chapter five

 

When I open the door to my childhood bedroom, I’m surprised to find it doesn’t look the same anymore. They must have renovated in the last year or two, because the last time I was here, it didn’t look like this. Instead, I find a treadmill, a little bench, a stack of workout magazines, and some free weights.

I glance in the rooms that were once my sister’s and my brother’s. Lizzie’s old room is an office now, and Mark’s old room is a guest bedroom. Some of our childhood mementos hang on the wall in the guest room, like my parents took one thing out of each of our bedrooms they thought would be the most meaningful to us.

Mark became a rock star. His first guitar is mounted to the wall.

Lizzie became an event planner. A huge storyboard from her first event is framed beside the guitar.

And then there’s my thing: my high school football jersey.

I played football all four years of high school as a defensive end. I loved everything about the sport, loved rooting for my professional home team, and loved the excitement, but I left football behind me with high school. I never believed I was good enough to make it beyond that level, and so I ignored the recruiters and offers of scholarships.

I wanted to own my own company, wanted to break into the world of business. Success as a professional athlete is one in a million, and I wanted something more concrete for my future. I knew I had a business mind, and so I turned down the dream for the surefire thing.

Being in this room tells me I should’ve dreamed bigger. My parents would’ve supported that dream. Why else would they choose a fucking high school football jersey as the memento they held onto for me? They have Mark’s guitar because they’re proud of his accomplishments as a musician. They have Lizzie’s storyboard because they’re proud of the event planner she’s become.

And they have my fucking jersey. The last time they were proud of me was when I played football in high school? What about the ribbon we cut when we opened FDB? What about the newspaper articles in the business section talking about our accomplishments? Even a fucking photograph of me with my partners would be more significant than a fucking high school jersey.

Do they even know me at all?

Who knows where I might have ended up if I’d taken up the offer to play for the University of Illinois? Instead, I headed to Loyola for a degree in business.

My life would’ve taken a completely different turn. Maybe I’d would’ve never met Kendra. Vivian certainly never would’ve entered the equation.

All I know for sure as I stand in a bedroom that isn’t mine is that there really isn’t a place here for me anymore.

I decide to text my sister.

Me: I’m in town for a few days. Would love to see you and Dave.

She replies almost immediately—unlike my big brother.

Lizzie: What brings you here? Are you at Mom and Dad’s?

Me: Yes, just got here. She’s making spaghetti.

My phone goes silent for a bit and then I hear my mom’s muffled voice downstairs. I assume Lizzie called her to invite herself over for dinner, and just like that, I feel like I’ve gained a little bit of my footing back. This is what I need. Home. Family. The people I can count on to lift me back up when I’ve tumbled all the way down to the bottom.

I change out of my jeans into some comfy running shorts and pull my shirt off before collapsing on the bed to relax for a bit.

My mom doesn’t work anymore, and my dad retired from investment banking once Mark set them up financially, but Dad still puts in a few hours a week as a mentor to the new recruits at his old company. I’m lying on the bed somewhere between awake and asleep as I stare up at a ceiling that never belonged to me. It’s a little before five when I hear the garage open and his muffled voice downstairs. I give my mom a few minutes to fill my dad in on the fact that I’m here and the reasons why, and then I head down to say my hellos.

“Hey, big guy,” my dad greets me when I walk into the kitchen. I didn’t bother putting on a shirt or changing my shorts. My dad gives me a hug.

“Good to see you,” I say.

“I’d say the same, but I’d rather have you back in Vegas doing what you love.”

His words resonate in my mind. Doing what you love. Does he mean Viv? Or work? Because I’d rather be doing both those things than hiding out at my parents’ house in Chicago in some attempt to run away from my problems—because let’s face it, that’s why I’m here.

“Thanks, old man,” I say, throwing an elbow at his ribs.

He jumps back and chuckles then comes at me to muss my hair the way a dad does to tease his son. “Spaghetti, huh? You must’ve really hit your mom’s sympathy button.”

I shrug. “You’re welcome for screwing up my life so bad you get a good meal out of it.”

“Need some whiskey and a talk?” he asks.

The bell rings just as I open my mouth to agree to his terms, so instead I say, “Let’s talk later.”

He nods once and I head over to get the door. When I open it, my sister stands there with her husband in tow. “Put on a damn shirt, you idiot,” she says. She steps into the house and hugs me in greeting.

“Good to see you too, princess.” I’ve recently taken to calling her that for two reasons. One is she literally looked like a glowing princess on her wedding day, but the other reason is because to me, she’s just my spoiled older sister who always gets what she wants. Sort of like Mark’s the prince of the family, and somehow I ended up on the bottom as the peasant.

She rolls her eyes at my nickname for her, and my brother-in-law sticks out his hand. “Brian,” he says by way of greeting, and I shake his hand.

“David,” I say with mock seriousness. “You two having babies anytime soon?” I ask. Lizzie freezes for a beat and I swear I see the red creep into her cheeks. I store the information away for later. “I just mean after seeing baby Ashton, I feel like our family makes cute babies.” It’s backpedaling—sort of—but my curiosity is burning now.

Lizzie plays it off with a shrug. “We’ll see. I need to get out to LA to meet baby Ashton still.” I don’t miss her swift subject change.

My mom appears in the doorway then. “Yes, you do, missy,” she says, pointing a spatula in my sister’s direction with a glare. She stalks toward Lizzie and envelops her in a hug. “Hey you.”

She reaches to embrace Dave next, and then we all head into the kitchen where more hugs and greetings are given with my dad even though Lizzie and Dave come here twice a week for dinner.

“Dinner will be ready in a half hour,” my mom says. She looks over at my dad and raises a prompting eyebrow.

“What’s everybody drinking?” my dad asks. He looks at me first.

“Whiskey.”

My mom shakes her head but refrains from commenting.

Dave grabs himself a beer from the fridge in the garage and Lizzie settles on water, which is unusual for the wine drinker of our family. I’m calling it now. She’s pregnant and just found out. I wonder if Dave even knows yet.

“You need any help, Mom?” Lizzie asks.

I’m already flopping down on the couch as I wait for my dad to bring my whiskey to me. I know I need to snap out of this. I need to man up and get my own drink and ask my mom if she wants my help. But I also need a minute to just wallow in my emotions.

My dad sets my whiskey in front of me and slides into the recliner. Dave, Lizzie, and my mom are making conversation in the kitchen when my dad asks me quietly, “You ready to talk about it?”

“How much did Mom tell you?” I ask. I sit up to take the first smooth sip of amber liquid. It warms me as it goes down, and I feel the immediate calming effects that a good whiskey always gives me.

“Everything.”

“I fucked up.”

He nods as he raises his brows and purses his lips. “I thought the lying and manipulating were left in the past after what happened with your brother.”

I’m a thirty-two-year-old man being scolded by his father.

“I should’ve learned my lesson,” I say—not because I mean it, but because it’s what he wants to hear. “I thought I was protecting my friends.”

“When three men go in on a deal together, they all deserve to know everything. I told you that up front.”

“You also told me not to get involved in business with friends. You were right.”

He takes a sip of his drink and winces a little, and I’m not sure if it’s from the whiskey or the conversation. “It’s not something I wanted to be right about, Bri.”

I shrug. “Can’t change it.”

“You’re not even going to fight for it?” He seems surprised by that.

“And do what? Force my way back in? Tell the guys I thought were my best friends they have to give me another chance?”

He raises his brows pointedly as if to say yeah, that’s what I should do.

“They made it clear they were done with me. It was one lie too many, one manipulation too deep for them. I kept a single shred of my dignity by not begging them to let me stay. I barely have a stake left, anyway, because Mark took it from me.”

My dad shakes his head. “He didn’t take it from you. You signed it over.”

I blow out a breath. Of fucking course he knows about that, too.

“What’s the golden rule when it comes to money?” he asks.

“Be in control of your finances.” It’s something he repeated to me throughout my childhood, adolescence, and adult life. I say it in monotone, like a robot repeating the phrase drilled and programmed into him.

“And number two?” he asks.

“Never ask family for money.”

“You broke both rules,” he says. “I taught you better than that.”

“I didn’t come here to hear everything I did wrong. I’m fully aware of it.”

He nods and blinks slowly. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll give you exactly one day to do the Brian, but then you need to get back on your feet and figure it out.”

“To do the Brian?” I repeat.

“You know,” he says, lifting a shoulder. “To wallow in your self-created misery and blame everyone but yourself.”

“Dad!” I say, and the single word comes out far more whiney than I intend for it to. But he’s admonishing me and telling me shit I don’t want to hear when I came here for a little slice of home—to get away from the truths he’s trying to make me see. He’s trying to get me to blame myself for all of this, and even though it’s certainly true, I came here because I need someone who’s on my side.

My mom seemed to be.

My dad...not so much.

My mom welcomed me back home with open arms, but my dad seems to be of the mind that I get one night here before he’s going to kick me out.

I came here seeking reprieve, but instead I’m finding there’s not really much of a place at all for me here anymore.

Dave walks in and so ends the berating of father to son. My mom calls us into the kitchen and we eat our spaghetti and meatballs as we chat over drinks. My mom fills us in on the neighborhood gossip, including whose kid married whose and which ones are having babies, and while it gives me some flitting sense of peace to be here, the feeling’s gone as soon as the plates are cleared and I have time to reflect.

As my mom talks over ice cream about one of my classmates who married a girl from the Netherlands, I can’t help but think his family isn’t sitting at their kitchen table talking about Brian Fox. They aren’t talking about how my Vegas business is thriving and how I finally met the woman I plan to make a life with.

They should be, but they aren’t because it’s simply no longer my reality. I want to shell out the blame in spades to my business partners or my brother or Vivian, but no matter what angle I choose, I keep coming back to the common denominator: me.