Page 102 of Broken Romeo

Duncan clicked his tongue and dumped a whole jar of Prego into the saucepan on the burner. “You think he told your dad?”

Comically on cue, my phone buzzed in my hand. The word HOME scrawled across the top of the screen.

With a sigh, I held it up for Duncan to see. “I’m gonna venture a guess that yeah, he did.”

“Damn. This is why I didn’t go to my dad’s alma mater.”

I snorted. As if I had a choice in the matter. “I might as well get this over with,” I muttered, then backed out of the kitchen. “Save me some of that spaghetti though.”

I crossed down the hall toward my bedroom and answered the call. “Dad, I swear, it’s not as bas as Coach—”

“Sweetheart, I miss hearing your voice.”

I stopped dead in my tracks at the sound of her slurred words. “Mom?”

“My sweet baby boy,” she cooed.

Drunk.

Really fucking drunk if I had to guess. And there was a good chance she’d washed down some pills with that vodka, too.

I shut my bedroom door quietly behind me. “Hey Mama,” I said gently. “Everything okay over there?”

“Oh, fine. It’s all fine over here. Not a thing to worry about.”

Which meant I definitely had something to worry about. Mom being drunk wasn’t exactly a headline in my world, but she didn’t usually call me in this state of drunkenness. A little tipsy? Sure. So drunk she could barely string her words together? Never.

“Where’s Dad?”

“Client dinner,” she mumbled. In the background, I heard the distinct clink of the decanter tapping the edge of a glass, followed by the slow trickling pour of another beverage.

Client dinner my ass.

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut. Dad had promised me that he wouldn’t do that shit anymore. No more affairs. He’d promised he’d look out for mom. It was the only reason I had agreed to come here to school.

The only reason I’d agreed to leave her.

Without me, there was no one to take care of her.

For three years, it seemed like he’d been holding up his end of the bargain.

“I think about Megan a lot,” Mom said out of fucking nowhere. My spine went steel straight.

She never brought up Megan. Ever.

And for good reason.

“It wasn’t fair of us,” Mom continued, blathering on. I wasn’t even sure she knew what she was saying.

“You’re right,” I croaked. “It wasn’t.”

“Megan was a nice girl,” she slurred again. “I was a nice girl, too, you know? Back before I met your father.”

“I know, Mom. You’ve always been kind.”

“I wasn’t to Megan.”

Silence.