Page 82 of Eat Your Heart Out

My always-stressed and suddenly happy little brother.I pressed my hand to my temple and sat at the table. “No, what’s going on?”

“She said yes. So next year, we need to add Paris to the wedding list.”

Gerard, Warren, Joel, Cyrus, and Arman were all happy because they’d found the perfect women. I’d had mine and shoved her out of my life. “Maman must be so happy.”

“She wants to talk to you.”

I stood. Sitting on Clarissa’s furniture felt wrong. I massaged my skull like that might calm me down. “I’ll call her soon. Jeff, what kind of evidence do you need to run a paternity test besides saliva?”

I grabbed a dish in the sink and headed to the bathroom and the boy’s room. I grabbed hairbrushes and combs and returned to the kitchen to find empty soda cans.

“Paternity? You’re a doctor, so you know,” he said.

My small collection was about to prove how wrong I’d been. I’d come to apologize, but I realized I needed to do more, starting with putting a million dollars in her bank account. I grabbed a plastic bag from her pantry and put my collection in it. “Look, Clarissa has an eight-year-old.”

“And you think it’s yours?”

I’d strived to be the perfect model for my family. I wrapped my evidence to ensure it wasn’t contaminated further. “I was an asshole when I was twenty. I need to make this right, for everyone.”

My son had a trillion-dollar inheritance, and Clarissa never needed to work to afford her life by sweating in a costume in the hot sun ever again.

I would fix everything. Maybe then I could sleep at night.

Jeff said, “That’s why she doesn’t come home… Maman and Pedar are going to be disappointed in you.”

They didn’t deserve to be hurt, but neither did Clarissa. I closed my eyes and wished I could go back in time and shake some sense into myself. “I… when I was twenty, I was so afraid of turning into my biological parents and doing the wrong thing that I took it out on Clarissa. I need your help, Jeff.”

“Always. That’s what family does.”

One day, maybe I could return the favors I owed him and all of my brothers. All I knew right then was that I might be a good doctor, but clearly, I sucked at being a human being.

Hopefully, Clarissa would accept my apology for pushing her away, not because of her but because I was afraid of ever falling in love. She was the best woman I’d ever met.