Leondra: Party of nine coming in for dinner tonight. Can you head right back after your shift at the marina? Should not be trouble, but you never know.
Me: Sure, no problem.
Leondra: Feel free to call in reinforcements.
That is my boss’s code for “please call in your famous father to help work the room and keep people happy.”
Sometimes I think Leondra only did me a favor on rent because of my dad.
Me: Hey, Dad. You available for a shift at Shambles tonight? Possibly drunk leaf-peepers. Leondra may want you to shake hands and pose for selfies.
Dex: Sure.
Me: If you’re doing another double shift at the supermarket, skip it and get some sleep.
Dex: Anything for Leondra. I’ll shower and have a nap. Be there at 6.
Me: Thanks.
Sometimes I think Leondra and my dad are sweet on each other.
Not that anyone else is banging down Dad’s door for a date. He’s still an icon, but at the end of the day, none of his wealthy friends from the old days want anything to do with him.
Not that I have room to talk. I had a girl with money who didn’t care that I had none. And I still fucked it up.
I think of the way I ended things with Meghan. I always do; I’m never not thinking about that ending. Hence the Jim Beam. It keeps the broken record in my brain at a dull roar.
Meghan was my first. First steady girlfriend. First sex partner. She was the first person that made me really like myself when I was around her.
I’d thought we were soul mates. I trusted her, and she trusted me.
But then she became my obsession.
I couldn’t get enough. I could barely function when I wasn’t with her. I still can’t explain what happened to me, but maybe it was the stress of those days of our first year at Pine Mountain University: Dad got arrested, Cass and I were deposed, and I had a crappy football season that ended with Cass and I getting kicked out and losing our athletic scholarships. And then the hearings and the sentencing.
Cass and I had nowhere to go. She went to stay at Titus’s dad’s house. Meghan made her lake house available to me for as long as I needed it.
And that’s when things heated up between us. The stress was unbelievable, and Meghan was there for me. Through the mountains of legal shit — and not just with my dad’s issues. Leela’s mother took it upon herself to strong-arm the school into letting us back in. It finally happened the following fall — with part of our scholarships restored — but not before loads of paperwork and financial aid applications. Friends, friends’ parents, and Meghan got me through that terrible year.
Coming together with Meghan was the bright spot in the middle of all that stress. She brought out feelings in me that no one else could touch. I grew to crave that release with her nightly.
I felt terrible for demanding so much from her physically. I hated the idea of using her to make myself feel better. But she insisted.
Meghan told me not to worry about anything and just “go with it.” She assured me this obsession would calm down eventually, and we’d come out the other side much closer.
We explored things that, before I met her, I’d thought were seriously fucked up. But she’d taught me that was not the case, that there was no shame in the things we enjoyed as long as we were both into it.
She taught me things, so that I could give her what she needed. And what she needed was something I never thought I would do.
But I did it. And I liked it. No, I loved the things we did. She claimed I was the only person she dared explore her darker side with.
We were perfect together. Until one day, it went too far, and I fucked it all up in a big way.
Meghan tried to make me feel better afterward, but she was being generous.
And that’s the other problem. She was always too generous with me.
With her constant handouts, I can’t stand on my own two feet.