Slow Twitch - Реинхардт Лиз - Страница 11

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“Hey.” I threw my stuff in the back seat. My dad stared at me. He had that kind of teary look like he wanted to hug me. Oh God.

“Jake.” His voice came out a little scratchy. “I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you.”

It was a lame thing to say. It wouldn’t be the last lame thing my dad said to me.

“Well, I’ve been right here for the last seventeen years.” I flicked my thumb at the beat-up house I’d lived in all my life. “And Saxon’s been ten minutes away.”

I had a love/hate thing going with Saxon, but he was still technically my brother, and I had a feeling a lot of his fucked-up bullshit could have been avoided if our dad bothered to stick around.

“I made a lot of mistakes.” He shook his head in what I knew was supposed to be a regretful way, but it felt like watching a crappy made-for-TV movie.

I knew what my next line was supposed to be. I was supposed to say something reassuring. Like, Well, you’re here now. Or, We all make mistakes, Dad. But all I could think was, Why would my mom have had her heart wrapped around such an obvious asshole?

“Yeah,” I finally said. “You did. Ready to go?”

We climbed into the car and he chuckled. “You’re a straight shooter, son. Just like your mother.”

I think that was supposed to make me feel better, but it made me clench my fists to keep from beating the crap out of my own flesh-and-blood father. I just nodded. He pulled out and we drove silently for a while. I snuck a look at him, and it was just strange how much he looked like me. Or how much I looked like him, I guessed. Same weird gray eyes, same brown hair. Hell, we even had the same turned eye tooth.

“Why didn’t you get braces?” I asked suddenly.

“Why do you ask?” He glanced over from behind expensive douchey Ray-Bans.

“You come from big time money. And we have the same twisted-out tooth. I would have had that fixed if I were you.”

He smiled. “Why didn’t you get braces?”

“Because my step-father works in a damn pharmaceutical factory.” The words hammered out like a blunt punch. “And his medical package is a big piece of shit.” I knew it was weird that I would even know about medical packages, but my step-dad had always been honest about why he couldn’t do more for me, why we had only the basics at best.

“That’s all going to change now, son.” Gerald’s voice came out pretty pious for a guy who skipped seventeen years of his son’s life and drove a car that cost about twice what my step-father earned in one year at work.

I just kept my mouth shut and thought about Brenna. She would have been gone for a few weeks at her Irish camp anyway, but it sucked to be away from her. In the summer. When we should have been having a good time together. Specifically on my truck’s big bench seat.

Bren was so damn pretty it still freaked me out a little. She was also really smart, like she devoured books in a few hours. She was a great artist. And she was sexy as hell. I’d been with a lot of girls over the years, and no one had ever managed to turn me on the way Brenna could. Just thinking about her was threatening to give me a boner, so I turned my attention to the radio.

My dad had all of the ‘cool’ stations pre-programmed into his radio. I had to flip through to find a classic rock station.

“Good choice, Jake.” Like I was a dog who caught a ball he tossed.

I sank into my seat and closed my eyes, doing that pretend sleeping thing that I always thought was such a classic dickhead teenager move. But I was feeling a lot like a dickhead teenager, and I didn’t mind playing the part. Eventually my fake sleep turned real, and before I knew it, my dad was shaking my arm.

“Wake up, Jake.” His smile was so disgustingly cheesy, it could have come in a can. “You’re home.”

I knew he wanted those words to mean something. Like, This is your real home, and you’re finally able to be here and enjoy it.But I didn’t acknowledge that bullshit. This was no more my home than my step-dad’s run-down ranch.

I didn’t really have one.

Yet.

My plan, long term, was to make my own home. One filled with people I chose. I had spent my entire childhood waiting for someone to give a crap and make me a nice place, but it never happened. So here I was.

The house stood fortress-colossal, like the kind you see in movies that everyone pretends regular poor guys live in. I mean, really poor guys in the movies get trailers with hubcaps on the sides, but every regular guy in any movie has a two-story brick monstrosity with a big front porch and shiny wood floors and at least one huge fireplace.

This was that kind of house, just add a story or two and roughly seventeen fireplaces. Even my guest room had one. And my own porch. That overlooked a lake. That my family didn’t own exclusively, but apparently owned part of. The furniture was old and expensive, and there were vases of real flowers everywhere and all kinds of valuable little pieces of crap set out to make it look nice.

I wasn’t so much of a bumpkin that I didn’t know what nice stuff was like. But it was one thing to see it in movies and pictures. It was a totally different thing to bump into antiques every time you tried to turn around. Dad showed me my room and told me we’d be eating dinner in forty minutes. I opened my bag and put my stuff away, glad that Brenna helped me dress up my sad-ass wardrobe.

Brenna always looked like she just jumped out of the pages of some high-class fashion magazine. Which was so intimidating until you got to know her. Because she was funny and sweet, and even though she loved clothes, she had no clue what a complete knockout she was. Anyway, with her help, my clothes were nice enough that I didn’t have to feel embarrassed.

Even as that thought crossed my mind, I was pissed. Brenna was worried I would change, and I told her there was no way. But here I was, one hour in this fancy, wallpapered, decked-out room, and I was already glad that the tag inside my shirt said Banana Republic. It was pathetic.

I wanted to call Brenna, but the time difference meant it was almost eleven at night in Ireland, and I didn’t want to bug her. She’d just got there, and I knew she had lots of work to do with her writing. So I lay back on my bed and thought.

Which is not something I’d ever had a lot of time to do. I’d always been busy. When I was young, I was busy taking care of things that a normal mom and dad would have done, since I didn’t have that kind of normal. When I got older, I was busy partying and making chaos with Saxon. When I outgrew that, I got busy working hard, then busier getting Brenna to say yes to dating me. I’d never had a lot of down time.

And I’d never had a vacation. This was all kind of new and weird. After a while I got up and washed my face in the little boat-decorated bathroom that linked to my room. That seemed to be another thing if you had a lot of money. No one wanted to use the same bathroom. Every room had its own, and there were three more for guests. It was like they were petrified to admit that there was shit in the world or that they made any of it.

I was laughing at my own thoughts when I heard a knock on my door. I expected my dad but was surprised to see a girl. Right around my age, cute and red-haired.

“Hey.” She smiled, her teeth perfect and white. She had dark eyes that looked strange since she was so light; light hair, light skin, even blonde eyebrows. Her lashes probably would have been light too, but she had makeup on, so they looked black.

“Hey.” I walked over to her and stuck my hand out. “Jake Kelly.”

She stuck hers out and shook. “I know. Everyone does. I’m Caroline Morgenstern.” She looked around my room, then walked in and peered out the window, acting like she owned the place. “They must like you. This is the best guest room by far.”

“Why would you say that?” Really, they all looked the same to me; kind of like they came from a magazine, and all with the same lame boat theme.

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