A second glance over him, and I confirmed he hadn’t. He still wore the same clothes he had on last night at the rehearsal dinner at his parents’ house.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I growled and dumped the last drops of liquid down the sink, tossing the bottle in the trash.
“Me?” His head shook, defeated. “I don’t know, Max. What the hell is wrong with me?” He started plucking through the other empty bottles, searching for another drop.
“Come on, Todd.” I swiped my hand through the tub, taking away the rest of his litter. “Talk to me. What’s going on? You were fine last night…”
Fine was a relative term when it came to time spent with his parents. Time hadn’t dulled the weight of the McCormicks’ expectations on their one and only son, and neither had it dimmed the consequences.
“I was…I don’t know who I was last night. Not a McCormick, apparently.”
“What are you talking about?” I grabbed a washcloth and went to the sink, dousing it with ice-cold water.
“My dad…”
I slapped the cold cloth on his neck, marginally enjoying his flinch and hiss of shock.
“Fuck your dad, Todd. How many times have I told you that?” I opened the cloth and laid it over his head. Moving back to the sink, I filled one of the glasses with water and took it back to him. “Drink this.”
“I thought he’d understand,” Todd muttered before downing the whole glass, probably wishing it were vodka.
I wished I understood why he still listened to—revered—his parents like he did. For all the time I’d known him, they’d either been absent or made him feel inadequate, and still he kepttrying. Trying and failing and drinking. Trying and failing and drinking.And drinking and drinking and drinking.
“Todd.” I put my hand on his shoulder, filled with equal parts fury and pity. “Listen to me. Forget your dad. Whatever he said…forget it. Today isn’t about him. It’s about you. The future you’re making. You decide what happens after today. What kind of life you’re going to make with the person you love, the person you want to spend your life with.”
These blow-ups with his dad were a tale as old as time. They started when we were in school and continued when Todd didn’t do as well as was expected. When Todd decided to help me open a start-up business. When Todd started dating Daisy, rather than one of the wealthy socialites on his mother’s marital menu.When Todd got Daisy pregnant.
Every time Todd tried to be himself—do something for himself—they argued until legacy inevitably pulled Todd back in line. Legacy, or the fear of not having one.
“Come on. Clean yourself up and get ready,” I said, giving him a little shake, his head bobbing like it was attached by a single tenuous tether. “Daisy deserves better than this.”
She deserved better than my troubled friend, who remembered her birthday but asked me to send her a birthday bouquet of daisies every year because he was too busy—and never remembered that peonies were her favorite. Better than my friend, who would’ve forgotten their anniversary if I didn’t say something, if I didn’t line up plans and gift suggestions like I was his butler rather than his best friend.
Better than my friend, who got annoyed when Daisy continued to work at the Stonebar Country Club, where he’d met her, to pay for school. Who continued to get frustrated, no matter how many times I explained Daisy’s reluctance to rely on him, given how her father had abandoned her mother. Andwho refused to understand why she wanted to get her degree in chemistry when, as his wife, she wouldn’t need to work.
And so much fucking better than the man who knocked her up and made her drop out of her master’s program, proposing to her and promising to take care of her, and then had cold feet every step of the way.
But it was a whole hell of a lot of guilt that kept me from telling her that.
No matter how I’d helped Todd over the years, Daisy loved him, and it wasn’t dependent on whether or not he remembered her favorite flower or their anniversary. Or whether he fully understood or appreciated her need for independence.At least, that was what I told myself.
“Daisy…” Todd said her name like he’d already forgotten who we were talking about.
“Your daughter deserves better than this.” An edge sliced into my voice.
“Better than me.” He corrected bitterly and pulled out of my hold, swaying as he rose. “Better than a McCormick.”
There were plenty of people who would hate Todd McCormick at this point, but knowing him for as long as I did—knowing the trauma that apathy and constant disapproval can do to a person—I didn’t fall for the bitterness aimed at her, but instead heard the bitterness aimed at himself.
Todd wanted his parents’ approval, but the only way he’d learned to get that was to fit himself into their picture of who they expected him to be, even though it wasn’t what he wanted. And that meant dragging Daisy along with him.
“Come on, man.” I tucked my arms to my sides with a deep sigh. “You deserve better than this too.”
How many times over the course of our lives had I watched him get to this point? To this fork in the road that split what his parents wanted from him and what he wanted for himself? Howmany times had I watched him reach this split and let it tear him in two?
The last time, he hadn’t ended up drunk in a hotel bathtub but in a venture capital presentation for MaineStems. It almost cost us the investment, but Todd fixed it because his father was a senator. And that was how he was raised to fix all of his problems. Money. Connections. Power. Rather than thinking before acting.
But the more I pushed him, the more he pushed back. The same way he did with his parents. I learned the hard way that people only change when they want to, and Todd didn’t want to. That was why, as soon as I was able, I’d bought out his shares of MaineStems, and he hadn’t protested. He looked at it as proof that the only path he belonged on was the one laid out by his parents. But he didn’t want to change that either. Not enough.
