guy with a terrible lawyer who found himself on the witness stand.
“What do you want, Stan? Why the undercover vibe and for real, man, Weehawken? A Marriott?”
He eyed his brother’s wincing reaction and wished to hell the fucker would just spit out whatever he had to say so Arnie could cut and run.
Stanford Lane Wanamaker was a mere three hundred and fifty-three days younger than him. Three hundred and fifty-three days, not even a full year.
The family timeline said it all. Arnie was born, his mother died, his father hired a social-climbing nanny, knocked her up, married the bitch, and one day not long after presented his eleven-month-old first born with a kid brother.
Stan took Arnie’s disparaging shot at the choice of hotel and location with a sigh. The lack of spoiled rich kid pushback surprised him. Usually, his brother came back with one lame excuse after another. Being a life-long slacker with entitlement issues gave his kid brother a lot of practice too. Add raging alcoholism to the mix, and things got really fun.
The uncomfortable silence and Stan’s constant hand wiping on his thighs caught Arnie’s attention.
“Mom pays a little too much attention whenever I’m in New York.” Stan sarcastically grumbled. He gave Arnie a hard look. “Sometimes, I swear she had me chipped.”
His reply was immediate and delivered with the bitchy delivery it deserved. “Oh, yeah? Hmph. How weird because Giselle doesn’t give a rat’s ass that she and I live in the same town. As a matter of fact, I think she walked right past me on Fifth Avenue not too long ago. Looked right through me too.”
Unless he was hallucinating, Stan cringed. Cringing about his gold-digging mother was new.
“Anyway,” Stan mumbled. “Jersey is just less complicated.”
The explanation left a lot to be desired, but he wasn’t here for more than was necessary, so he moved the conversation along.
“When do we get to the part where you tell me why I’m here?”
“This is why.”
Stan reached into his back pocket and held out his hand. Arnie took what he handed him and was dumbfounded when a bronze medallion dropped into his palm. He’d seen it probably half a dozen times over the years It was the Alcoholics Anonymous thirty sober days chip.
“I’m here to make amends with my brother,” Stan declared in a shaky voice.
Arnie’s jaw dropped. “Does Dad know you’re sober?”
“No, not yet. I’m starting with you because April’s antics were over the line. What you put up with is not okay. I’ve been a shit-tacular brother,” Stan muttered. “Bro, I’m so embarrassed.”
Hearing April’s name made Arnie tighten up.
Four years ago, Stan made what their father hoped was a positive step toward growing up and took a wife.
A wife. Pfft. April Haynes was not standard Wanamaker wife material. She was twenty-two and a mall sales clerk with an unseemly habit of jumping from dick to cock searching for a way out of her less than glamorous life when Stan picked her up in a bar, fucked her in the back seat of her Toyota, and got her pregnant.
Like mother, like son?
To no one’s surprise, their shotgun wedding was a shitshow of gargantuan proportion. Giselle tried to save face and took control of the planning. What she failed to do, however, was get control of her son. On the day of the wedding, Stan’s drinking began with breakfast cocktails.
And it wasn’t just his brother getting hammered. The bride’s friends were double-fisted drinkers—mostly beer and cheap whiskey. When the time came to navigate a church aisle, not one of them was sober. It went straight downhill after that.
A lot of incomprehensible behavior took place, including but not limited to the bride and her maid of honor cornering Arnie at the reception to offer a wedding threesome. The newest Mrs. Wanamaker had a hankering for anal sex, and her BFF expressed enthusiasm for giving head. It would be a funny albeit pathetic story today if the BFF’s lesbian girlfriend hadn’t walked in on them and overheard the offer. A fight broke out—a chick fight. Arnie tried unsuccessfully to escape. The fracas drew a crowd, and before he could mutter, “Fuck my life,” the entire guest list was served a three-course delight of salacious gossip along with dinner portraying him as a sex-starved home-wrecker with Arnie being jealous of Stan’s success and good fortune.
Before the ink barely dried on the marriage license, Darnell Senior was apoplectic when he learned his grandson hadn’t insisted on confirmation of the pregnancy. It got worse