“Hello?”I hear from inside the house. “You guys here?”
“We’re out here!”
Luca arrives right as the food is done. I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse.
I ate breakfast this morning, but I also spent the late morning at the gym, which always leaves me feeling famished.
“Luca, my man! How was the drive?”
He emerges from the house, looking tired. His hair is all messed up, like he’s been running his hands through it. “Eh, it was long, and it was raining for most of the drive. The usual. Damn, those smell good. Are they ready?”
“Yup,” I say, popping the P. “I’m getting myself another beer. Want one? We have Bud Light bottles, Truly lemonades, or Coors Light cans.”
“Uhh, sure. I’ll take a Bud Light. Thanks.”
We get a fresh round of beers and dig into lunch. In addition to the burgers that Knox grilled, we also have mac salad, baked beans, and chips.
“Luca, you know your major yet?” Weston asks from across the table.
“I haven’t declared, but I'm leaning toward English.” He pauses to take a long drink of his beer, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he swallows. “My dad has hinted, heavily, that he’d like me to go into investment banking with him, like he wants for Bran, but I don’t know if that’s what I want to do, you know?”
It’s true. Andrew has mentioned us coming to work for him, but like Luca, I don’t know if that is the path for me.
We both have time to figure it out.
While Andrew isn’t my real dad, I have always been fond of him and appreciated everything he’s done for my mom and I over the years. Both of us were in rough shape when we moved in with him and Luca. At first, I was insistent on hating him, and Luca too.
I was an angry kid who lost his dad a few years prior and felt like my mom was trying to replace and forget all about him. No matter how pissed I was about the drugs, how he treated me because of them, and how things ended, I still didn’t want him to be completely replaced.
Over the years, I’ve realized that I was wrong.
Andrew and my mom needed each other.
He and Luca are both intimately familiar with loss and grief, like we are. Luca’s mom, Camille, died when he was only five.
Andrew and Camille were high school sweethearts. They both came from wealthy families, and their parents spent a lot of time together, which in turn meant Andrew and Camille spent a lot of time together. They got married right out of high school and had Luca shortly after.
From the outside, you never would have known that Andrew was grieving or suffering at all. Living with him, though, I saw a lot. Like the way his eyes would both light up and tear up whenever he spoke about her with Luca. Or the way he would shut down every year on the anniversary of her death. Or the way his company donates thousands of dollars every year to cancer research. It’s clear as day how much he loved her.
He loves my mom too, but first love and all that.
Luca was so young when she died, but I know he misses her. He took to my mom easily, though. I know he appreciates her motherly love for him.
She was a mess before Andrew came along. At the time, I never understood it, because my dad was awful to us prior to his death. I couldn’t understand how she was so broken up over it when he caused us so much pain for years.
She wouldn’t get out of bed for days at a time after he died, and she was this shell of who she used to be. My loving, happy, vibrant mom died alongside my dad. She was alive, but she wasn’t really living.
My grandparents finally forced her out of bed and into grief counseling. They couldn’t sit by and watch her deteriorate any longer.
That’s where she met Andrew.
Like I said, I was bitter and angry when we moved in with Andrew and Luca, but he has been more of a father to me than my real dad was in the last few years he was alive.
* * *