I could never call him Dad. He didn’t deserve the title. I shut the door behind us and turned to him. “What do you need?”
Carl’s brows furrowed. “What the fuck? Is that any way to talk to your old man?”
Taking off my vest, I hung it over the back of a chair and set the helmets on the table. Normally I’d put everything away before crashing, but tonight I didn’t care. It could wait until tomorrow. “I’ve had a long day, and I have an even longer day tomorrow.”
“Me, too,” he said, sitting on the couch. “I’ve been working on the old bridge off of Meyer Road. Christ, that thing just needs to come down. Rickety piece of shit.”
“So you’re still working for Haskins?” I asked, still standing, hoping he would get the idea I didn’t want to talk.
“Nope, I’m with a different outfit now. I still don’t have benefits, but hopefully one day.”
Yeah right…
“You still with that one chick?” He leaned back, crossing his arms behind his neck. “The redhead?”
“No.”
“She was a hot little number.” He whistled and flashed a greasy smile. “Great heart-shaped ass and big ol’ titties.”
Heather was pretty but lacked everything else. I had grown bored really fast. In fact, I had a tendency of growing tired of every girl I dated in a short period of time. Why was that?
Was I more like my dad than I had originally thought? The man went through women like underwear. Now, the older he got, the younger his girlfriends were. And sleazier, too. Mostly trampy bar girls. Last time he’d been here before his latest stint in rehab, he had told me about banging three different women in a tavern restroom on the same night.
If he wasn’t my father, I’d fucking detest him. Actually I do, but we don’t get to pick our family.
“I’m tired, Carl. What can I do for you?”
He stared at me in that hard way—mean-mugging me like I was some little kid that would run away with his tail between his legs. “I’m a little short this week, and I owe my roommates for rent.”
Why was it that he had roommates and a job and yet he still couldn’t afford rent? I pulled out my wallet and took out a hundred dollar bill. “This will have to do.”
His eyes lit up. “Thanks, son. I really appreciate it. I’ll get it back to you with interest.”
I almost laughed. I hadn’t seen a dime back from him from the first twenty he’d “borrowed”.
He took the hundred from my fingers and slid it into his front pocket. I looked at him, and it was like looking into a mirror…but adding twenty years. My mom had once said that it had been hard for her to look at me sometimes because I looked just like my dad. I didn’t want to be him. I swore I’d never be like him, and yet at twenty-two, I already found myself slipping into what my father was. Not able to commit to a woman, to run the second things started to feel a little too close or familiar. Granted, I’d never had a woman that I felt like I wanted to settle down with.
But Mandy was different from any other girl I’d dated.
She was better than me in every way. From where she’d come from—a secure, loving home with parents who still adored each other, to graduating from college and having a good career. And she’d spent seven years with one man. From what I understood, she’d been incredibly loyal to Ross. The perfect girlfriend who would have been the perfect wife, and no doubt she would have been the perfect mother.
“You alright, son?”
I hated when he called me son. Gritting my teeth, I nodded. “Yeah, like I said, it’s been a long day.”
“I could always come stay with you, you know,” he said, his voice all hopeful. The words filled me with dread. One day I actually expected him to show up with a suitcase and a sob story about having nowhere else to go. “My roommates are talking about moving on, and I could use a roof over my head.”
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. “It’s like I said before. I like my space.”
His eyes narrowed. “But I’m your father.”
“Maybe that’s something you should have thought about when I was growing up. You know, when you left Mom and me. When you decided to take jobs that paid you under the table so you didn’t have to pay for child support.”