The Party 345 a.m.
The Party
“Me?” Billy managed. “What are you doing here?” He blinked and saw his father clearly.
He wore seafaring pajamas, a long-sleeve navy set with white piping.
Utterly dorky, but Billy couldn’t help but feel a rush of emotion because, he remembered, they now had something in common besides their DNA.
Billy was about to join the ranks of fatherhood.
“Your mother and I had a disagreement,” he said, taking Billy’s drink from him and downing it.
“Again?” Billy asked, leaning back against the pillows.
“I told her I didn’t want Olivia here. After what her parents did…”
“What did they do?”
Billy’s dad looked at him with reluctance, like he wasn’t sure how to answer the question, but then he sat down next to Billy. “Your aunt and uncle have used us many times over the years.”
Billy nodded, but he didn’t understand. Olivia’s parents were enigmas to him, and he didn’t really care about figuring them out.
“Dropping her off like she’s a dog. They think this plan in Switzerland is going to fix everything. Absolute idiots.”
“What are you talking about?”
Billy’s father waved his hand and then refocused on Billy. “Did you take the tender here?”
“Yeah.”
“Stupid thing to do this late at night. You could have been killed.”
“I needed to be here.”
“What you need is to sober up. You’re a man now, William. The world won’t be as kind to you off this island.” He paused, looking out at the water. “We’ve made you soft.”
Billy pushed himself to sit. “That’s not my fault.”
His father grunted in response.
“Besides. I’m about to show you I can handle a lot more than you think.”
“How’s that?”
“Erica’s pregnant.” He couldn’t help it.
He smiled. The news filled him with a strange sense of pleasure.
A little kid running around with his face, Erica’s hair.
Her spunky sense of adventure. She would come around.
He knew she would. Billy looked to his father, expecting to see shock or maybe even joy, but all he saw was rage.
When he spoke, his voice was tight. “She’s going to get rid of it, isn’t she?”
“I hope not. Dad, this could be amazing. We could live—”
But before he could finish, he felt a sharp pop of pain at the back of his head, a rattling inside his brain, and a shock so deep, he froze.
“We did not raise you to become a teenage father.”
“Did you just hit me?” Billy stood, backing away from his father.
His dad’s hands were clasped behind his neck, and he was pacing now, shaking his head. “You have no idea what it’s like to be tethered to someone you barely know. You will give up your freedom. Your life. Your will. Just because you made a stupid fucking mistake when you were a kid.”
Billy looked at his dad and saw a mix of pain and fury and, horrifically, recognition.
Billy had always known his mother was twenty-two when she had him, a young mom.
She prided herself on that, whispering that all of his friends’ mothers looked ancient compared to her.
His father was older by ten years, and the story went that they met because his maternal grandfather was Reid’s boss at the real estate development firm.
Billy assumed it had been love at first sight, that his grandfather groomed his father to take over the business, and it had all been kismet.
Sure, his parents fought all the time. But there had to have been brighter days in the past.
What if, Billy wondered, there was a darker truth? What if he never knew his parents at all?
“You didn’t want to be with Mom?” he asked.
Billy’s dad didn’t answer the question. Instead, he only replied, “I won’t watch you ruin your life.” Billy could sense the rest of that sentence lingering in the air. Like I did mine.
And suddenly, Billy was filled with his own simmering fury.
He didn’t ask to be born into this world.
To come from two people who hated each other.
To never know what it’s like to live in a house with two adults who cooked together and had inside jokes.
He wasn’t like Ethan or Lucy, whose parents modeled sickeningly perfect relationships.
He had been made different, and he was overwhelmed by the injustice of it. By anger at the people who caused it.
“Go to bed, William. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
His father stood and started to walk away from him, his hand on the railing that led to the cabins below. But Billy wouldn’t let him leave. Not now.
“Dad?” As his father turned around, a wave curled up under the boat, causing Billy to stumble forward, out of control of his limbs, and in a breathless moment, he found himself midair.
The last thing he heard was the sound of his skull cracking against his father’s, slicing through the night like a thunderbolt.