24. Always Want The Dirt #2
He dropped his head sideways on top of hers. “I can’t wait either. Are you going to let me read it before it’s published?”
“I never let anyone do that,” she said, squishing her lips to one side. “But I probably will with you. It’s almost as if you wrote a portion of it.”
“Hardly that,” he said. He wasn’t as good with words as she was. He was better with ideas.
“Enough of it,” she said.
“I’ll let you two have that talk,” his mother said. “Warren, we’ll chat soon.”
“Bye, Mom,” he said and disconnected the call.
Emma hopped up, put her leg under her hip, and angled her body. “What’s this mysterious talk we have to have?”
“My mother thinks I should talk to you about my father.”
“I’d like that,” she said.
“You didn’t ask more before,” he said.
“Because it felt as if you weren’t ready. I know I appear to be someone with no restraint, but I’m not completely clueless.”
He dropped his hand on top of hers and threaded their fingers together. “No,” he said. “You’re not.” He had to remind himself of that. She didn’t joke about everything. That she cared even when it might not come across like others’ actions.
“Tell me what you want,” she said. “I won’t promise to not ask questions because I don’t think I’ve got the restraint once we get started.”
“I want you to ask. My father was a high school football star. I don’t think he could have gone pro even though he says he would have. He didn’t even plan on going to college if you ask me.”
“Why is that?”
“Because when everyone else was picking colleges, my mother said, he still hadn’t decided on anything . He’d had offers and kept dragging his feet. His parents weren’t going to pay for it. They told him he had to get loans himself. He didn’t even have a major declared.”
“That makes it hard on a lot of levels,” she said. “But if he was getting offers, then it might not have been as much in terms of loans.”
“That’s the thing,” he said. “My father says one thing, my mother another. I believe her . He wasn’t getting all that much offered in scholarships and not to the big name schools as he said.”
“You went to Ohio State,” she said. “I saw that, and Ohio State is ranked high in college football.”
He laughed. “They are. We won a championship my junior year and a bowl game my senior year. I hated going that far away from home but knew I’d have to for my future. I had to think several steps ahead.”
It killed him to leave his mother alone doing things around the house.
Not even just him helping with a part-time job, but snow removal and cleaning and laundry.
His sisters stepped up like he knew they would.
“You made sacrifices,” she said. “Everyone makes them in life, but not everyone’s are as big.”
“My father made none, but he would cry that he made the biggest of them all. My mother got pregnant a few months before graduation and my father said he couldn’t go to college then. He had a child to raise.”
“Since there were kids after you, I’m going to assume he stepped up at some point?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Your parents were married, right?”
“They were married after graduation,” he said. “My mother got a job right away. My father found one too in a plant. He had a lot of jobs and normally got fired from them all.”
“You said he had a drinking problem? Did he always?”
“Don’t put a pretty name on it,” he said, not hiding his disgust. “He was a drunk. Everyone knew it. My guess is that is why he always got fired. No clue. My mother should have left him and not the other way around.”
“Do you know why she didn’t?” she asked.
“She said she loved him. I don’t know. I think her parents’ divorce and its impact on her had more to do with it. She didn’t want to have a failed marriage.”
Emma nodded. “Sounds like the same thing you do. You do everything possible to prevent being compared to your father. Your mother held onto something much longer than maybe she should have for those reasons.”
He wasn’t sure why he never thought of it that way himself. “I guess so,” he said. “But she can’t say her mother or father hated her. My father hated me. He blamed me and my existence for his failed supposed football career.”
Her jaw dropped. “That’s horrible,” she said.
“Yeah, well. That’s what I lived with for years. And then when I hit high school and had talent, he came around again.”
“What a dick,” she said with her hands on her hips.
“There you go,” he said, grinning. “Join right in.”
“I think I will,” she said, snapping her chin down.
“So here is this asshole that isn’t around, and when he is, he’s drunk. If he has a job and money, he’s not giving any to my mother. She’s working extra shifts and holidays to provide for our needs, and the three of us kids are at home doing what we can to take the load off of her.”
Warren was the father to his sisters when he should have been a brother.
They didn’t always appreciate him telling them to do their chores or help with dinner because he was trying to fix something in the house, but they did it anyway.
He wondered if his sisters ever ratted him out or not.
“He was better off gone,” she said.
“He was. But once I got attention as our high school quarterback, he decided it was time to come back into the picture and act like the supporting father.”
“Did people believe it?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “By then he had a reputation in the town. That’s the other thing. People felt sorry for us. My mother is the nicest person you’ll ever meet. I’m not sure what she saw in Sean. I think of him that way now.”
“If you think of him at all,” she said. “Do you?”
“Rarely,” he said. “Only when I look at you and worry people will judge me for where I came from. Or compare my background to yours.”
“Oh, Warren,” she said, crawling into his lap and putting her arms around his neck. “Repeat after me. Fuck them. Fuck, fuck, fuck them all. Go on, say it.”
He laughed. “Fuck them,” he said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck them all.”
“That’s right,” she said, giving him a big smacking kiss on the cheek.
“You’re Warren Showers. Not Sean Showers.
Not Casey Showers. Warren. That’s you.” She shoved her finger into his chest. “You took the good and the bad in your life and blended it into something great. All you should care about is how you feel about yourself .”
Her words humbled him.
“I care about how you feel about me,” he said softly.
“As you should,” she said, kissing him on the lips. “I feel very favorable toward my boyfriend.”
He wanted to know more. To ask more.
But she was showing him instead and it was better than nothing.