Chapter 1
Rafael
Mom’s wailing morphed from appalled to apoplectic with the octave acrobatics of a seasoned soprano. If this were an aria, it would mark the climactic moment when a woman scorned screamed to the heavens with one thing on her mind: death.
Presumably mine.
My body sank deeper into the mattress beneath me, and I buried my head under a pillow. I had no recollection of what happened the night prior, but it must have been epic from the bellowing exiting Mom’s mouth.
She screeched again, the sound piercing my eardrums like a rocket and exploding somewhere between my eyes and brain. For a moment, I thought that maybe Mom hired a hitman to plant a bomb in my head. I felt my pulse in my temples like a clock counting the final moments before my noggin turned to mashed potatoes. I wouldn’t put it past her. I hadn’t exactly been anangelfor the past couple of years.
I knew it wasn’t an actual bomb—it was a hangover of massive proportions.
Her voice traveled through the heating shaft and into my room. “I can’t do this anymore, Hank. He’s out of control. I need help.”
Uh oh.Whatever I did must have beenbad.Mom did everything in her power not to call Hank, my father.
Mom continued, “When? The school year is over. You’d know that if you spent even a second of your life being a goddamn father to him.”
She’s got a point there.I hadn’t spoken to Hank since he married Jill. I may have caused a bit of drama during the wedding. Truth be told, the invitation shocked the shit out of me. I wanted to go to that wedding like I wanted to stick a hot poker up my ass. Hank must have called Mom about it because they, in a rare act of unification, agreed that I had to go.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t walk into a situation with the premeditated intention of destroying the moment. I had every intention of being a good little boy and just going through the motions of watching my absent father marry a woman ten years younger than my Mom. It wouldn’t be the worst thing that happened in my life.
I arrived the day before the wedding. The clichéd house, complete with a white picket fence, stood in its All-American glory at the end of a picturesque street. Kitchy trinkets filled the home. An honest-to-God welcome sign constructed of dried roses and thistles adorned the foyer, and the scent of vanilla-scented candles permeated the space. It was so unlike Hank.
I called him Hank because Dad is what you call someone who actually sticks around to raise you, and Hank bailed on us to live out some fucked upLeave it to Beaverfantasy. At first, I thought it was funny.What an idiotic house.
Then I saw him.Cody. My stepbrother. If a movie needed two dudes to play the angel and the devil of the main character’s conscience, you could cast the two of us, and I already told you I’m no angel. He stood just an inch shorter than I. The blush on his pale skin shimmered under the annoying overhead lighting. I looked at him and knew I hated him with a fire that could burn a city block to ash. I wanted to rip every strand of blond hair right out of his fucking head. I prepared myself to meet Mom’s replacement, but not mine. The combination of Cody and Jill being the complete opposite of Mom and me was the nail in the coffin. Hank ran away from his real wife and son and replaced them with polar opposite versions.
Consequently, I did what any angsty teen does right before his dad remarries. I swiped a bottle of cognac from their liquor cabinet and pregamed before the ceremony. I didn’t even wait for the reception. I’d never tried cognac before, and my motto in life has always been totry new things. So, I tried it by drinking three-quarters of the bottle in the bathroom before hopping into the limo that drove us to the church.Go big or go home, baby.
Things got a little fuzzy right after my new stepbrother sat next to me on the pew—the touching of our knees further intensified the combustion of rage consuming my body.We had a whole pew. Why sit so close?
That’s when it all goes black. The day after the wedding, I woke up on the floor at the foot of the bed in their guestroom.So close.It also felt like someone had karate-chopped my throat.
The eerie silence foreboded that the wedding may not have gone off without a hitch. It also wasn’t a good sign that I couldn’t remember a damn thing from the night before. That’s when I usually put on a show for the ages.
I nearly tumbled down the stairs to find my father and his new family staring up at me with the scorn reserved for a dude who flashed a group of old ladies.
That’s when Hank informed me that I expressed my “objections” during the ceremony and then made a speech about how this, and I quote, “Douchedoodle of a man was bailing on his real family and replacing his wife and son with a Stepford wife and one of the kids fromChildren of the Damned.” I had to hand it myself on the Douchedoodle jab. Where’d I even come up with that? Had the presence of the Holy Spirit rerouted my impulse to call my father a fucking douchebag, and I somehow landed on a Disney channel version? It was almost poetic.
Needless to say, my relationship with Hank after that was distant. Since Mattie’s death four years prior, I could count the number of times I’ve spoken to Hank on one hand.
Mom was still jabbering on the phone, and the sound of her voice nauseated me more than the massive hangover consuming my body.
I braced myself on an elbow, rolled out of bed, and clattered to the floor.It’s too bright.
My head felt as heavy as an anvil. I practically army crawled to the window, gripped the ledge, and pulled myself up while trying to close the curtains and save myself from the blinding light of a new day when my sight landed on our Honda Civic, enjoying a lovely morning parked on our gazebo.Did I do that? Oopsy daisy.
Parked might not have been the right word—crashed was more like it. That poor car looked like I’d driven it to the top of a mountain, used it to fight a yeti, and then careened it into my mother’s beautiful backyard sanctuary.
What was I even doing last night? Oh yeah!Bucky threw a party, and who was I to turn down an invitation to a good party? Especially one thrown by the Buckster, complete with cocaine, a bag of Percocet, and enough vodka to kill a horse—a Russian horse at that.
Better go down and face the music.
The marble floor of the McMansion my parents bought, when we were a vision of familial bliss, pressed against my bare feet as I descended the winding staircase. A ray of sunshine streamed through the picture window, reflecting off the chandelier and creating a rainbow of sparkles that dappled the floor. The bright grandeur of a home encasing the saddest family you’d ever seen was too on the nose for me. I hated that house. There wasn’t a room in it that didn’t ignite a stream of memories that made the waters of despair threaten to drown me.
That house never felt like home to me. My true home was on the ice—my only refuge in life. When I raced for the puck, everything else vanished; the sting of loss faded into a distant memory as I focused on the game. It was the one place where the dark thunderclouds finally parted to reveal a glimmer of sunshine.
