Page 74 of Emmett
“Nope,” he tells me. “Ya spent your free pass. Put it back.”
This is a weird shade of responsible that I haven’t seen him wear before. The last time we did something like this was four years ago, and we’d used it as an excuse to do a weekend in Vegas. We didn’t just havehairof the dog, we had the entire goddamn dog by the time we’d come home; I don’t think we spent a minute sober. Dad let us use one of his planes to get there and we cracked open a fewbottlesof champagne on the flight to pre-game.
He made us pay to have the mess from that cleaned when we got back.
I set the bottle back in its place with a sigh and shut the fridge door before heading back to settle onto the couch.
When the food gets here, Davis brings it out to the living room and pulls probably fifteen different containers from two separate bags, spreading them out onto the coffee table. He uses one of the container lids as a plate, treating it as if he’s at a buffet, and he inclines his head toward the food.
“Ain’t gonna get any warmer,” he tells me.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t give a shit.” He reaches for another one of the lids and tosses it at me so that it lands on my chest with a quiet thunk. “Eat or I tell your old man.”
Despite diving into his own meal as if he hasn’t eaten in a week, I can feel his eyes on me as I load up my ‘plate’ with some of the lighter options, of which there aren’t many. It’s mostly a spread of protein and carbs, each fried to various stages of crispiness and covered in grease.
“Hey, thanks for last night.”
“It was nothin’,” he tells me. Nodding to my plate, he adds, “Eat your fuckin’ food. You’re getting scrawny.”
“I am not.”
“Just lost two pounds running your mouth,” he says, gesturing with his hand as if it’s a talking puppet.
“Christ, you’re annoying,” I laugh with a shake of my head.
I feel his eyes on me while I eat; not Uncle Davis or big brother Davis anymore. Second dad Davis is sitting across from me, and as he picks up his phone and taps away at the screen, it isn’t hard to figure out that he’s texting my actual dad.
“Can I ask you something?” I’m fully aware that the most I’m going to get from him is a muffledmmhmmin response as he stuffs his face. “Do you ever wonder about your birth parents? Y’know, why they gave you up, which one you take after more, any of that?”
His eyebrows raise in surprise and he finishes the bite in his mouth, washing it down with water before shaking his head. “Nah,” he tells me. “I gave ‘em a story in my head a long time ago that I was good with.” He must notice the disappointment on my face, because he adds, “But my situation’s a helluva lot different from yours. I never met themand I don’t know who they are. I just know they got good genes,” he finishes with a wink.
“I spit in a tube yesterday morning,” I tell him. “That’s why I was— I figured I might not get Anna’s life history, but maybe I could figure out the rest of it, find a few more branches on the family tree or something.”
“Make ya feel better?”
I shrug, pulling my lips into a tight line. “We’ll find out when they email me, I guess.”
“Maybe you’ll find out she got bodysnatched and turned into a robot,” he tells me, gesturing with his fork, and I let out a deep belly laugh in response. “Always hope.”
He did a good job of hiding it when I was a kid, but Davis has pretty openly hated Anna since somewhere around the time that I turned fifteen. It didn’t come up often, but any time I heard him talking about ‘Satan herself,’ I knew who he was referring to. I hated it for a while, but now, I get it. Now that I know what I know, I appreciate that he was so angry with her.
“Maybe she’s part snake.”
“Nah,” Davis says with a shake of his head, “snakes are cool. Might be part roach, though.”
We go through a list of probably fifty more creatures, both real and mythical and each one more ridiculous than the last, before I finally clean up my mess and tell him goodbye. He doesn’t let me leave without a bear hug and a promise ‘on my left nut, unless the right one’s my favorite’ that I’ll call him before I let him catch me drinking at the office again.
THIRTY
Nash
15 years old
This room is cold and empty. A queen-sized bed sits at one side of the room, covered in plain white bedsheets, and a small bedside table which matches the Victorian paneling on the walls sits next to it with a single lamp on top. I don’t like this room. I don’t want to be in this room.
Mother and Father are already gone when I look out of the small window to watch for them on the drive.