3
Wesley
The motorbike always looked bizarre in the driveway at Dad’s old mansion, behind the fence. It glinted under the security lights. My boots were heavy as I trudged up the staircase, walking up cliffside toward Theodore Adams’s abode. At four stories high, it rose along the edge of the cliff, boasting immaculate views of the ocean just on the other side. At seven-thirty, the sunlight had begun to cast orange hues through the glass of the mansion, spilling over me. It felt like I was ascending to heaven, or maybe hell.
It wasn’t the place my brother Hank and I had grown up. Old Theodore hadn’t been a billionaire when we’d been teens. Rather, he’d worked long hours at the tech start-up, charging toward what he called a “new reality” and more or less avoiding any problems at home. When Hank was seventeen, he’d opted for an internship at the company, becoming Dad’s fuckin’ right-hand man. They’d buckle into the car at quarter to five in the morning most days that summer, leaving me to rage through the summer afternoons and long, heavy nights with Quintin. And then, with Remy.
“Why can’t you be more responsible, like your brother?” Dad had asked me, sounding like some kind of recording. “Hank’s going to leave you in the dust when he takes over the tech company. All you’ll have is that shit tattoo. And that motorbike.”
I rang the doorbell, waiting only a couple seconds for Baxter, the doorman. He appeared, dapper as always, his nose lifted in the air. His eyes skated over me, taking in my rugged look. Three hundred miles just that afternoon on the motorbike had whipped my dark blond hair back. I knew the almost-violent look I carried behind the eyes after a ride like that.
“Mr. Adams,” Baxter said to me, opening the door still wider. “Your father is in the small dining room. I’ve prepped you a scotch, as always.”
“Baxter, you’re a doll,” I told him, knowing full well he hated this compliment. Baxter had been working for my father for nearly fifteen years, which meant he’d seen me at my worst: a wild teenager, ripping through San Francisco hunting for the next bottle of booze. “That bimbo brunette always at your side,” Baxter had said once, speaking, of course, of Remy. During the days when we’d been completely inseparable.
I felt Baxter’s eyes on me as I stomped through my father’s house, my boot steps echoing through the hallways. On the left, as I moved toward the dining room, there was a long window stretch, with that essential view of the ocean. “They say it’s better for your health if you can see the water,” Hank had told me once, in that snooty way of his. “I told Father it would benefit him as he grew older. And my house? Well, it’s just a bit down the cliff’s edge. We’ve got similar views.”
At the time, with Hank and my father’s careers blistering across the proverbial night sky, I felt an inner rage that pushed me back to the road. “I wouldn’t fucking take your money even if I was out on the street,” I’d told Hank once, when he’d offered to help me fix my bike. “You guys, with your bullshit tech. It’s not like that’s where real life is.”
The words echoed in my mind. I’d been, what, twenty-five at the time? I’d roughed it across the continent, working odd jobs—a mechanic here, a truck driver there, occasionally a bartender in strange cities. I’d once worked on a boat in Alaska, lugging logs from an island and back to the ferry. My muscles grew thick that winter. I’d learned the true depth of loneliness.
My father, Theodore, sat back in his grand dining chair when he spotted me. He’d grown out his mustache like it had been in the ’80s, and his white hair curled oddly around his ears, almost like Quintin’s. He blinked his amber eyes at me. I strutted toward him, and he took a sip of his scotch, as if he needed the courage.
“Son,” he said, standing from his chair.
“Theodore,” I said.
We stood just a few feet apart from one another. Dad was exactly my height—six feet two—but had lost his muscles over the years. In the tech world, he told me, his brain was the only muscle he could exercise. He gestured his wiry arm toward the chair beside him, and I sat in it. Clinking our glasses together meant it was time to drink together, one of the only activities over which we’d found any true common ground.
“You just get in today?” he asked. “Where from this time? Last time you messaged you were in some shoddy cabin in eastern Tennessee.” He laughed, his eyes glittering. “What the hell was it you were doing there? Logging?”
“Naw, Pop. I was running a little bar out there called Swanky’s Saloon,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “But that was over two years ago now.”
Dad’s eyes grew heavy with this news. I knew that, in the year since Hank had died, he’d had to take stock of the passage of time in a different way. Two years ago, Hank had been alive. He hadn’t had to care where the hell his young, black-sheep son was roaming. Now, his interest was almost one of necessity. If he didn’t know where his only son was, did he even have a son at all?
We spoke sparingly. Baxter brought us another round of scotch. The old German cuckoo clock on the wall chimed out for eight, then eight-thirty, and Baxter brought us breads, cheeses, prosciutto. My stomach felt twisted with hunger. But I showed no pain, nibbling lightly. The main course—steak, shrimp, salmon, who the fuck knew?—would arrive soon.
“So, what the hell am I here for, Dad?” I finally blurted, my eyes burning into him. “Why the hell did I have to come all the way here from Austin, Texas, just to eat some cheddar cheese?”
My father shifted. It was clear that I annoyed him—that I always had. He saw nothing of himself in me and had poured his interest into my brother. I knew full well that he still had my brother’s widow over for dinner once a week. That he planned to suit her up with a good portion of the company. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he wanted to make her his wife, since Mom ran off to that Caribbean condo—taking as much of Dad’s cash as she could.
Dad snuck a toothpick from his pocket and drew it over his graying teeth, eyeing me. “You know, Wesley. You and I are the only Adamses left.”
I sniffed. So, it would be one of those nostalgic talks. Talks about “what we could have been,” if only Hank hadn’t shoved his car into that Northern California tree trunk and burnt out. If only.
“Sure thing, Dad,” I sighed.
“And despite the fact that you’ve shown no interest whatsoever in the company that has made me a multibillionaire, you’re still my son,” Dad continued. “And I respect family. For this reason, I’d like to make a proposition.”
At this moment, Baxter arrived with two platters of lamb sizzling with a green sauce. Immediately, my stomach lurched with hunger. I made a note to eat as much as I could before the conversation with my father grew dark, ugly. Lined with anger and years of resentment.
“What makes you think I’m open to a proposition?” I asked. I slid my knife through the tender pink meat, inhaling the spice. Jesus.
“Well, son. I happen to know a few of your contacts on the road. You’re not as invisible as you think you are,” he said. He chewed at his lamb slowly, really studying it with his teeth. “In any case, I believe you’re having some trouble with money. And if you ever want any of the money involved with this company, I suggest you listen up.”
He’d piqued my curiosity. I shoved another bite of lamb into my mouth and tapped my napkin to my lips, leaning closer. God, one of the last times I’d seen the old man, he’d been hunkered over Hank’s grave—his knees digging into the dirt. A multi-thousand-dollar suit, just soaking at the knees.
“All right. I’ll listen to what you have to say,” I offered. “But that doesn’t mean I’m saying you’re correct. About the money thing.”
He generally was. I was always darting from one job to the next, sleeping in random places across the continent, and scrubbing myself in rest stop bathrooms—all the while knowing this world, back in San Francisco, existed for me. If I only wanted it.
“This is your last chance, Wesley,” my father continued. “If you want your brother’s share of this company—minus, of course, what I’m giving to his widow—then you must do one thing for me. If you don’t do this for me in the next six months, then I will have my lawyer note that you are never, ever to see any of the money in the Adams fortune. Is that clear?”
I felt so much like scoffing. Like tossing my plate to the ground and watching it shatter. But I held back, trying to steady my breath. With nostrils flared, I nodded. “OK. Let me hear this grand proposal.”
“As my last and only living son, I, Theodore Adams, would like a son from you. An heir,” my father said, speaking like some kind of high king.
An heir. A son. What the fuck? My brain sizzled with anger. I felt my hands draw into fists. Another rush of passion filled me, and I yearned to smash my fists against the table and make everything clack and crash to the ground.
“I’m sorry?” I asked, almost curious if he was fucking with me. “You want me to produce an heir?”
“I don’t think it’s a ridiculous thing to ask of you,” my father continued. “I’ve built up this incredible business myself. And I don’t want the Adams name to die with you. And namely, since I’m getting up there in years—already seventy-one next October, you know—I want to meet this son and instill in him good values. The kind of values I managed to give to Hank. And the ones you flushed down the toilet.”
I was so accustomed to this kind of talk I wasn’t hurt. Rather, I drew back, crossing my arms over my chest. The past fifteen years of near-constant commitment to pulling out during sex, to Plan B, just in case, to hoping for birth control for every bimbo I met along the way—it had all been such a necessity, so that this very thing didn’t happen. Now, my father was pointing to my spunk and saying: keep going, guys. Create a line of strong San Francisco Adams men.
“I’m not saying yes,” I said, my nostrils flared.
“As I said, you have six months to decide,” my father said, speaking slowly. His words kind of trickled through the air. “After that, if you deliver no heirs, you and I can part ways. And we no longer have to speak of this, of Hank, or of your mother—ever again.”