Chapter 2 #2
I knew I was just fuming at this point, but what else could I do?
“I couldn’t do that, could you imagine how awkward you being my butler would be?” Morgan retorted.
We both laughed, and the genuineness of my brother briefly relieved the frustration I felt.
“Having you as my brother will be bad enough! Besides, you’re too nosy to ever be a successful butler.”
The jokes were nice. They felt good, at least in the way that a brief drop of a roller coaster felt good.
But like the nauseous feeling following a roller coaster too close to a meal, once the laughter subsided, the disgust and anger at what had just happened and my current family situation came roaring back.
I couldn’t just drop it, no matter how much I wished I could.
Alfred, I wanted to joke, had been a successful butler to Bruce Wayne and he’d been plenty nosy.
It would have kept in the theme of our joking, but I just didn’t want to joke. What was the damn point?
Sarah was gone. I wasn’t a true Hunt. Nothing else mattered.
“I just want to prove myself.”
This wasn’t something that the two of us had ever discussed previously, and my eyes went anywhere but on my brother. Confessions to Sarah were hard enough—if Morgan mocked me for this, I don’t know that I’d ever show my face in society again.
“I’m not you Morgan, I’m not even like you. I don’t have any real family to fall back on, much less a family name or family money. I want to make something of myself, I want to have my own money to fall back on, my own money to leave my kids.”
If I ever get to have them…
I knew that I probably should have left it alone. These were things that I knew not a lot of kids his age even thought about, much less wanted to talk about. Especially in the circles Morgan and I ran in.
But when you grow up in the environment I did with the disadvantages I did, you grew up awfully quickly.
“I don’t want to be a butler.”
I was trying to soften it again, pull back from that depressive spiral that I was falling into. We didn’t have time for it.
Or, rather, I didn’t think that Morgan really wanted to be talking about any of this, and why would he? It wasn’t that I thought that Morgan wouldn’t talk to me about it, it wasn’t even that I thought that Morgan would have a problem with doing so.
It was that I knew that Morgan couldn’t relate. He was a billionaire by inheritance alone. Me? I was lucky to be a thousandaire by association.
Because of Morgan’s inability to relate to the topic, he was going to feel awkward. It didn’t help, either, that Morgan felt responsible for some of his own father’s mechanisms and schemes, which left him feeling guilty, mostly when it came to those concerning either his mother or me.
I knew, just as everyone knew, that I had a brash attitude and an even brasher mouth—that is, when I wasn’t feeling like shit as I did now—but that didn’t mean that I didn’t feel emotions like any other kid his age.
It was just that I had learned to bury them beneath an act of casual indifference and sarcasm.
At least Morgan knew this well and knew how to recognize after our years of friendship and brotherhood.
Unfortunately, that did not change the facts.
Morgan might have been more sensitive and self-aware than most of his peers in his social circle, mostly due to his mother’s influence, but he was still a rich boy and always would be.
It made it that much harder for him to actually identify and keep from self-absorption, no matter how much he was my brother.
Morgan’s laugh was easy enough, even if I could sense some discomfort for him.
“We’re twelve,” he said finally, laughing around the words as if they were actually funny at all. “We’ll have time to figure it out you asshole, we have all the time in the world.”
My jaw tightened at the words. I tried to ignore that rush of irritation that they brought, a persistent reminder of just how easy it was for the son of a billionaire to say something like “all the time in the world.” If only he knew how rare and how good he had it.
Again, I was reminded of our differences, of the different rate at which they had had to grow up.
Morgan didn’t get it, he wouldn’t be able to understand, and he would never have to face that hurt.
Even when Morgan moved, striking forward and punching me jokingly and jovially in the arm, I was still preoccupied.
But, wanting to dodge my thoughts and because I felt I had to, I gave chase regardless.
It would be too easy for me to go nowhere, something I was all too aware of, even if no one else was.
Morgan seemed to forget about the fact that his father was the man that he was, like I didn’t understand that just because Mr. Hunt had adopted me didn’t mean that he couldn’t discard me even faster.
Perhaps Mrs. Hunt would have some sympathy and bring me back on as a damn butler, but I sure didn’t have the guaranteed future Morgan did.
I was overly aware of this fact, aware that if I didn’t find some other service to provide to the man of the house, that it was very likely that he would cast me aside the minute it was that it became evident that I wouldn’t fill the role that he had intended for me to.
For now—emphasis on now—I had access to the same schooling as Morgan, to the same society I was such an outcast from, to the connections and the means that allowed him to have them… but that was a limited time frame.
And I only knew that it was limited, not to what degree.
I wasn’t going to inherit anything like Morgan was, I wasn’t going to be written into the Hunt family, I hadn’t even been given their name when I was adopted.
Mr. Hunt’s snort at the question posed by the social worker referring to such still echoed in his head.
Only the insistence of Mrs. Hunt had allowed me to become Chance Hunt, but a legal certificate did not change what Mr. Hunt thought.
For at least a few seconds, though, I just became another twelve year old boy, chasing after his brother for some rough and tumble—maybe some physicality would get rid of the thoughts in my head.
I caught Morgan by the waist and tackled him down onto the compact earth, the both of us rolling and fighting for control until I could work his knees around either side of Morgan’s ribs.
I pushed him back even further into the dirt and cocked my arm back.
By all appearances, I was about to beat the shit out of my brother.
It would be too easy to take my frustration out on Morgan; it wouldn’t even be the first time for either of us to go that route.
Too easy to release my coiled arm and connect with Morgan’s still laughing face again and again until we were actually fighting, until Mrs. Melanie Hunt were screaming again about the bloodstains and the broken bones they inevitably inflicted upon one another.
Too easy to bring him down to the level that kids who didn’t have wealthy mommies and daddies lived at.
However, Morgan was my best friend and my brother. And even if he didn’t have a damn clue about how the world worked, he was my naive best friend and brother.
The tension in my arm released and the flat of my hand lowered to the ground instead, grabbing an accumulation of dirt and grass… and throwing it in Morgan’s face.
If I was being honest, for all my dark thoughts, it wasn’t just Mrs. Hunt that would keep me from the streets. Morgan would put a word in as well. I appreciated that, even if I couldn’t admit it.
Unfortunately, if push came to shove, that wasn’t going to keep me from ending back on the streets.
The only thing that was going to keep me from ending back up on the streets was myself and my humility before Mr. Hunt.
I fully intended to use whatever leg up I could get from being adopted by Mr. Hunt as I could; I just had to find out how it would be most profitable for me, and absorb all of those lessons I was getting unintentionally through just being present and Morgan’s best friend and brother.
“You dick!” Morgan muffled from underneath.
Morgan, showing surprising strength, buckled me off. My knees came up under in an attempt to get back to my feet before Morgan got his hands on me, but that was ruined the minute that Morgan’s hands closed around my ankles, jerking me back and digging his elbows mercilessly into my back.
“You’re not getting away that fucking easy, you prick,” Morgan said through his laughter, the sound of Chance’s jacket tearing inspiring even more laughter still.
It seemed the two of them weren’t going to get away without a lecture from Mrs. Hunt after all, but I figured we could handle that. Dirt accumulated on our nice clothes, said clothing ripped, and a few scratches formed, even drawing blood.
I had to say, fuck girls, and fuck money… but damnit, I loved Morgan, even if he came with a whole lot of surrounding baggage.