TWENTY-THREE
“MAYBE I SHOULD ADOPT YOU,” Clive said, filling the silence of the bar.
I was wiping down the bar top while he counted out the register. It had been a long night, and we were both exhausted. Needless to say, his words came out of left field.
“What?”
Obviously, I had heard him wrong.
First of all, I was too old to be adopted, and second, who in the hell would want to willingly make me a part of their family?
No one.
That was who.
“You heard me, kid.” He chuckled. “What do you think about calling me pops?”
“What I think is that you’re crazy.”
He closed the register and scratched at his beard.
“I’m serious, Sebastian.”
Hearing him say my name made me pause, and I stopped wiping the bar. He never called me by my first name. It had always been kid, but after our conversation a few nights ago, it went from kid to son.
He was probably the only person in the world I was okay with calling me son. Usually, it pissed me off, but when Clive said it, it warmed me for some reason.
Still, something about the way he was looking at me made me believe he was serious, and even though I was all for Clive calling me son, it still scared me. Probably because the only other time I had felt part of something, I found out I was just being used as a sperm donor. Then the time after that, I watched as a family was murdered and broken apart.
“You can’t adopt me, Clive.”
He frowned. “Why the hell not?”
“Because I’m not a kid anymore.”
“What the hell does being a kid have to do with it? You don’t adopt someone because they’re a kid.”
“Then why do you want to adopt me?”
He moved toward me, dropping his stack of the night’s money on the counter in front of me.
“You’re family now, Sebastian. We’re a family. It needs to be legal.”
When I was a kid, all I wanted was a family of my own. A perfect grouping of people who would love me for me and accept me into their life.
That was something I never got.
Clive wasn’t the picture-perfect family I had imagined every night before bed, but he was better.
He was real.
A perfectly imperfect person in my world who made me feel like I was a part of something bigger than myself.
I thought of Clive as my family, too, but I wasn’t about to legally make my fuck ups his, too. If anyone ever found out about what I had done, it would be linked to Clive, and that was unfair to him. After everything he had done for me, I couldn’t curse him with a legal connection to me.
“You don’t need to adopt me for it to be real, old man. You’re my family, and no piece of paper is going to make a difference.”
“True, but it makes a difference to me.”
“Why?”
It was not like it mattered. We were in this thing called life together, and until he kicked my ass to the curb, I was there to stay.
He chuckled, obviously annoyed with my questioning. “Because I said so.”
I ran my fingers through my thick hair, feeling uncomfortable with the conversation.
“Sorry. That answer’s not good enough.”
I moved away and began wiping down the bar again. I wanted that to be the end of the conversation, but Clive had other plans.
“Yeah, well, I don’t really give two shits about what you think is good enough. It’s already done.”
Again, I paused, the wet cloth dangling from my fingers.
“What the hell does that mean? It’s done? What’s done?”
He tugged at his beard and then scratched at the new growth on his cheek.
“The process.”
I glared at him, a spark of anger igniting in the pit of my stomach.
It was one thing to bring up the subject, but it was something else entirely to start it without asking me first.
“How the hell can there be a process when I haven’t even given my consent? You can’t just adopt me without my say-so.”
“Sure, I can. I know people.”
“Oh, so you’re a part of some New York mafia now?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
I threw the cloth down on the bar and turned to face off with the old man. “For once, I don’t think I’m being the stupid one.”
He glared, slamming his hand down on the bar. “I said ridiculous.”
“I heard what you said. Now, listen to what I’m saying. You’re not adopting me, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.”
“Frankly, son, I don’t really care what you have to say.”
“I’m not your son, Clive. I’m no one’s son, and I never will be. I’m damaged goods. Consider yourself lucky we’re not legally related.”
Other than my name, and my first name only, Clive knew nothing about me. He never asked, and I never told him anything, and that was the way it would stay. He was better off not knowing how damaged I really was. He’d be disgusted for sure.
“I don’t share your opinion, Sebastian. You’re a hard worker, you show respect, and you’re a good kid.”
Aggravated, I tugged at the ends of my hair.
“I’ve done things, Clive; things in my past I’m not proud of.”
And then he laid a grenade on me.
“I know about your foster mom, Sebastian.”
My tongue felt thick, my throat closing up with shame. An explosion went off in my brain the second his words registered.
“What?” I asked, swallowing the shame and disgust of my past.
“I said, I know about your foster mom. I know what—”
“You don’t know shit,” I snapped, cutting him off.
I had never spoken to Clive with so much contempt. Since the night I met him, something about him demanded respect, and after playing the part of the smartass kid for all my life, I stopped and gave him the respect he deserved.
That changed the second he even mentioned the woman who fucked me up so badly.
I moved to leave the bar, but he reached out, grabbing my arm and stopping me in my tracks.
“You listen to me, Sebastian. There ain’t shit in your past that would make me turn my back on you now.”
“How the hell do you know? Just because you think you know whatever it is about where I was before you. You have no idea, Clive. No fucking clue!”
“I met the Jepsons,” he said, dropping another bomb right in my lap.
I didn’t think he could top anything he told me he knew about Jane, but I was wrong.
So fucking wrong.
“What are you talking about? And no more bombshells. I want the truth. All of it.”
He stared back at him, his yellowing eyes taking in my expression and seeing something that made him cave.
He nodded and released my arm.
“Fine. You deserve that much.”
He moved away from me and slid onto the closest stool. I followed, being drawn in by whatever story he was about to tell.
“A few months after you started working for me, I started looking into your past. It was clear you had secrets, and it was even clearer you weren’t going to tell me any of them willingly. So I needed to see how bad they were. I needed to know what I was facing.”
I swallowed hard, worrying over exactly how much he knew about my past.
Did he know I murdered a family?
Did he know I ruined the lives of two small kids and left them parentless?
“How did you do that when I didn’t even give you my full name?”
He grinned and nodded.
“I told you. I know people. A little DNA and I was able to find out your last name.”
I was seething, but not because I was angry he had investigated me. I was angry because of how close I had come to losing my new happy life. There was no way Clive knew about the family—about the two people I had basically murdered—about the biggest regret of my entire life.
He didn’t know because if he did, he would have put me out on my ass a long time ago.
I didn’t say anything. Instead, I let him continue as my nerves ate away at my insides.
“I was sorry to hear about Deloris,” he said.
And just like that, my stomach bottomed out. Nausea swept over me, and I gripped the bar to keep from falling over.
It had been so long since anyone had even said her name, yet the pain was just as severe as the night I had found out she was dead.
“She seemed like the only real thing you ever had in your life,” he followed up.
I nodded, too afraid that if I spoke, he would hear the devastation in my voice.
“The ladies at the group home were real nice and thought highly of you. They told me all about Deloris and how she thought of you like her own son. They told me how you were moved from one foster family to the next, and then they informed me that you had run away from the last family you lived with.”
He stood from his stool and moved closer to me. I wanted to step away from him—I wanted to run—but my feet were firmly planted on the concrete floor beneath me.
“They wouldn’t give me names, but as I said, I have my ways. I contacted Mr. Jepson. He had little to say about the situation, but as I was about to leave, his wife came in.”
At the mention of Jane, my head shot up and my eyes moved over his face.
Did he think I was disgusting?
Did he look at me differently, knowing the things I had done with the woman who was supposed to be like a mother to me?
“Yeah. I figured that would get your attention,” he said, his grin melting into a frown. “She was a pretty little thing.”
I nodded, the embarrassment of my situation choking me.
“I don’t know the details,” he said. “But I’m not a stupid man. I’m guessing something happened between you two?”
I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t.
Instead, I nodded and looked away in shame.
He grabbed my face, his fingers pinching my cheeks until I faced him again.
“You listen to me, son. You have nothing to be ashamed of. She was the adult. Not you. Whatever happened was on her. Not you. Do you understand?”
He didn’t know the details.
At least I had that.
I nodded, trying with all my might to agree with him, but my mind wouldn’t process it that way.
Suddenly, the bar felt too small for the both of us. My lungs felt deprived, and I sucked at the air around me only to feel nothing.
I needed air.
I needed to think.
These were things I couldn’t do inside the small bar with Clive eyeballing me. Not when he knew that little tidbit from my past. The shame was too much. It was even worse knowing that he had known these things for months.
I walked around him and to the door of the bar. He didn’t try to stop me nor did he ask where I was going. I kept going, holding my breath until I pushed the door open and stepped outside. Only then could I breathe. Only then could I think.
I didn’t stop walking until the bar was far behind me and the shame had stopped burning my face.