Page 45 of Fierce-Matt

“It’s fine. It was one of many fights about my father wanting EJ to take over the business. EJ had no interest. But he was mean about it. He looked down at what my father did. But he also expected my father to pay for all of EJ’s college, all his living expenses, everything. He’d graduated from college and was dragging his feet looking for a job and living like a bum.”

“We always had to work,” he said.

They never wanted for anything, but it wasn’t expected either.

“I’ve always had a part-time job. I worked for my father early on and then found other things. Not EJ. He’d put little time into the business, but enough to whine he needed money. He’d break curfew. Which I think happened that night. He didn’t think he should have one at twenty-two, but he snuck in at two in the morning, the alarms went off, my mother was upset, my father came downstairs thinking someone was breaking in. I was scared.”

“I can see where that could cause a problem. He didn’t know the alarm code?”

“He knew it. He was drunk and he drove home. All on my father’s insurance.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. That’s all a huge liability and I’m sounding like an attorney, but I can’t help it.”

“The next morning, EJ was hung over and my father got him out of bed by having the fire alarms going off. I thought it wasfunny in a way, but EJ wouldn’t come out of his room and had locked the door.”

Matt laughed. “I like your father.”

“He had his moments. They fought, EJ broke a chair and threw a piece of it at my father and that was it. He was kicked out.”

“Where did he go if he didn’t have a job?”

“He stayed with a friend, but they got sick of him being a bum also and he finally came home. He was on good behavior long enough to get a job and move out.”

“That’s something at least.”

“A couple of years ago, EJ found out a girl he was dating was pregnant. He wanted nothing to do with the baby.”

“So you’ve got a niece or nephew you don’t know about?” he asked. He wasn’t sure how he’d feel about that, but it’d never happen in his family.

“No. I think this was the last of the stresses that tipped it for my father. It was about three years ago. I wish he’d retired then. The business wasn’t doing as well and he was stressing there. Then EJ said his girlfriend was pregnant and he didn’t want it. He told her to give it up. My mother begged him not to do it. That they’d raise the baby, it was their grandchild.”

“My parents would have done the same thing.”

“I had a panic moment. My mother was retired, my father should have been and now they were going to raise a baby? I was in no position to do it, but I was trying to find a way.”

He wasn’t surprised she’d sacrifice herself for her parents. “Even though you didn’t get along with EJ?”

“It wasn’t about him. It was about my parents. But it never came to that. After a couple months of going back and forth, Krista, that was her name, she told him she’d gotten an abortion. Come to find out, she wanted the baby at first, but her family wasn’t happy either and she’d get no support if EJwasn’t helping. She felt it was the best decision. The abortion devastated my mother. My father too. EJ had already applied for a job transfer and it was in the works.”

“He was leaving the country knowing he could have a child coming?” he asked.

“Yeah. As my father said, he was running. I think he thought if he couldn’t be reached they couldn’t get him for child support if Krista had kept it. He wouldn’t have felt he would have owed anything since he didn’t want the kid.”

“What a dick,” he said. He came across a lot of sleazeballs in his life, but this was a new level.

“Yep. See what I was surrounded by in my life?”

“And I made it worse,” he mumbled.

12

NEED TO TALK

“This is nice, but I expected no differently,” she said two weeks later when Matt opened the door to his condo.

Date number four and all they’d done was eat together.

Their first date at Tina’s pub, lunch, another dinner date, and tonight he was taking care of it for her since she didn’t know when she’d get done showing a house to clients.