“Yes, a captain’s hat. I’m aware of what they are.” Nathan tacked on a laugh at the end.
“Have you flown in combat?”
“Several times, of course. I was part of the unit that captured one of the heads of ISIS.”
“Really?” The guy’s eyes nearly flopped out of his head. His brain might not be that big, but by the look of his large hands, something more important was.
“Our unit was caught in a dust storm, and it was hard to see our target on the ground. Hell, I could barely see out my windshield. My mate…he wasn’t so lucky. His plane was shot down and…” Nathan put a hand over his eyes. “Excuse me. This is not proper bar chatter.”
“Don’t be.” The guy rested his hand on Nathan’s knee. “You are a hero.”
“Am I though? What is a hero?”
The guy’s mouth puckered with concern. “Let me buy you another drink.”
“No. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t try to dull the pain.”
“Well, maybe there’s something I could do to cheer you up.”
It was almost too easy.
* * *
The next morning,Nathan skillfully untangled himself from his latest sexual encounter without waking him up. The guy slept soundly in Nathan’s bed, his baby arm of a cock sticking up under the sheet. Nathan gave it a salute and headed into the kitchen.
The entryway had been rimmed in gold, or something painted gold. His stepmother loved the Palace of Versailles aesthetic, even if her design budget couldn’t compete with royalty. She set out to turn their flat into a tacky monstrosity filled with gold and marble and lots of things from catalogues. Nathan found a note on the kitchen table from his father.
Here is the name and number of the hotel in case you need to reach us, but only for emergencies please. Don’t eat the lasagna in the freezer. We are saving that for when we come home. Love, Dad.
“Happy to be back, too,” Nathan said to the note. His father had been bought out of his company for a tidy sum and was enjoying an early retirement visiting every cruise and five-star resort in the world.
They never talked about his mother, his real mother. Whenever Nathan used to ask, his dad would just tell him to forget about her, even though he was the one who dropped the bombshell on his son. “What she did…she’s not worth looking for,” his dad had told him, his voice going cold at the mention of her.
When Nathan had first found out the truth, he tried finding her. He looked on YouTube for recordings of the Oasis concert in Knebworth and searched the footage for his father. It was the largest outdoor concert in the UK, with over 250,000 attendees, but Nathan pored over each frame he could find, hoping to locate his maternal needle in a haystack. Needless to say, it was a giant failure, and soon, Nathan took his dad’s advice to heart. She wasn’t looking for him, and he wouldn’t look for her.
Nathan could never get fully on board with this plan, though. He hated her, yet he also felt a connection to his real mother. Maybe she had a good reason for doing what she did. It was a possibility that squatted in the darkest corner of his mind and was impossible to evict.
Why am I thinking about this now?he asked himself. He’d been thinking about her more in the past week than he had in years. Stupid counselor getting into his head. Maybe that was part of the plan. Purposefully screw up recovery to ensure repeat business.
Nathan beelined to the liquor cabinet, but it was locked. His father never locked it. “What? You think I’m some addict who you can’t even trust?” he said to the cabinet. His dad never attended a performance or major event in his life, yet because he dropped Nathan off at rehab, he thought himself fucking father of the year.
He was going to find that key. He didn’t even want the alcohol anymore. Sure, he could go to a nearby liquor store, but he wanted to take from his father’s precious stash, as a very personal and special kind of fuck you.
Nathan rummaged through the kitchen drawers with no luck. He took out his parents’ precious lasagna and ate it during his search.Oops.
Over the fireplace was the same enlarged photo of his extended family taken at Christmas when he was nine. Nathan and his uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents. The sick taste entered his mouth as if on cue. They all looked the same, with their thick chestnut brown hair and chocolate chip eyes, their stocky builds. And then there was the literal redheaded stepchild Nathan kneeling beside the tree, his light hair and pale skin practically glowing. Before they took the picture, his cousins shoved him around in a circle outside, calling him Ginger and asking if he knew the Weasleys, like they loved to do. Their lack of creativity ceased to amaze him. Nathan’s insults weren’t that much more creative. He called them a bunch of braindead cocksuckers (ironic in retrospect). His eldest cousin punched him in the stomach before pushing him into a puddle of mud, where he landed on his ass. Hence the kneeling position.
Still a bunch of braindead cocksuckers.
Nathan stormed into his parents’ bedroom and tore through their dresser and nightstand drawers. He came up empty. He recoiled at the canopy bed with thick drapes and the gold sparkly walls of the bedroom. His stepmother had a gay stepson at her disposal yet still churned out rooms like this.
Next, he searched through his father’s desk drawers in his office. He leafed through papers and envelopes and files. Steam filled his head, and the whites of his eyes glistened with purpose.
“I know you’re in here,” he muttered. Nathan popped open the locked bottom drawer of his father’s desk, like he’d done as a teenager when he needed some cash.
He found the cabinet key sitting atop an old checkbook. Whenever he broke into this drawer, he always went for the checkbook. After forging his father’s signature on permission slips, it was only a natural progression. Not like his father cared or even noticed the money Nathan had taken from him. When he did discover the stealing, Nathan thought he’d be in for it. Yelling. Punishment. Wondering about what kind of downward spiral his only son was on. But all his father did was get him his own credit card. “That should make things easier,” his father had told him before going out to some swanky benefit.
Nathan picked up the checkbook. He had this urge to rip it into pieces, or sign all the checks and hand them to homeless people on the street. Something else far more interesting grabbed his attention. At the bottom of the drawer, the corner of a paper peeked out from under a stack of more important documents. Or at least it looked like paper, but thicker. Nathan had never noticed it before, since his attention had always been drawn to the checkbook.
