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2.
“You’re a screw-up, Liam. Do you think being Mr. Popularity
will be enough to get you by in life?”
I’m lying on
top of Dad’s desk drunk and half naked wearing only rumpled
boxers and one sock while a sobbing girl who never really liked
me in the first place searches for her pants and top.
“Please don’t call my parents,” Delia pleads.
“I can explain, Mr. Geller. I’ll do anything. Just don’t
call my parents. Please . . .”
I wonder if begging will work for her because it never does for
me. I close my eyes, letting the waves of nausea wash over me. Delia
finishes buttoning her shirt and gets on her knees to straighten
the stack of papers we knocked over. She sets them on the desk,
but I accidentally knock them over again when I try unsuccessfully
to sit up.
The world spins, and I’m vaguely aware that Dad is now yelling.
“Do you think it’s okay to fool around in my office,”
he’s saying “. . . on my desk . . . when your mother
and I are right downstairs?” He’s looking at me, but
it’s Delia who answers.
“We didn’t know you were here,” she says, crying
harder.
I ought to be pleading too, but I can’t stop thinking how
stupid I was to believe Delia was actually in love with me. She’s
totally smart, president of the Honor’s Society and everything,
so why would she ever like me? But there we were at this party,
both plastered, and she’s telling me how she had this crush
on me all last year when we were juniors.
“You’re so beautiful, Liam,” she practically shouts
over the pounding music. “You’re sweet and funny and
I’m totally in love with you.”
That’s what she said.
So who can blame me for ending up back at Dad’s office? I
wanted to show her all his awards and stuff, but the whole time
I kept hoping I wouldn’t say anything monumentally stupid,
so I started kissing her to minimize the talking, and that’s
when everything went wrong.
As soon as a girl starts taking off my clothes I can tell how she
really feels about me. The first thing Delia took off was my watch.
It’s a really nice watch – just the right degree of
tarnished, and the worn leather band is soft. I picked it up used
at this shop in SoHo, but it’s still a brand name watch so
it was a rare find. Delia dropped it on the floor beside Dad’s
desk like it was garbage, and that bothered me, but I was in the
process of taking off her sweater, so I let it go.
Only then she unbuttoned my shirt.
The shirt itself -- a Kenneth Cole from a couple years ago –
isn’t special. The thing about that shirt is the perfect metal
buttons. Thin and sharp. But they could have been plastic buttons
with Gap stenciled on them for all Delia cared because she didn’t
even see them. She wadded up the shirt, popping a button in the
process, and tossed it across the room.
Now, you could argue that she was distracted, but so was I, and
I still noticed her black velvet bra, probably from Victoria’s
Secret, which told me that underneath her brainy exterior, she was
sexy. I liked that. But I could tell that Delia didn’t like
or dislike anything about me.
And that’s when I knew.
This girl doesn’t love me. She doesn’t even like me.
She just wants to be popular.
Who the hell cares when she’s taking your clothes off, right?
But I cared. And the thing is . . . I kept going anyway.
Right until the moment when Dad walked through the door.
So now as he yells, I lay still and let my head spin, thinking of
all the things in life I wish I’d done differently.
“ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?” Dad bellows at the top of
his lungs. Delia cringes.
“You’ve really compromised your future this time,”
Dad hollers.
This is a phrase I hear a lot.
“Despite everything I’ve done for you -- you have no
moral qualities. You are nothing I ever wanted in a son, and I don’t
say that lightly.”
Although he does say it all the time.
“When a child has been given a fine upbringing and an international
education and he still turns out to be delinquent, then it’s
not the parent’s fault, is it?”
Dad is in the zone, and in his zeal, his thick black hair falls
onto his forehead and the vein in his throat throbs. I watch it
pounding.
Actually, it’s my head that’s pounding.
“I told you last time I wasn’t going to put up with
this behavior. I’ve had enough of you. I’m sick of you,
Liam. Sick of you.”
The words are blending together, slurring, but Dad’s not the
one who’s still drunk – I am – so it must be my
brain that’s slurring. Sick . . . of . . . sick . . . of .
. . What’s he saying? Truth is, I do feel kind of sick. Really
sick, actually.
“I want you out of my house.”
“Mr. Geller!” Delia gasps, but Dad gives her the same
look he always gives Mom, narrowing his eyes until she shrinks.
I feel sorry for Delia right then. Sorry that I dragged her into
this, and sorry that she has to listen to Dad yelling. I try to
sit up again, and I think that maybe this time I’ll finally
figure out the right thing to say and Dad will take everything back
because he can’t possibly mean it, can he? So I take a deep
breath trying to force my eyes to focus.
“If I can just have a second to apologize . . .”
But unfortunately, the moment I sit up, the world spins. Everything
around me turns upside down and my vision narrows to a single tiny
speck, then fades to black.
Click
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