli: Hey, Dad. Is there a chance you and Mom could swing by and pick me up, please?
I doubted he’d be that generous.
Three dots appeared under my text as I lowered my arm and let my bag slide down to drop on the floor. I had no energy to pick it up and put it on my chair.
Dad: How much of a whiny brat can you be?
“Here we go,” I muttered.
“What’s wrong?” Finn asked, pulling an ear bud out as he turned from his desk where he was studying. He likely saw my mouth moving and assumed I was talking to him.
“Nothing,” I replied.
Dad: It’s one thing for you to bitch about what day of the week your mother’s birthday falls on.
Dad: Like it’s some hardship to give a damn to celebrate and care about someone else for a change.
Dad: The world doesn’t revolve around you.
“Oh, fuck off ,” I groaned, falling back onto my bed. It was always like this with him. Always. He’d turn everything I said into some major grievance, where I was the only bad guy, never doing anything right.
Dad: And now you’re asking me to go out of my way and spend more gas just to pander to you and make YOUR life more convenient?
“Never mind, asshole. It’s not like I want to go at all.” I dropped my phone to the mattress next to me.
“What’s wrong?” Finn asked again.
“My mom’s birthday dinner. They want me to come out to eat and celebrate with them.”
Familiar with how crappy my parents could be toward me, he cringed. “And you can’t get out of it?”
I wouldn’t dare try. I’d never hear the end of it.
“I asked him to pick me up on the way. He’s acting like I’m bitching for a chauffeur.”
Finn shook his head. “What an ass. They know you don’t have a car.”
I sat up, rubbing my face. “I’ll hop in the shower now and start walking to the bus stop.” Because of course, my parents would pick a restaurant in Marsten that wasn’t within walking distance, then act like I could fucking fly there or something. Like magic.
“Nah. I’ll take you.”
I got up and headed to the bathroom, glad that we’d lucked out in this dorm room to have a bathroom. It was tiny, but it was ours. A huge plus when we had a girl over.
“No, it’s fine. You got your date.”
“Nope. She canceled on me.” He rolled his eyes. “Said I’m not her type after all. I can drive you.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Want a ride home too?” He yawned. “I’m tired after last night, but I need to stay up and read this chapter. Knowing I have to pick you up would force me to stay awake.” He chuckled weakly.
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”
On the drive there, he asked me about my plans for Haley. He pitied me that I had to jump through a hoop to not get in trouble and have to pay my scholarship back. “You’re not going to tell your parents, are you?”
I huffed a dry laugh. “Are you insane? Of course, I’m not telling them! They’d freak out.”
His reminder about this impossible dare peeved me, keeping the fear of failure forefront in my mind.
“I’ll text you,” I told him after I got out of the car and waited to shut the door.
“Yeah, do that. In case I fall asleep reading. Give me a heads up and I’ll be here.”
“Thanks again.”
I walked into the restaurant and found my parents seated at a table. I was actually five minutes early, but the sticklers they were about punctuality, they probably saw that as tardy.
“Finally managed to make it, huh?” Dad asked.
He was an asshole of the finest order to taunt me when he knew damn well I’d have to walk or ride the bus. Or maybe he had his head so far up his ass that he assumed bus schedules catered to his whims.
“Happy birthday, Mom.” I handed her a card, by rote. Bothering with hellos would be a waste of breath. They wouldn’t say hi to me, so I had no incentive to try with them. Deep down, I hated that I had to be here at all.
The last time they celebrated my birthday was before I hit double digits.
“Oh, jeez.” She frowned at me. “You can’t even try to dress up or look decent?”
I sat, bracing myself for a long fucking night. “I showered. I’m decent.”
“Barely,” Dad said, frowning.
“It’s not like I have a tux in my dorm,” I replied.
He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t even think about talking back to me like that. Not on your mother’s birthday.”
I ground my teeth and exhaled through my nose.
Pick your battles. Pick your fucking battles. This will be over with before you know it.
Acting like a robot and not investing any emotions were the only way I could ever handle them anymore.
Mom opened the card and didn’t smile. “Is this it?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. They knew I had little funds, focused on school. And it wasn’t as though I could drive to a store and shop for her, not that she’d approve of anything I bought for her.
“Just your name, scrawled like this?” She showed Dad the card, pointing at the inside.
“That’s my signature.” For fuck’s sake, do not nitpick how I sign my damn name now.
“I see that.” She cringed. “You can’t say love, Eli ? Or From Eli ? You just scribble your name?”
Someone kill me now. Again, I steadied my breath, determined to stay strong. “I didn’t think I had to say from since handing it to you implies that it is from me.”
If she dared to ask me why I wouldn’t sign it with love, I’d walk out of here. Love was a joke. They hadn’t loved me since I got my first bad score on a test in second grade.
It only got worse from there. Over dinner, they harassed me nonstop about all that I did wrong.
My mom got on to me about the Cs that I had, demanding that I give her a “good” reason they weren’t all As.
My dad complained that I was tired and acting uninterested in the conversation, not a fan that I’d checked out.
She bitched about how no one would want to hire me if I didn’t graduate with better grades.
He whined that I was a spoiled punk who didn’t appreciate having a scholarship in the first place.
His comments about the scholarship nearly made me throw up. Unbeknownst to them, my mistake at that party could get it taken away. If Mr. West so decided, he could put it in motion for my scholarship to be revoked. I’d have to pay thousands. And I bet they wouldn’t let me graduate based on my behavior. Preston’s family had that much influence.
I was stuck, caught in the shittiest tight place between my parents never thinking I was good enough and assuming I was a dumbass, all brawn and no brains, and the threat of the West family ending my time in college prematurely, right before graduation.
“All that matters is that I graduate,” I told them when my mom started in again about why my grades were only average.
“Of course, it matters,” she said, looking to the side of the room like she was so exasperated with me that she couldn’t stand the sight of me. “But we don’t want everyone to know we have some deadbeat son who can’t excel.”
Thanks. Thanks a lot. Really feeling the fucking love here.
“And you'd damn well better graduate,” my dad warned. “Because you better not forget that we won’t be supporting you financially.”
“How could I ever forget?” I said dryly, so sick of their voices that I wanted to scream in frustration.
“Are you talking back to me?” he asked, leaning over the table to try to get in my face.
I didn’t reply, knowing how this particular argument ended. Since it was her birthday, I doubted my mother wanted other people in the restaurant to witness him smacking me around.
“You'd better not be,” he warned. “You spoiled, smug asshole. You act like the world owes you some easy pass at work. Like you can be lazy and get ahead.”
I sighed, dead inside and needing to get the fuck out of here. They didn’t deserve another second of my time. “Are we done here?” I asked my mom. “Happy birthday.” I turned to my dad. “Have a safe drive home. I need to get back to campus and study,” I lied. I needed to leave before I lost that thin control I had and actually talked back for once.
It wouldn’t matter if I did. It’d feed the flames of fiery hatred my dad had for me. Nothing would change. They didn’t love me. They’d never loved me the way I was, for who I was, the kid who didn’t get perfect grades like everyone else. The boy who had slight dyslexia but didn’t know until he self-diagnosed it at fifteen because his mom feared getting checked for it would really mean he was less than and flawed.
I knew I wasn’t perfect. But that shouldn’t be an excuse for parents to stop loving their kid.
Right?
Without waiting for a reply, I stood, turned around, and left.
I got my phone out to text Finn so he could come get me. At least, I hoped he could still come get me. I was done earlier than I told him that I thought I’d be, but I could stand around in the cold outside and wait. Maybe that would cool me off, anyway. I refrained from talking back to my parents or arguing with them, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t fuming inside, raging, red-hot mad at them.
“How dare you treat your mother like that?”
I groaned as I stood outside the restaurant. I’d only gotten as far as the walkway to the parking lot, planning on sitting on the railing to wait for Finn. In the shadows broken only by a single streetlamp, I groaned and stopped, knowing that if I walked away from my dad again, he’d get madder and madder. Sometimes, appeasing him made it all end faster.
I turned. “Treat her like what, Dad? I came to dinner. I got her a card. I told her happy birthday.”
He stalked up to me, livid. His face was red, that vein bulging on his brow. Deep lines were etched on his face, bracketing his mouth as he sneered and around his eyes as he narrowed them. “And then you think you can disrespect her by just walking out? Not having the decency to say goodbye?”
“I’m not disrespecting?—”
He struck out, backhanding me so swiftly that I wasn’t prepared for it. I hadn’t braced myself for a hit from him in years. Two years, to be exact. But that streak was over now.
I whipped to the side from the force of his smack, but before I could slant too far over, he gripped the front of my coat and yanked me upright.
“Still talking back, huh?”
“I’m not!” I argued, resisting his hold on me. “For fuck’s sake, I’m not !”
“Don’t you talk to me like that.” He reared his hand back and punched me.
Something in me snapped. Red tinted my vision, and I couldn’t hold back on this festering hatred any longer. I punched him back. Harder.
He shook it off, growling with more rage. Then he hit me again, and again, and again. He tried to treat me like a goddamn punching bag, but I was done. I unleashed it all, striking back more than he could land a hit on me.
I wasn’t a little boy anymore.
I wasn’t a dumb kid who would be scared of his parent just because he was older. He wasn’t that much bigger than me now, and I was more in shape.
I shoved him away forcefully, retreating as he slammed his back against the brick wall.
He was heaving for breath and glaring at me with his face swollen from my hits. I pointed at him as I backed up. After spitting out a mouthful of blood from where he’d gotten my jaw so hard that I bit my cheek, I stared him down.
“Stay the fuck away from me,” I warned.
He tried to catch his breath, furious but lacking the fight to charge at me again.
“And here’s your goodbye.” I flipped him off, then turned again and walked away for the last time tonight.
No footsteps pounded after me. As I walked away, not bothering with my phone to text for a ride because I needed to cool down, he chose not to chase me down again.
He’d learned his lesson—this time.
And I prayed that if I played my cards right and managed to fulfill this dare Preston put on me so I could graduate without losing my scholarship, I would never have to see my parents again.