Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
The Hero
Iwas five when I found out that my father was a villain.
Because he’d made my mother cry.
I saw them through the crack in their bedroom door. My dad was talking to my mom in a low voice. He was saying something to her that I couldn’t hear but I could see the effect of it on her face. I could see that with every word he said, her features crumpled up.
It was a sight that scared me.
I don’t remember ever seeing my mother like that.
And so when my dad left the room after a while, I ran to be with her. She was sitting on the bed, her shoulders hunched and her head bowed. I tried consoling her, asking her what was wrong, but she never told me.
All she said was that everything was fine.
I was five; of course I believed her.
But my mother was lying that day.
Because over the years, I watched. I watched it all with my own eyes, how my father broke her heart over and over. How he cheated on her, neglected her until he needed something from her. How his attentions were short and wandering.
So much so that one night I saw him fucking the nanny.
In his office chair no less, the one that he had custom made. And he was doing that when she was supposed to be taking care of my sister.
Back when Pest was little, there was a time when she used to have nightmares.
Since her room was right across from mine, I’d always wake up when she did and I’d try to put her to sleep.
It had gotten so bad that we had to see the doctors.
And so Mom had specifically hired a nanny to take care of Pest at night.
But when I woke up that night, I went to her room and found the nanny gone.
I shushed my sister and put her back to sleep before I went in search of her.
The fucking nanny.
I was only eight but I was raging. I was furious that she wasn’t there to take care of my sister. And then, I heard noises coming out of my dad’s study and there she was. The nanny.
Instead of taking care of my sister, she was taking care of my father. I had her fired the following day; I planted Mom’s jewelry in her room and made it look like she’d stolen it.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that my father is a douchebag and by the time I was eight, I’d decided something.
I decided that I hated him.
That I loathed him for making my mother miserable. I loathed him for never giving any attention to my sister. And I loathed him because even then he thought he could control me.
So when I was eight, I decided to do everything in my power not to. Not to be controlled by him. Or not to be his devoted little son.
If he wanted to show me off to his business partners when I was a kid, the future CEO of the company, or show me the ropes of how it’s all done, I made sure to make myself scarce. I made sure to stay busy, stay lost in the town, stay drunk at the party he’d thrown where he wanted to show me off.
If he hated that I was wasting my time on soccer and that my coaches thought that I had some real talent, I made sure to play harder. I made sure to run away to that soccer summer camp he hadn’t wanted me to go to. If he asked me to quit the team, I decided to get a fucking scholarship.
I decided to go pro, get a million-dollar contract and throw it in his face.
Not that I could do it now because you know, I don’t play anymore, but it was a nice little wish to have, that kept me going while I was growing up.
So my father and I, we’re at war.
We’ve been at war ever since I was a kid.
Every war has collateral damage, doesn’t it, though?
The collateral damage of ours is her.
The girl I saw spinning on the playground when I was nine. The little blonde ballerina. The one who dances like a fairy and who stole my car when I broke her heart to hurt me.
She didn’t know what she was getting herself into. At the time I didn’t know either. I was high on my win, on the fact that I’d done the exact opposite of what my father wanted, of what my father had asked the previous night.
Yeah, I broke her innocent little heart in the process. But what do you expect of a villain anyway?
Not to mention, I defied him in style.
I won.
But somehow my father got wind of it, that a girl had stolen my car. Or maybe he was keeping better tabs on me than I’d arrogantly expected. And since he’d had it with me and my tantrums, he took advantage of the situation.
He used her to get what he wanted.
We Jackson men are real bastards, aren’t we?
I used her to win at soccer so I could piss off my father and he used her to get to me.
“Nice song.”
My thoughts break at the rough, gravelly voice and I pull myself from under the ’68 Chevy that I’m working on. It’s a sweet ride, or at least has the potential to be.
Right now it’s a dump though.
Salvaged from a yard, it’s all rusted and banged up. Needs a new engine, new tires, new paint job. It’s got alignment issues when you drive and the sound of it starting is like an animal being tortured.
But I’ve got plans for it.
Especially for that engine. I’m going to build it from scratch, rebore the cylinders, put in new pistons. It’s going to be fucking sexy when it’s done and it’s going to purr like a kitten.
And Pete knows that. The guy who just interrupted me.
That’s why he gave me the job even though I don’t work with him anymore. He knows I can make it run and look like a million bucks.
I press a few buttons on my phone and lower the volume of the song I’ve been playing. “Hey, what time is it?”
“Time for you to go home.”
I chuckle and get up and put away the wrench as I shoot back, “Which means it’s past your bedtime, isn’t it, old man?”
Pete is old, yeah.
He’s probably north of sixty and you can see every inch of that age on his ruddy face and his white beard. Pair that with a beer belly and the red and white checkered shirt that he’s wearing right now, Pete is a regular Santa Claus.
I met him when I was thirteen.
Back then I only knew him as the guy who was giving my dad trouble.
Since my dad has a habit of wanting things and acquiring things, Pete’s garage called Auto Alpha in Wuthering Garden, one of the towns that neighbors Bardstown, was in his sights. Pete was and is known, among other things, for restoring vintage cars and selling them for a fuck-ton of money.
My dad offered Pete a lot of sweet deals to give it up to Jackson Builders. My dad was going to turn it into a car showroom or something. Despite my dad’s intimidation tactics, a lot of them illegal, Pete never budged and my dad had to back off.
I guess Pete was the only man I ever saw who stood up to my dad.
Pete laughs at my comeback and offers me a beer. “So this song. Is it about her?”
Leaning against the Chevy, I was about to take a sip of the beer but I stop. “What?”
Pete has no problem sipping his beer though. He has no problem smirking either. “You’ve had it on repeat since you showed up at the shop.”
I showed up at the shop only an hour ago so I don’t know what he’s bitching about.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.
Especially because of where I’m coming from. Dropping her off at St. Mary’s after her midnight practice.
“And?”
He shrugs. “It’s got a ballerina in it. She’s a ballerina. I put two and two together.”
It’s the song that I made her dance to, that first time. And yes, it has a ballerina in it.
But so what?
It doesn’t mean anything.
I stare at him a beat before going ahead and taking a long gulp of the beer. “Your beer’s shitty.”
He laughs again, this time harder than before. “And you’re an asshole.”
Back when I came to see him for the first time, we struck up a weird friendship.
He was a lonely old man whose wife had just died and I was a punk kid who came to look at the guy who stood up to my father. I respected his rebellion.
Plus something about his garage, located off an isolated turn in the highway, surrounded by woods and cliffs, seemed like an awesome place to hang out. An awesome place to get away from my own house, my father, the town where he owned everything.
So I’d come here every chance I got.
Pete taught me everything I know about cars. He let me build my own car even.
Actually, I didn’t know it was going to be mine at the time.
It was the first car I worked on, my Mustang, and when it was done, Pete just gave it to me.
I refused; I told him that I could get a hundred cars like that.
I could pay, could buy it from him; on top of my father’s wealth, my mother’s father had me and Pest set up with a trust fund that my own father can’t touch so money has never been a problem for the Jackson kids.
I was only building the car because it was another way to piss off my father. Well, secretly.
For some reason, I never wanted to throw this in his face. I threw soccer in his face plenty but I couldn’t do it with my time with Pete. Maybe because I’d never met anyone like Pete, strong, proud, decent, and I’d never enjoyed anything — not even soccer — as much as I enjoyed working on cars.
Anyway, Pete told me to shut the fuck up, keep my trust fund money, take the car and start working on earning my own money for a change.
So I did.
I worked here all through high school. I earned my own money, which I started to spend instead of spending my dad’s money; another way to defy him.
And slowly, this garage, Pete, working on cars, building them, became soothing to me.
Relaxing. Since my mornings were busy with school, soccer, fucking around with friends, I’d come here at night.
I’ve never been much of a sleeper anyway and working here took away my stress.
“What are you doing up so late?” I ask him.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Going through the photo albums again?”
“Yeah.” He throws me a small but fond smile. “She was fucking beautiful.”
I chuckle; I can’t help it.
Pete is a lovestruck fool and he’s completely gone for his wife, Mimi. She died of a heart attack years ago and now he’s left behind, looking at her photos every night, missing her, telling everyone tales of their love story.