Page 46 of No One Like You

“Okay, thank you. I have some stuff to go over with you, but that can wait until you’re done. Lemme check on the coffee. I’ll be back in a minute with yours if it’s ready, then I’ll leave you alone. Oh, I’ll feed Nocturne too so that you can focus.”

“Thanks, Megan.”

CHAPTER 29

EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORN

Brad arrived a few minutes early to one of Portland’s many brew pubs and found a fairly isolated table. He thought about having a beer but decided that, as much as he would probably need one after this, soda would be the better option. Last Saturday had been an abject disaster and he wasn’t optimistic about today. His father had been extremely disappointed at his failure and had buried him in punishment projects at work this past week. He had no idea how to handle that situation. In fact, he felt completely out of his depth in every facet of his life.

Brad didn’t feel any better when he saw Tasha walk in with two envelopes in her hand. Legal-sized envelopes. He had spent enough years in the banking world to know that almost anything in a legal-sized envelope was serious. The fact that it was Tasha and not Megan holding them meant nothing good for him, he was sure. She frowned when she saw him and stalked over.

“Hi, Tasha,” he said, forcing himself to be as pleasant as possible.

“Brad,” she said, taking a seat and tossing the envelopes on the table.

“Where’s Megan?”

“She’s taking Sophia to roller derby. She also knows that she’s fallen for your bullshit way too many times. So now you get me instead.”

“Uh huh. What’s in the envelopes?”

“We’re not talking about that right now, Brad,” Tasha said his name with immense distaste.

Brad stayed silent, assuming that speaking was probably not going to do him any good. “You came into my home… into our home… and said some damn stupid things, Brad.” He wisely kept his mouth shut.

“You and I, we never liked each other much. Not at first, and not now. But one thing that I never thought was that you were stupid. An over-privileged White boy riding Daddy’s coattails for sure, but not stupid. Holy shit, though. You got deep in the stupid, didn’t you?”

“I could have handled that better.”

“No shit!” Tasha snorted. “I gotta ask. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I don’t know.”

“And we’re back to stupid again. Of course you knew. I know you didn’t drive all that way, thinking that you’d show up and Megan would just go home with you.”

Brad really couldn’t think of a good response.

“Oh, shit. That actually was your plan! Wasn’t it? Again, what the hell were you thinking?”

“I don’t know, Tasha. I wasn’t. I showed up at Thanksgiving without Megan and Sophia and my dad read me the riot act. He told me that I was weak and that I needed to be a man. He said that Megan needed a strong man to tell her what to do. He said that if I didn’t go get her then everyone would know what a pussy I am. He said, ‘You’re a pussy, Brad, and everyone knows what happens to pussies.’ So, I tried to do what Dad would do.”

“Your dad is an asshole, Brad. I mean, you should never, ever take his advice. Especially about women. Megan’s not some pushover that you can just order around. You didn’t do that shit while you were married, did you?” Tasha’s voice was rising.

“No! I mean, we argued and stuff, but it wasn’t like that. I guess I was just so desperate and humiliated that I did something stupid.”

“That there is a start, Brad. What was that other bullshit?”

“Um. I?—”

“Come on. I know that you weren’t that ignorant back in college, so you musta learned it somewhere along the way.”

“I got on some message boards in the past few years. Lots of guys talking about how we don’t learn real history in school.”

“Lemme guess, these assholes knew the ’real history.’” Tasha’s air quotes at the end were practically dripping with disdain.

“Yeah, I, um, maybe should have been more discerning.”

“Oh… Ya think?!? Tell you what. We don’t learn the real history in school, because the real history is awful and a whole bunch of White folk don’t want their kids learning how evil their great-granddaddy was.” Tasha’s native South Carolinian accent was starting to show.

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