Gap Year - 30. Chapter 30

February 19, 2004

Santa Cruz, CA

 

Will

“Divorced?” I asked him stunned. “You haven’t even been married for three months.” He gave me a foul look for pointing that out.

“It just didn’t work out,” he said, like that was enough.

“What happened?” I demanded. “Something had to trigger this.”

“I don’t have to talk about this if I don’t want to,” he said, trying to browbeat me, but instead sounding like he was 12. That he had shifted from being relatively morose to angry was either a symptom of the meth or an indication that his arguments with Jake weren’t very sound. Or maybe both.

“You must have done something really stupid and that’s why you don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

He glared at me. “Very funny.”

“When you get married less than three months ago, I find you tweaking on Tina and barebacking some dude, then you have to talk about this,” I said firmly. “This isn’t like you were just dating someone and now it’s over. This is a big deal, and I’m not the only one who deserves an explanation.”

“What makes you think you, or anyone else, deserves an explanation?” he asked snidely, using air quotes over that last phrase.

“Because you brought Jake into our lives as your husband, we all went to your wedding and stood there supporting the two of you, and I don’t know about the rest of our family, but I’ve developed a pretty good relationship with him. That’s why,” I said, staring at him boldly.

He sighed with frustration, because he knew I was right, and none of his defense mechanisms were working. “You are never going to let me live this down, are you?” Now he was acting like Matt, who when he was losing an argument, just changed the subject. He was going back to the Danny/meth issue.

“I am not,” I said succinctly.

“How come you give me a bad time when I get upset over your drug and alcohol abuse, and you think you can give me crap about a one-time deal?”

“Drug and alcohol abuse? Seriously?” I demanded, shaking my head. If I was his standard for drug and alcohol abuse, rehab facilities would be overflowing with members of our family. Darius and John were both way bigger partiers than I was. “Here’s why. Because you’re my father. When you do shit like this, it sends a message that it’s OK. So you just told me that it’s alright to dump someone I’m in a really intense relationship with without explaining things to you, that it’s okay to do meth, and that it’s okay to have unprotected sex with random dudes I pick up on the street. So you want to explain all this, or you want that hanging over us like a big piece of shit?”

“I’m going back to bed,” he said, beating a retreat from both of his losing arguments. I watched him walk away, snickering when he yelled ‘fuck!’ because his bed was sopping wet with ice water. He came back into the room, mad all over again. “You need to clean that up!” he ordered.

“When cows fly out of my ass,” I said, and pulled out my phone out.

“Who are you calling?” he demanded.

“I don’t see, based on your big rant about your own privacy, why you think I have any obligation to tell you who I’m calling,” I said factually as if I were Grand. I got up and started to head to my room. “I’ll see after your nap.”

“Will!” he shouted after me. I turned around, looked at him, then flipped him off and went into my room. I heard him banging around in the kitchen, raging at pots and pans or so it seemed, then he must have gone into one of the other rooms. It suddenly dawned on me that he could decide to leave, so I went out to the garage, pulled my car out, and parked it behind his so he couldn’t go anywhere.

It would have been nice to hang out in the fresh air, only it was cold, dark, and windy, so instead I went back into my room and called Stef. The way my father was acting, this was a bigger problem than I could probably deal with on my own. “I heard that you had left,” he said, after our initial greeting.

“I’m in Santa Cruz,” I explained. “I tracked down Dad.”

“He was hiding?” Stef asked.

“He wouldn’t talk to me on the phone, then when I finally got a hold of him, he wouldn’t tell me where he was, and when I went to talk to Grace, she wouldn’t tell me either,” I said.

“Maybe he just wanted to spend some time by himself at the beach,” Stef pondered.

“No,” I said. “I got here and found him in bed with some hot young dude, both of them passed out after a night of meth and fucking.”

“The young man was attractive?” he asked, of course.

“Yeah. He kind of looked like Dustin, that douche in New York” I said.

“Meth is a dangerous drug,” Stef said, thinking of people we’d known who had done that and who had some pretty bad side effects. It was so typical of him that he’d ask about how hot the dude was before he got to the drug issue.

“No shit,” I agreed. “I mean, I saw Zach go through the DTs with that, and it wasn’t pretty. But it’s probably not a big deal for Dad, since he only did it once, and he’s a little too intense and obnoxious to become addicted to it after one time.”

Stef laughed. “We can hope. That is a significant change from the marital bliss he’s been projecting.”

“He told me that he and Jake are getting divorced,” I said.

“They just got married!” Stef exclaimed, making me laugh.

“I pointed that out to him,” I said.

“Why are they getting divorced?” he asked.

“He wouldn’t tell me, which means he probably did something really stupid,” I opined.

“Probably,” Stef agreed. “Is he staying there?”

“Well, after I totally pissed him off, he went back to bed to sleep this off. When he wakes up and tries to leave, he’ll find my car blocking his path,” I said. Stef chuckled.

“I think that JP and I will traverse over the mountain to see you,” he said.

“I’ll make sure there’s a room ready for you. Hopefully Dad hasn’t taken the one you usually stay in.”

“What is wrong with his room?” he asked.

“To wake him up, I poured a bucket of ice water on him,” I said. Stef laughed at that.

“We will see you in an hour or so,” he said, and ended the call.

Having Stef and Grand here would be useful, but the person who really needed to be here was Jake. I pulled out my phone and called him, and once again it went to voice mail. This time, I left a message. “Jake, it’s Will. I need you to call me. It’s an emergency.”

Ten minutes later my phone rang, and I saw from the caller-ID that it was Jake. “Hey,” he said, after I answered. His voice was upbeat and chipper, like there was nothing wrong at all. “Sorry I missed your call.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” I said firmly. “You were avoiding me and we both know it.”

He was silent for a few seconds. “What did you want?”

“I want to know why my father is a complete mess, and why he says you two are getting a divorce,” I said.

“It’s a long and complicated story,” he said.

“I’ve got time,” I said, and kicked back in my bed.

“Will, you should talk to your father about this,” he said.

“I’m talking to you,” I said.

“Look, you said this was an emergency,” he responded, getting a little bitchy. He must have done some stupid shit too. “This isn’t an emergency.”

“Yeah, it is,” I said. “He’s in the other room, passed out, trying to sleep off the meth he did last night.”

“What?” he asked, stunned.

“So yeah, I think it’s an emergency,” I said rudely.

“Is he alright?”

“Well he’s pissed off at me, but that’s nothing new. Other than that, I can’t really tell,” I said. That wasn’t entirely true, but I figured that if they were going to bullshit me, turnaround was fair play.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“We’re in Santa Cruz,” I answered.

“Part of me wants to check on him and make sure he’s alright,” he said, in what was almost a string of consciousness. “But at the same time, he told me that he never wanted to see me again.”

“He was probably really upset and emotional when he told you that, and you know as well as I do that’s when he makes bad decisions,” I countered. “Do you really think he doesn’t want to see you again?”

“I don’t know how he’ll react if I show up,” he said nervously.

“Are you afraid he’ll kick your ass?” I teased, since Jake was a complete stud.

“He was pretty fired up the last time we talked,” Jake said. “I don’t want to get into a fight with him where I have to hurt him.”

“I’ll be here,” I said.

“And you’re going to calm him down?” he asked sarcastically.

I laughed. “I can do that sometimes. I think it’s worth a try.”

He was silent for a few more seconds. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

“Sounds good,” I said, and ended the call. I called Stef back and told him that Jake was coming and asked him to bring my laptop and some of my spare clothes with him, then I decided to go outside on the porch. I made myself a vodka tonic, threw on my coat, then went out and kicked back, listening to the waves crashing against the rocks.

The door to the patio flew open and my father stormed out. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Sucks when you can’t find people, doesn’t it?” I asked him in a smarmy way. He literally growled at me, which was more funny than scary.

“I need you to move your car,” he said.

“You’re not going anywhere until tomorrow,” I said.

“Move your fucking car!” he shouted.

“No,” I said.

“Goddammit,” he said, and came over to me and grabbed my collar and pulled me up.

“Fucking let me go,” I said, with so much venom that it shocked him. I pushed him away from me, making him break his grip, and stood there eyeball to eyeball with him. “You ever grab me like that again, you will pay for it for the rest of your fucking life!” He realized that he’d crossed a huge line.

“I’m sorry, but I need to get back,” he said.

“You’re stuck here until tomorrow, so deal with it,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll call Danny and have him come back,” he said in a smarmy way, which was so ridiculous it wasn’t even funny.

“Cool,” I said. “Ask him if he can bring a friend with him.”

“Fuck!” he yelled and went back into the house. I sat out there in the cold, drinking my drink, shaking my head at what an idiot he was being. Or was he? He knew I was going to call someone, and he’d probably guessed that it was Stef. In that case, it made sense that he’d get the fuck out of here before they got here.

I finished my drink and went back inside, then rummaged around the kitchen to see what else we had to eat. The oven was still on, so I put the other pizza in, or at least the half of it that was left. Damn he’d eaten a lot. I hadn’t bought much at the store, and with all these other people showing up we’d be pretty short on food, but there was nothing I could do about it now. I couldn’t leave, because if I left, he’d leave.

Dad suddenly appeared in the kitchen, really agitated. “I feel trapped, almost like a claustrophobic feeling,” he said, only this time he wasn’t ranting, he seemed genuinely frazzled.

“Come on,” I said. We went out on the patio and I lit a joint, took one hit, then handed it to him.

“I’m not sure if adding one drug on top of another is a good idea,” he said, then snatched the joint out of my hand and took a couple of big drags. Of course, that made him start coughing. The last thing I needed was to be majorly stoned, so I put the joint out and went inside with him.

“Zach said that helped when he was coming down from his meth high,” I said.

“Didn’t they test for that?” he asked

I shrugged. “He had about a two-week window before they started drawing blood again. They were worried that the meth would show up again, so cut him some slack.”

“This doesn’t stay in your system very long, does it?”

I shrugged again. “I don’t know. I mean, you only did it once, so I’m guessing you’ll be done with it in a day or so.”

He sat down on the couch and I made him a drink, a gin and tonic, grabbed the rest of the now-reheated pizza, and joined him. “Thanks,” he said, the first nice thing he’d said to me since I got here. “You read all these stories about people crashing and then craving this stuff for weeks.”

“I’m guessing that if you were binging that could happen. Really, I think you’ll be fine in a day or two,” I said.

“God, I hate this feeling,” he said, shaking his head. “On the one hand I’m exhausted, while on the other I feel so agitated.” The house was quiet and calm, with the gas fire blazing in the fireplace, and our mellow conversation breaking up the silence. I heard the rumbling of the garage door going up, and so did he. His eyes shot open and he stared at me. “Who’s here?”

“Let’s go see,” I said in a pleasant way, and headed to the garage with him on my heels.

“Who did you call?” he demanded. I ignored him and opened the door to the garage. Stef and Grand were getting out of their Escalade limo, while Tom was working on getting their stuff out.

“Good evening,” Stef said, and walked over to us. His movements were almost feline they were so smooth, and he looked elegant in an outfit that could be described as ornate pajamas. Grand was focusing on helping Tom get their things organized. He was wearing jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and a cardigan, which seemed to reflect the intellectual behind the clothes.

“You did not have to come over here,” Dad said to Stef, then glared at me.

“I think they did,” I said. “Come on, let’s figure out where you’re going to sleep.”

“Don’t put them in my room. The bed is wet,” Dad growled.

“We’re working on potty training him,” I said to Stef. Dad stomped out of the garage and into the house, while Grand chose that moment to join Stef and me. “He must have had some sort of weird reaction to that shit. He’s all agitated and tells me he wants to leave, that he feels claustrophobic.”

“Well perhaps we will be charming enough to make him want to stick around,” Stef said. “I was of a mind to send Tom off to the store for supplies.”

“I think you may want to keep him here, and send the driver,” I said. Dad had gotten a little violent with me, and I thought Tom’s presence might help keep him from freaking out again. We saw another set of lights coming down the drive, and that could only be Jake. “Especially now.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Stef said. “We’ll settle in and meet you in the great room.” They vanished into the house just as Jake drove up. Dad had gotten him a Porsche Cayenne, the same car he’d gotten Marc when they’d first started dating. I wondered if the car was a curse for him, such that if he bought one for a dude their relationship was on life-support. He parked and hopped out, then walked over to me nervously.

I moved forward and gave him a big hug. “It’s good to see you.” He was so uptight it took a second for him to respond and hug me back.

“Well, it’s good to know that at least someone isn’t ready to toss me out on my ass,” he said bitterly.

“At least not yet,” I said, then smiled to show him I was teasing. “Relax. You’re our guest here.”

“Two weeks ago I belonged here, now I’m a guest,” he grumbled.

“Dude, do not get all bitchy about your status,” I said, then changed the subject. “Try to be patient with my father.”

“Why?” he asked.

“He’s all agitated and nervous,” I said.

“Really?” he asked. I nodded. “How much Tina did he do?”

“I don’t know, but it seems like it had a pretty big impact on him, or at least the hangover does,” I said.

“Hang on,” he said, went back to his car, then joined me, carrying a bottle.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s Modafinil,” he said. “It may help him sleep, and it may help with cravings.”

“Why do you have that?” I asked.

“Because when I kicked my own meth addiction, it was pretty helpful,” he said. I stopped him before we walked into the house.

“You did that stuff?”

“I was pretty much living like a circuit boy,” he said ruefully. “For about a year, I’d be on and off it. It sounds like this is pretty intense for Brad. That’s unusual for a guy who just does it once.”

“He hasn’t been fun to deal with,” I said. “I guess his body just can’t handle it.”

“Nobody’s body is really able to handle it,” he said, with the conviction of a recovered addict, who assumed that everyone who did it would end up as fucked up as they had been. I knew that could happen, but I also had friends that did it, and it wasn’t this big of a deal for them, so maybe he was right about my father. “It’s probably genetic, so you should be careful if you try it.”

“Probably good advice,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure I’d freak out like him. To be honest, Tina hadn’t really been on my radar screen. If I wanted a party drug, I usually picked either cocaine or ecstasy. Both of those drugs came with risks, but I pretty much knew what to expect, both during and after my partying. We went into the house and into the great room, where I made him a drink, along with one for Grand and Stef, then got out the snacks I’d bought at the grocery store.

Grand and Stef came into the room, greeted Jake in a friendly way, and thanked me for their cocktails. “Thank you for making the trip over here,” Grand said. “I think that based on how agitated Brad is, we are going to have to pry into your life for some background information.”

He looked around, almost acting as trapped as my father was. “Alright,” he said resignedly.

Before we could start our conversation, I heard my father yell at almost the top of his lungs. “What the fuck are you doing here? I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

“I was invited,” Jake said, and stood up to face him.

“That is correct,” Grand intervened, stepping between the two of them. “Jake is our guest here.”

“Then I am leaving even if I have to ram the Ferrari enough to get it to move,” Dad said.

“I think this would have a much happier ending if you would sit down and explain things to all of us,” Stef said, using his authoritative voice. That had an impact on my father, but not much of one.

“I’ll pass. I’ll be in my room. Have a nice visit,” he said in a smarmy way.

“The only problem with that is if you go hide in your room, you won’t know what’s happening out here,” I said, in the same tone he used. He hated secrets, and I knew that would probably force him to stick around. I turned away from him and addressed the rest of them, as if he’d already left. “I picked up a couple of pizzas, but those are gone. These snacks are all I have left.”

“Do not worry,” Stef said. “The driver is leaving shortly to go get some more things to tide us over.”

“I think I’ll ride along,” Dad said, desperate to escape.

He’d finally pushed my patience to the edge. “You will stay here in this house or I will call the cops and have you picked up,” I said to him forcefully. “Weren’t you going back to your room?” He ignored my question.

“Are you going to tell them how you cheated on me?” Dad asked Jake. “You going to tell them how you basically pretended that you loved me so you could get that prenuptial agreement done? How you stand to pocket $50 million in this deal?”

“I did not pretend that I loved you, I did love you,” Jake said earnestly. “I still do.”

“Right,” Dad said skeptically.

“If I have to give up the money to prove it to you, I will,” he said. That shocked the shit out of me, and from the expressions in the room, it had that effect on everyone else too, my father most of all.

“That is most noble and generous of you,” Grand said.

“Whatever,” Dad said, and stood there almost pouting.

“I thought you were going back to your room?” I taunted again.

“I think instead I’ll stick around and hear how Jake tries to spin this,” Dad said, and sat in one of the chairs. The great room had a sectional couch. Grand and Stef sat on the longer part, I sat on the smaller part, Jake sat on a chair in front of us, and my father was in a chair off to the side, as if he were just an observer.

“Perhaps you can explain what is going on?” Stef asked Jake in his warm and gentle manner.

Jake sighed. “About a month ago, the CIA contacted me because they wanted me to do some work for them in Mexico. After the nightmare raid at Goodwell and the death of Lord Preston, they are trying to figure out how things are on the ground. They’re worried that a big war between the cartels is coming, or maybe it’s already here.”

“That is a very high-risk thing for you to do,” Grand observed.

“They gave me an incentive,” Jake said. “They told me that they would reinstate me in the Army, and actually promote me to major. In exchange, I had to do a one-year tour of duty with the CIA, and then three more years in the reserve.”

“I seem to recall that after they had found out you were gay, they gave you a dishonorable discharge,” Grand noted.

“That’s been a stain on my record, and this would erase it,” Jake said.

“You’re thinking about spending a year in Mexico spying on drug lords just so you can get your discharge changed from dishonorable to honorable?” I asked, stunned.

“Honor is very important to a warrior,” Grand interjected.

“Really?” I demanded. “The army finds out he’s gay, tosses him out and stains his record, and that was honorable?”

“They were enforcing their policies,” Jake responded.

“So now that they need you, they’re willing to overlook their bigoted policies and change the rules?” I asked rhetorically. “Doesn’t sound like they’re very honorable.”

“That’s not how this works,” Jake objected.

“So if a dishonorable outfit gives you an honor, how does that make you honorable?” I asked.

“It validates him in the eyes not only of the military, but in the eyes of those serving or who have served in the armed forces,” Grand said, coming to his defense.

“If Hitler hands out awards, does that make the SS dudes who got them honorable?” I challenged.

“That is not a reasonable extension of logic,” Grand argued.

I ignored him. “So you’re going to do that? You’re going to bail on everyone and go off to Mexico, where there’s a good chance you’ll be killed, just so you can have those assholes think you’re a good soldier?” I asked Jake.

“It’s something that has grated on me, that has seared into my psyche, and this is a chance to rectify it,” Jake said.

“Regardless of the impact that it has on the people you love?” I asked. He didn’t answer me, so I looked at my father, who sat there dazed. “I get why this must have completely freaked you out.”

“Why is that?” Stef asked.

“Because once again he’s dealing with a dude who’s running off to do the ‘honorable’ thing, and once again that dude is risking his life, just like Robbie did,” I said. My father said nothing, but wiped away a tear. “And just like Robbie left him behind to grapple with the fallout, Jake is doing the same thing to him.”

“There’s a very small risk that I’ll get hurt,” Jake said. None of us believed him. “It’s only for a year.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You said you have to serve in the reserves for three years after that. What’s to stop them from just making you spend four years there?”

“They don’t usually do that,” Jake said.

“But they could,” Grand said. “I think that makes you very vulnerable, especially because of your link to us.”

“I don’t understand,” Jake said, confused.

“If someone wanted to cause us problems, someone who had powerful connections, having you sent off to Mexico for those extra years would be a useful tool,” Grand observed. I hadn’t put that together, and obviously Jake hadn’t either.

“I am mindful that Elizabeth Danfield, Alexandra Carmichael, and Sabrina Granger are all out there with their wings clipped, but they are still very dangerous women,” Stef noted.

“You could be putting your life in their hands,” I said, stunned at the complexities of the situation.

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Jake said, as if considering the risks for the first time.

“I did,” Dad said.

“Why didn’t you tell me then?” Jake asked, clearly annoyed with him.

“Jake, from the moment the CIA contacted you, you haven’t heard a word I said,” Dad said sincerely. “You wanted to do this, to erase that stain, as you see it, and you were willing to trade everything we had to do it. To me, our relationship was so precious, so valuable, it was inconceivable that you’d risk it.”

“I saw that as my duty, and I’ve been trained all my life to do my duty,” Jake replied dogmatically.

“Your duty was to some entity that totally rejected you, and not to me, not to us?” Dad asked. “See Jake, that’s the deal. You were thinking about you, and your future, and what you needed. I was thinking about us.”