12. Evan
12
EVAN
“ W hat do you think?” I asked Colton as we strode toward the clubhouse after finishing our game. “Do we have what it takes to impress everybody the weekend of the wedding?”
We’d just finished eighteen holes on a glorious Sunday, and I was flying high. The wedding was two weeks out, plans were being finalized, and already word had spread of the influential Black and Goldsmith families choosing my country club for the site of a gala wedding. Serena was up to her neck in inquiries with curious callers asking to reserve space all the way into next year.
The only thing dampening my spirits was my best friend’s scowl when I turned his way. “We have a problem,” he announced, lifting his sunglasses to give me a narrow-eyed stare.
My stomach dropped. “What is it?”
“Why the fuck did you never invite us out here to play before now?” He barely managed to get it out before laughing.
Noah, Miles, and Lucian cracked up at what must have been relief written all over my face. “You never asked for an invitation,” I reminded him, giving his shoulder a firm but friendly punch as we continued across the emerald lawn separating my two businesses.
It was a gorgeous day, perfect spring weather, and the pleasant buzzing of bees and fluttering of birds added to the sweet smell of fresh-cut grass and what was already coming to life in the gardens we cut through on our way up to the clubhouse dining room. It was downright idyllic, and I’d made it happen. Not the weather, but everything else.
“I remember visiting out here when we were kids. Senior year,” Noah recalled. “Your dad treated us to a game next door to the club, remember?”
“That was before your family owned the golf course?” Miles asked.
“My family never owned the golf course. I owned it,” I explained. “My father never had the vision.” He never had a lot of things.
We reached the rear veranda and Colton turned around, folding his arms as he scanned what stretched out in front of us. “It’s perfect,” he declared. “Look at that lake. I’d love to take a boat out on it.”
He then pointed to an unused lot on the other side of the lake, overgrown but still picturesque. “You ever think about buying that lot? You could put up a hotel. Create an entire resort experience for your guests.”
“Let me guess,” Lucian joked. “The Black family would oversee construction.”
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked while the rest of us laughed.
“I thought about it,” I confessed, waving everyone inside. It was a beautiful day, but what I needed more than anything was a cold drink after spending hours in the sun .
“He’ll have more than enough on his plate once photos from the wedding get published,” Lucian guessed as we took seats at the bar opposite the windows overlooking the gardens. There were a couple of men in polo shirts like ours parked on stools who raised a hand in greeting, and most of the tables throughout the dining room were in use. It was a bustling afternoon, and every sale rung up at the register was sweet music to my ears.
“Mr. Anderson.” Right away, I recognized Serena’s breathless voice, along with the level of stress it held when she found me.
“Who is this?” Lucian turned on his stool, putting on a charming smile while he sized her up. I wanted to tell him to take his attention elsewhere. She was my most trusted employee, and I couldn’t afford her complaining about being harassed by one of my best friends.
Thankfully, she was too interested in whatever made her approach us to pay much attention to him. “This is Serena, my event coordinator,” I explained. Turning away from him, I asked her, “What can I help you with? I thought you were only stopping in for a few minutes this morning.”
“I was until I ran into someone.” She gulped, lowering her voice to a whisper. “He’s been waiting up in your office for an hour and a half. I would’ve called to tell you, but he insisted on keeping it a surprise.”
“There he is.” My father’s voice rang out, stabbing me in the ears and making me cringe before I composed myself. Son of a bitch. He strutted across the dining room, his white hair gleaming in the sunlight, turning him into a beacon as he passed between tables.
Fuck me. The man had a sixth sense when it came to destroying a good time. My skin crawled, and my stomach churned, but I couldn’t let it show .
“Dad. I thought you were in Morocco until next month.” Incredible, the way the sight of him could take what had been a great day and turn it into something cringe-inducing.
“Your mother’s still there, shopping her way through the country.” He offered a brief handshake before turning to the guys. I was only half aware of Miles introducing himself, of Colton asking how business had been lately. Why, of all times, did he have to show up now?
I knew why, and the answer didn’t provide any comfort. What he wanted more than anything was to find out I’d run the place into the ground. He had never expected me to make a success out of this, much less on the scale I’d managed it. Anyone could sit back and do the bare minimum, letting a business run itself with the help of countless assistants and underlings. I was the one who had the balls and the vision to do more than coast by the way he always had.
And he couldn’t fucking stand it.
He could smile all he wanted, but there was no hiding that hard glint in his eye. Sizing things up, judging, looking for any excuse to put me down. To make sure my head didn’t get too big. One of his favorite sayings, one of many empty statements I’d heard so many times, they became a mantra I repeated to myself whenever I lost sight of how deeply I needed to succeed.
“Obviously, nothing as busy as this.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder in response to Colton’s question, and it took everything I had not to shake him off. “But we aren’t all business geniuses like this one.”
“Careful with that genius talk,” Lucian warranted him with a grin. “We don’t want him getting an even bigger opinion of himself.”
“I’m not sure that would be possible.” Dad shone his friendly, affable smile on me, and I hoped for my friends’ sake that my grimace looked like a smile.
“Let him have a huge opinion of himself,” Colton insisted, grinning my way. “So long as it means my wedding goes off without a hitch. Mr. Anderson, we expected you would still be out of the country, or else we would have?—”
“No need to explain,” Dad told him with a hearty laugh. “Congratulations, by the way. If I hadn’t gotten so damn bored of all that shopping at this bazaar and that market, I would still be over there. I suspect I’ll have to fly back soon, anyway, to make sure my wife doesn’t bankrupt me.”
Relief cooled the heat spreading through my chest. Good. He wouldn’t be here to ruin things. Here I was, close to thirty years old, and the man still had the power to get under my skin. He was the sort of man who used to brag about scheming his way out of doing chores when he was a kid, who couldn’t understand when I first approached him with suggestions on how to improve his business. All because some of us studied and learned in college rather than going through the motions.
I knew something else about him that my friends didn’t. He held a lifelong contempt toward people like them, though he would never show it outside his immediate family. He had grown up with the stigma of being new money, and as an adult, he’d been rich enough to own and run country clubs but not wealthy enough to count the members among his friends. We had nothing like the fortune the Diamond and Black families had amassed. Enough to afford a long trip to Morocco but not enough to send me to an exclusive prep school like the one I’d attended. Only a scholarship had made that possible. Maybe he would have made enough money and then some if he had only tried to do more than skate by .
As always, his hypocrisy made my skin crawl. “Why don’t we go to my office… have a chat?” I suggested, getting up from my seat.
“No, that’s fine,” he insisted. “I don’t want to take you away from your guests. I’ve been waiting so long, I’m almost late for an appointment as it is. We’ll have to catch up soon.” With another handshake, he was gone, his white hair disappearing around the corner as he approached the lobby. It was just like him, popping in to remind me he existed, then leaving without explaining what the hell was so important in the first place.
I picked up my iced tea, the taste of which brought Valentina to mind—the iced tea we drank at my house before the power went out then what played out after. “What time was the shower scheduled for?” I asked no one in particular, playing it off like a casual question.
The guys exchanged glances, knowing exactly why I abruptly changed the topic. Except for Miles, who was new to the group, they knew enough about our uncomfortable history to leave it alone. His mouth snapped shut when Lucian shot him a look.
“I think it started around eleven,” Colton replied.
“It will probably go on for hours,” Noah predicted with a smirk. “Get a bunch of women together, talking about weddings and babies, and you’re talking about an all-day event.”
“Thinking about going over there and looking for some fresh blood?” Lucian inquired with a knowing grin. “I was thinking along those lines, myself.”
“Do you ever stop thinking about pussy?” Miles asked.
“No,” Lucian deadpanned, earning a laugh from the rest of the group. I did my best, but it came off as half-hearted and empty. I needed to see Valentina .
All it took was a few minutes with my father to stir up a lifetime of bullshit. She was the only one who knew what things were really like with him. The way he looked down on my friends while kissing their asses, along with their fathers’ asses, of course. The hypocrisy was endless. How could a man who’d had everything handed to him resent Colton and the others for living the same way? And unlike my friends, Dad had never bothered going above and beyond. He had built nothing of his own. I had no doubt it ate at him as much as anything else.
Valentina would understand. She always had.
I stared down at my phone, waffling between texting her and letting it go. What could she do, after all? She could listen. So could my living room wall. A wall could do roughly as much for me as she could anyway. Nothing would change once I’d vented like a whiny child.
Still, the impulse was surprisingly intense. What would it be like to have someone to go home to after being bombarded?
“Oh. That’s a shame.” It was Miles who spoke first, nodding down at his screen. “Aria says Valentina wasn’t feeling well and left before Rose finished opening gifts.”
“I hope she isn’t overdoing it,” Colton murmured with a frown. “I was worried this would be too much for her. Why does she always work like she has something to prove?”
“Because she always feels like she has something to prove,” I observed without hesitation. One of the many points on which we had always been able to relate. I knew now that deep in the back of my mind, I had always observed her success through the lens of the time we spent getting to know each other that one wild summer.
There’s Valentina, proving herself. That was what drove her .
I kept my thoughts to myself until we went out to our cars, with the guys climbing into the limo I’d sent out to the city to pick them up while I got behind the wheel of my Mercedes. Before setting out, I sent Valentina a text.
Me: Heard you weren’t feeling well earlier. Can I bring you something? I could stop by and drop off whatever you need.
There wasn’t a woman in existence who’d ever deserved this level of attention. Not from me. Here I was, wanting to drive back to the city and act as a gofer to someone more than capable of taking care of herself.
I couldn’t help but blame it on my father, whose contact I pulled up after getting on I-95 and finding myself stuck in road work traffic. He answered right away, his voice filling the car and mysteriously devoid of the boisterous energy it held earlier. “Now you have time for me.” His sigh didn’t hide the animosity he held.
He always had a way of twisting shit around. “I had no idea you were there. I would’ve come straight up to see you otherwise.”
“I’m sure you would have rather spent the afternoon with your friends. Not that it matters,” he continued with another sigh. “I couldn’t announce in front of them what I came all this way to tell you. Your mother plans on staying with friends in Italy once she’s tired of Morocco. She’s not coming home.”
What a good thing I was stuck in place, surrounded by cars going nowhere, since the sudden shock might have been a problem if I’d been driving at speed. “What? Since when?”
“We’ve agreed to a divorce,” he explained, flat and even. No emotion spared for a woman he’d been married to for thirty years. “I came home to take care of things with the lawyers. This isn’t something you want to handle long-distance. I’m sure she’ll call you at some point.”
I wasn’t so sure. She never wanted to be a mother. A kid knows when they’re an unwelcome guest in their own home. “It’s a shame this is happening,” I offered, staring straight ahead while countless memories of stiff, distant holidays and strained smiles for family photos raced through my head. All it did was remind me of what a disaster I’d be as a husband and parent without a strong example of either.
“These things happen,” he reasoned. “At any rate, you have more than enough on your plate without worrying about us. I’ll let you go. I’m having a drink with my lawyers shortly.”
That was it. No goodbye, no wondering how I’d take the news. Not that I was important in all of this. I wasn’t a child either. There were no illusions when it came to them and their chilly attitude toward each other.
Traffic had started moving by the time the phone buzzed with a text from Valentina, who I’d almost forgotten after being blindsided by my father for the second time in an hour.
Valentina: I am really not feeling well and wouldn’t be good company. I have everything I need. I’ll see you Thursday for the final menu approval.
I didn’t have it in me to argue and knew it would be a waste of time. She was doing me a favor in the end. Cutting me off before I could show up at her apartment door looking for the comfort I’d been missing all my life.
All my life except for the summer we spent together.