Cupcakes and Christmas - R.J. Scott Page 0,59
of something that nearly destroyed me. I don’t know what this is, what us is, but I want to know more about you away from the show, so maybe we can meet up after we’re done and—”
“Please.”
“Okay then. So I was thinking… ” I had to word this properly because maybe he didn’t want to be too hasty in this and maybe seeing each other on our day off from filming would be his idea of rushing. “We have a day off tomorrow. You want to go out somewhere, just the two of us? No cameras? There’s a hot spring in—”
“Yes.”
“Meet you in the parking area at nine?”
“So no more blowjobs tonight?” He looked up at me a hundred kinds of innocent and then dissolved into more laughter. “Yes, parking area at nine.”
When I got back to my room, after the conversation with Justin about his parents, and along with that niggling doubt that I hadn’t said sorry enough, I called my dad. I know it was late for him, but the need to speak to him overwhelmed my sensible side.
“Brody? Is everything okay?” Dad sounded worried, and I could hear the commotion behind him, Mom scrabbling for the control as the sounds of a show in the background lowered.
“Sorry, yes, I shouldn’t be calling now, but I met this guy, and he was in foster care, and he missed out on everything I did, and I want you to know I love you, and that again, I’m so sorry about what I let Marc do to us.”
Silence. My dad said nothing, and then I heard him sigh. “Hang on.” More noise, the quality of that silence changing, and I could imagine him walking out the living room through the kitchen and out to the sunroom on the back of the house. “I don’t understand,” he inquired, and there was a rustling and I assume he was sitting in his favorite chair. “I mean, I do, but I wish you wouldn’t feel you need to keep saying it.”
I was frustrated, pent-up fears clutching in my chest. “I do, Dad, because it’s not the same, and I want things to go back to normal. I love you, and I hate what Marc did, and I hate that I didn’t stop him.”
“Brody—”
“He took money from you. He stole from you. He took it from me—”
“Stop. That’s enough.” Dad was using his ‘I’m-the-father-here’ voice, and I instantly subsided. Jim Thomas had a way of raising his voice just enough to be heard over sibling squabbles, and not one of his four children ever ignored him because he used that voice so infrequently. “I knew what he was doing for a few weeks, and I didn’t tell you. That is why it’s awkward because when I see you now, I can’t look you in the eye and keep on lying.”
I slumped to the bed, all the energy leaching from me in one go.
“The week before you found him… ” In bed with another man. He didn’t need to finish that sentence because I knew what he meant. “I’d had a call two or three weeks before from the accountant telling me that things weren’t adding up. Small things here and there, nothing huge up until a few months before and then the proceeds from a truck sale couldn’t be found as posted, and the bank accounts didn’t match up. He couldn’t understand, but there was only one person who could’ve been doing that.”
“Marc.”
“So, you see, for all that time, I was suspicious and telling you that I thought something was happening, but I never told you what I knew, so you defended him. I was investigating with the accountant, working my way through, and we saw what he was doing. I wanted to fix things, only he got to you first, said I was telling lies and what could I say? You loved him—”
“Dad, I’m sorry.”
“—and whatever you had, it was special and important to you, and for me to blindly tell you what I knew for sure and for you to hate me for that. I couldn’t do it.”
“God, Dad, I could never hate you. I thought you—”
“You’re my son, I love you so much.” He was choked up. “I wish I could have made it okay for you.”
“You do, every minute of my life you make things okay.”
We did what men do, sat in stoic silence for a while, then Dad cleared his throat.
“So tell me about this young man you’ve met.”
“Young?