“Plans change, Mom,” I spat. “And, newsflash: Nate’s your son, not mine. I’d take a bullet for him any day of the week, and I don’t mind helping out with him every now and then, but he’s not my responsibility. It’s your job to raise him and provide for him, so what I’m doing with my life after high school shouldn’t even be part of your thought process when it comes to your parenting plan once I graduate.”
“You know I’m too old to be doing this again, Brendan,” she whimpered, her bottom lip quivering like she was about to cry. “I cared for you when you were his age, and now I just need a little bit of help. Is that too much to ask?”
No, a little help wasn’t too much to ask. But I was practically raising my brother and I had no social life to speak of because she expected me to constantly be at her beck and call to take care of him whenever she didn’t feel like it, which was pretty much all the time. And she’d basically admitted to me just now that her entire plan for raising Nathan was to have me do it until he was self-sufficient.
“Well, maybe you and Dad should have thought about whether you wanted to be parents again before you decided not to use birth control,” I scoffed. “But you didn’t, and now you have an amazing, sweet, curious little boy who loves you unconditionally. And what do you do? You foist him off on anyone who’s willing to take him every chance you get!”
My dad’s office door opened, and a few seconds later, he came to stand next to my mom with a scowl on his face.
“What the hell is going on out here?” he growled. “I’m trying to work!”
“All I did was ask Brendan to go get Nathan from his play date because I have one of my headaches,” she pouted like a child.
Yeah, one of her recurring headaches, which seemed to magically disappear as soon as someone took Nathan off her hands. And which she’d never seen a doctor for.
“And she could clearly see that I was in the middle of something,” I added. “Come in here and you’ll see a huge plastic tarp laid out with my cabinet from carpentry class, which I was putting a base coat on so Nate and I can paint it together tomorrow.”
“Ruth, the Jeffersons’ house is only ten minutes away. You couldn’t leave Brendan alone on his first day of winter break so he could finish his project?”
“It’s not my fault that I have a headache!”
Dear God. By this point I could have been at the Jeffersons’ house already. And at least going to pick Nathan up would get me out of this house and away from this woman, who somehow insisted on being a parent even though she clearly lacked the emotional capacity to care for anyone other than herself.
“Brendan, can you please help your mom out this once?” he sighed.
“Yeah, I’ll get Nate. Because, unlike her, I actually give a shit about him,” I snarled as I grabbed my keys and wallet and stormed out of my room, slamming the door harder than I needed to.
“How dare you use that language with me, young man?” my mom spat.
“Give it a rest, Ruth,” my dad barked. “He’s picking your son up for you. What more do you want?”
I didn’t even turn back as I marched out the door and got Nathan’s booster seat out of their car to install in mine. I didn’t know why they didn’t just buy him a second one to keep in my car with all the time I spent carting him around. But, then again, I was kind of glad that I didn’t have one installed in my car all the time, because I would have gotten hell for it at school.
“Come on, bud,” I said as I unbuckled Nathan from his booster seat. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Yeah, I was going to show him the cabinet early. Even though he had zero patience and would hate waiting until tomorrow to start helping me paint. After the argument I’d had with my mom, I just really needed to see the smile on his face.
“What is it?” he asked as he climbed out of the car.
“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise,” I chuckled, taking his hand.
I led him inside, and the first thing I heard was my mom screeching at the top of her lungs.
“All I’m asking for is a little bit of help!”
“No, you’re asking your sixteen-year-old son to be a parent!” my dad growled. “Nathan’s your problem, not his!”
Nathan looked up at me with so much sadness in his eyes that it broke my heart. My eyes stung and I choked down a lump in my throat as I picked him up and squeezed him tight. His little arms wrapped around my neck, and I heard a quiet sniffle.
I’d always known that my parents considered my brother a nuisance, but hearing my dad saying that made me see red. Nathan was the sweetest kid in the world and all he did was love them, and what did they do? They dismissed him. Treated him as an annoyance. Shuffled him off on anyone who would take him off their hands.
“I’m almost fifty years old, James! I don’t have the energy to do this again!” my mom complained.
“Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to go to bed with another man!” he spat at her.
“How long are you going to hold that mistake over my head?” she whined. “I was weak and I gave in to temptation, but it was one mistake, one time!”
“A mistake that we both have to live with a daily reminder of! A daily reminder that you’re shoving off on anyone you can, because you can’t stand to see the evidence of what you did!”
For a split second, I froze in shock as I processed what I’d just heard.
My mom had cheated on my dad. And Nathan was my half-brother.
No wonder my dad seemed to barely tolerate my mom most days. And no wonder he couldn’t even bring himself to look at Nathan most of the time. Nathan was a living and breathing reminder that she had gone against every single church teaching on the sanctity of marriage and been intimate with another man.
I heard my brother’s quiet sniffles and felt his tears dampening my shirt, and that made me snap back to the present and make an impulse decision. I needed to get him out of here. He didn’t need to hear any more of this. I quickly turned around and walked back out the door, carrying him back to the car and putting him in his booster seat again.
“Why did Dad say I’m a problem, Brendan?” he asked with tears streaming down his cheeks. “What did I do wrong?”
God, I hated my parents. I knew I shouldn’t say that, but I really did. Not for how they treated me, but for how they treated Nathan. It didn’t matter how he’d come into this world. It wasn’t his fault that my mom had cheated on my dad, and it wasn’t his fault that they hated each other. He was just a little kid who’d never done anything except love them and depend on them, but they both took their issues with each other and their marriage out on him because he was an easy target. And that was inexcusable.
“He didn’t mean that, bud,” I choked out. “He was just mad at Mom. People say things they don’t mean sometimes when they’re mad at each other. But I think they need a little time to calm down, so what do you think about going for some ice cream?”
“Okay,” he mumbled, looking down at his hands.
“Listen to me, Nate,” I said, trying desperately to bury everything I was feeling about this situation and what I’d just learned so I could take care of him. “You are not a problem, and you are not a mistake. God has a plan for every single one of us, and He wouldn’t have let you be born if you weren’t meant to be here. And you have so many people who love you. You’ve got Darla and Naomi and Heather and Alex and Peter and Marie and all your friends from church, and you’ve got me. You’re my brother, and I’ll always be here for you, no matter what.”
“Promise?” he asked, looking at me with big, wide eyes.
“Promise.” I tried to crack a smile. “Okay, come on. Let’s go load up on sugar.”
I drove him to our favorite hole-in-the wall ice cream shop, which was in a small strip mall right next to the Rhees’ Asian market. And as we were walking toward the entrance, I saw Mrs. Rhee’s car pull into the parking lot. Mrs. Rhee and Naomi got out of the front seat, and
then Darla, Kate, and Ashton all piled out of the backseat. I was a little shocked to see Darla with Kate and Ashton outside of school, but I was thrilled that she was able to spend some time with them somewhere other than at our lunch table in the cafeteria.
“Darla!” Nathan exclaimed.
Her head immediately turned in our direction, and the biggest smile spread across her face. My heart squeezed, and I wished like hell that we were alone. I needed to talk to someone about everything I’d just heard my parents say, and she was the only one I trusted enough to tell. Well, that wasn’t true. I wouldn’t have minded Naomi, Kate, and Ashton hearing either, but I wasn’t about to say another word about it in front of my brother.
“Can we go say hi?” he asked, tugging on my hand.
I chuckled. “Of course.”
He started to take off in her direction, and I jogged after him, making sure to keep hold of his hand since we were in the middle of a parking lot. Darla crouched down and held her arms open, so when we were about ten feet away from the group, I let go, and he ran straight into them.
“Hey, little man,” she laughed. “It’s good to see you.”
“What are you guys up to?” I asked.
“We just saw Titanic,” she said, looking up at me. “And now we’re going to have dinner here before Miss Hana takes, me, Kate, and Ash home.”
I was a little shocked that Darla’s dad would let her see Titanic because it wasn’t a “Christian” movie, but I was glad she was getting out and doing normal kid stuff and spending time with her friends. That was a rarity for her.
“Pastor Jones doesn’t know.” Naomi answered my unspoken question. “He thought she and I were just hanging out at my house. But Mom said that what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
I snorted. That was the motto we’d been living by for pretty much this whole semester, and would continue living by as long as she lived in his house.
“She’s right,” I agreed. “How was the movie?”
“Nay wouldn’t know. She was too focused on running into Alex Gleason and Belinda Evans there,” Kate teased. “Oh, and the fact that he spent more time trying to talk to her than Belinda.”
Naomi turned bright pink. “I was not. And he was just being nice.”
“Okay, then what was the movie about?” Kate challenged.
“That’s kind of a trick question. Even I know it’s about the sinking of the Titanic and I haven’t seen it,” I chuckled.
“There was a love story too,” Naomi mumbled. “It was good, but the end was sad.”
“It wasn’t sad. It was lame,” Ashton groaned.
“Oh, come on, Ash!” Kate scoffed. “It was romantic.”
“Did you see all the room on that dang door?” they countered. “They could both have fit, but she let him freeze to death. How is that romantic?”
“Because he made the ultimate sacrifice. He gave up his life so she could live,” she argued.
“But he didn’t have to die. Then they could have lived happily ever after. That would have been even more romantic.”
“The point was that he loved her so much that he died to save her.”
“And I love you that much too, but if we were about to freeze to death in the ice-cold ocean after our ship just sank, you can bet your ass I’d be finding a way to fit us both on that door.”
I snickered. Their banter always cracked me up.
“I still can’t get over that scene in the car, though,” Kate chuckled. “I mean, that was just bad.”
“What are you talking about? That was hot. Put your hands on me, Kate,” Ashton teased, wagging their eyebrows at her.
She broke into a fit of giggles, and they pulled her into their arms and kissed her. I laughed…until I remembered that my four-year-old brother had been listening to all of that.
Damn it. On top of answering Nathan’s questions about why our parents hated him, now I’d have to answer questions about my friends making fun of what I was assuming was a less-than-stellar love scene in a movie too. And I had absolutely no idea what to say. Since Darla and I hadn’t told him that we were a couple because he wouldn’t understand about needing to keep it a secret, he didn’t really have a whole lot of reference for romantic relationships. It wasn’t like our parents modeled one for him.
I turned to look at him, but it turned out that he hadn’t been paying attention to any of it, because he was engrossed in conversation with Darla about the Jeffersons’ new puppy. Breathing a sigh of relief, I said a silent prayer of thanks for that mini crisis being averted.
“Sorry they just ruined the whole movie for you,” Darla chuckled as she stood up and gave me a hug.
The second she had her arms around me, it was like all of my stress and frustration and confusion just melted away. If nothing else proved to me how right we were together and that what we had was built to last, this did. Because she was the only one other than Nathan who could completely turn my mood around with a simple hug.
“Eh. Seemed like a chick flick anyway from the previews,” I said, squeezing her tight and dropping a discreet kiss on her head. “I needed this today.”
She looked up at me. “Are you okay? You seem…off.”
Of course she’d picked up on my weird mood. I didn’t even know what I was feeling, but I did know that I was far from okay. She always said how well I knew her and just knew what she needed or when she was upset, but the truth was, we knew each other that well. We just got each other in a way that I’d never experienced with any of my friends or family.
I sighed and shook my head. “No, I’m not. But this isn’t the time.”
“Can you come by tonight?” she asked. “I finished your Christmas present this morning, so I can give it to you and we can talk.”
Going to her house, parking a block away, and climbing into her window late at night had become a semi-regular thing for me ever since that night after the Jars of Clay concert. I knew it was stupid and risky as hell, but neither one of us could find the will to stop. She said she felt safer with me there, and I loved our late-night talks and just getting to hold her until she fell asleep. Plus, if her dad ever did walk in on us and start getting violent, at least I’d be there to protect her and call the cops.
“Yeah, I think so. I have a present for you too.” I let out a breath, then let go of her and ruffled Nathan’s hair. “But right now, I promised this guy some ice cream.”
“Oh, my God. I got so involved in the debate about tragic romance that I completely forgot there were little ears. I’m so sorry, Brendan,” Kate gasped.
“It’s fine. He was talking to Dar about our friends’ new puppy,” I assured her.
Ashton grinned as they crouched down so they were at eye level with my brother. “You must be Nathan. Your brother’s told us a lot about you.”
Nathan nodded shyly, but cowered into my side, which made Ashton chuckle.
“It’s okay, bud,” I said, squeezing his shoulder. “This is Ashton and Kate. They’re really good friends of mine from school.”
“But you can call me Ash,” Ashton added. “All my friends do.”
“Brendan, would you and Nathan like some bubble tea slushes?” Mrs. Rhee asked. “That’s still cold and sweet, and you don’t have to pay for it.”
That actually sounded even more appealing to me than ice cream, but I wasn’t sure what he’d think about it. Then again, there were some fruity flavors that he might like.
“What do you think, bud? Want to try a new kind of slushie instead of ice cream?” I asked Nathan.
“Okay,” he mumbled.
“The boss has spoken,” I chuckled, taking my brother’s hand. “Thanks, Miss Hana.”
“Come on in,” she told us. “I’ll make Nathan a strawberry one. What flavor would you like?”
“Thai tea, please.”
She smiled. “I can do that.”
We followed her into the store and over to the small café area they had set up, near their fresh food stati
on. Ashton headed over to the cooler full of sodas, grabbed a couple of bottles, and walked up to the counter, pulling out their wallet, but I saw Mrs. Rhee wave them away, refusing to let them pay.
That didn’t surprise me one bit. The Rhees were the kind of people who insisted on feeding their guests until they were so stuffed that they couldn’t move. And it wasn’t just Korean food, either. They made amazing Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Taiwanese, and any other kind of Asian food you could imagine.
When Ashton got back to the table, I was a little surprised when I saw that the soda they’d grabbed had some sort of Asian writing on it. Then again, it was an Asian market, so I guessed it shouldn’t have shocked me.
“What’s that, Ash?” I asked.
Naomi gasped. “You’ve never had Ramune?”
“Nope. I’ve never even heard of it.”
“How is that possible? I’ve known you for years and I’ve never introduced you to the wonders of Ramune? I’ve failed as a friend.”
“Well, looks like you’re making up for it now. Or at least Ash is.”
“It’s a Japanese soda, and it’s awesome.” Kate took one of the bottles from Ashton. “Nathan, you’re going to love this. This soda stays fizzy because there’s a marble in the top of the bottle that keeps the carbonation trapped in.”
“A marble?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, then looked at me. “Can I give him this one? I’ll go buy another one.”
“Sure,” I chuckled.
I really didn’t give a crap if my parents yelled at me for loading him up on sugar. He’d just heard them yelling about him being a mistake and a problem. Thankfully, he was too little to understand the part about how he was the product of an affair. So, yeah. My parents could both go suck rocks.
“Watch this, bud,” Kate instructed.
She took a piece of plastic off the top, then turned it over and pushed down on an opening in the top of the bottle. Sure enough, a small marble dropped down and sat on a thinner portion in the bottle’s neck, immediately getting little carbonation bubbles all over it. Then she slid the bottle over to him.
My Vows Are Sealed (Sealed With a Kiss) Page 19
