Courting Mrs. McCarthy (2 page)

Chapter 2

Nathan awoke first with the need to empty his bladder of the beer, vodka, and blue raspberry Kool-Aid he’d consumed the night before. Desperate to escape the aura of disappointment that filled the room he currently occupied, Nathan did not seek to return to his slumber. He found a brush on the table, which he used to comb his short brown hair.

There were about twenty teenagers asleep in various rooms around the house. Nathan needed to find Griffin, who was his ride out of there, before he could escape to his own room and his therapeutic reality television.

He found his friend asleep in the room of Sarah’s eight-year-old sister Margaret O’Brien, or Maggie as her parents called her. Being in a position of pseudo importance as the best friend of Sarah’s boyfriend, he’d had his pick of the bedrooms. Maggie had a bed fashioned to the popular children’s program Care Bears, complete with blanket and multiple plush toys. Maggie was with her parents on Long Island, an excursion planned to allow Sarah time to bid adieu to her friends with a party. Sarah’s parents employed a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with regards to what would go on in their house. As long as there was nothing broken and the cops didn’t show up, all was well.

Griffin had not gotten lucky that night. He was alone, but being a man of class like Nathan, he would not have chosen to soil the bed of a child with anything other than the unfortunate foul odor that comes after a night of consumption of alcoholic beverages and marijuana cigarettes. He was unaware that Antonia, the housekeeper for the O’Brien family, would be paid extra to come in that afternoon to clean up the mess and wash the linens.

“Griffin, are you awake?” Nathan asked. His friend rolled around for a short while until he repeated himself.

“What…”

“Get up. I want to leave,” Nathan said. “I will pay for coffee on the way back,” he added, hoping to provide some sort of fair compensation.

It took Griffin only a few minutes to get ready. His only possession in the house that wasn’t in his pocket was a nearly empty plastic bottle of cheap gin. While the sight of booze at such an early hour made both of them feel unpleasant, it would be a tremendous shame to leave the bottle behind, especially since they were underage and couldn’t legally purchase alcohol.

In the driveway, they took a moment to smoke the joint Griffin had been saving. Griffin suggested they smoke it under Sarah’s window in order to extract feelings of jealousy from the person he perceived to still be in a romantic partnership with his best friend. Nathan would not tell him otherwise for a while longer.

The line at the café was not long as they expected on a Saturday morning. The parents of children participating in athletic events had apparently decided to spare them the discomfort of being seen in their disheveled states. Nathan ordered two bacon egg and cheeses on English muffins with two sides of hash browns, a large coffee, black with one sugar, and a carton of chocolate milk. The milk was for Griffin, who did not drink coffee and did not care for milk that wasn’t sweetened.

Their food tasted like anything else that had been flash frozen for easy preparation. But they were both high and didn’t mind. To them, it tasted wonderful. Being high often made mundane or generic things far more interesting.

Griffin had two mothers. His biological mother, Victoria, had given birth to Griffin after being inseminated with sperm provided by her wife’s brother. Victoria, was a financial analyst for a reputable New York City publicly traded company, the first openly gay woman to be made partner and she did it within six years of joining the firm.

Megan was a former model turned reporter and occasional talking head for Fox News.

Griffin and his mothers bore the surname Rousseau, which was neither Victoria nor Megan’s original last name. After neither woman could agree as to whose name should be put on Griffin’s birth certificate, the two adopted the last name of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Megan had read Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality in its entirety one night on the toilet as a result of laxatives consumed the night before she was to undergo a colonoscopy. The results of the colonoscopy showed a heightened sense of human enlightenment and a polyp free bowel.

People often asked Griffin if he was French, and the answer was a resounding
no
. Griffin, like Nathan, had a large amount of free time afforded to him at birth by affluent parents but he did not use that time to understand his heritage. Instead, he smoked a lot of pot and joined Nathan on his many odd adventures.

Nathan attributed their bond to a mutual desire to think outside the box. This differentiated them from many of the rest of their peers, who spent their days watching reality shows on cable television and not much else. Nathan liked these as well, but his interests extended far beyond the “not much else” bit.

The memo board in Nathan’s bedroom had a schedule of the classes offered by the city of Roxburgh and the various institutions within its borders. Nathan would often attend these classes and as a result had acquired a multitude of skills not commonly found in an upper class twenty-first century seventeen-year-old. He could cook, paint, sew, use sign language, and was an amateur woodworker capable of fixing many of the flaws around his aunt and uncle’s house, often to the chagrin of Cassidy.

He and Griffin also attended many fitness classes ranging from Crossfit to Pilates, and even barre once in an effort to attract women. The two were accomplished members of their school’s swim team, which was woefully unsuccessful. Nathan didn’t mind the team was a failure. He wasn’t going to go to college on a swim scholarship.

The two friends consumed their breakfast sandwiches in silence until Griffin reminded Nathan of an event that was taking place later that day. Their summer club, Seers Point Yacht Club, would be opening its doors for festivities and light refreshments at one o’clock. Summer clubs were a staple of the Northeast, and it was Memorial Day weekend.

“Do you want me to pick you up for opening ceremonies later?” Griffin asked.

“Oh, crap. I forgot about that. Do you think it’s okay if we skip it?” Nathan was neither hung-over nor mournful of his break-up, but had a desire to be alone that often came to him. Festivities could be a lot to handle for a young adult in as odd a position as Nathan found himself in.

“Well, you don’t have to, but I wouldn’t want a repeat of last year’s overreaction from your aunt if I were you. Unless you want to have your fridge stacked with pity food.”

Griffin was referring to last summer’s opening ceremonies, which Nathan had chosen not to attend. Instead, he had gone to a poetry reading at the local library, which he frequented, but he did not tell his aunt or uncle. They had taken his absence as a sign of teenage rebellion. They assumed he was feeling a little down after the departure of his father and shared this information with families who took to pitying him with gifts of comfort food and visits, neither of which he wanted. He abandoned his poetry interests soon after the incident.

“Ugh, I guess you’re right. I’ll go with your family. Cass and Marty will make a big deal about it and I’m too tired to deal with that nonsense,” Nathan retorted, in a rather harsh fashion. He took a big gulp of his coffee.

He didn’t want to tell Griffin about his break-up just yet, as the so called “bro code” required. The whirlwind of events that had led him to this moment in time didn’t give him much of a chance to process what had happened. He wasn’t the type to get overly sentimental and would prefer to save the obligatory cheer up session Griffin would undoubtedly provide for another time. The two finished their breakfast and Griffin took Nathan home.

Chapter 3

No one was home when he arrived. There was a note on the kitchen table from Aunt Cassidy. She and Uncle Martin had gone to Elizabeth and Piper’s softball game. The girls were seven years old and had been living with the Thompsons since they were ten months old. The subject of younger female siblings had been a topic of an early conversation between Nathan and Sarah. Nathan had not bonded much with the twins during his time living in their home.

The note didn’t say whether or not they’d be at opening ceremonies. Nathan hoped they weren’t going. Many of the adults knew Nathan from the local library or functions around town that he and sometimes Griffin liked to attend. This made small talk easy, but he felt weird doing it in front of his aunt. This behavior was seen as peculiar by his relatives so he liked it when they appeared oblivious to his adventures.

Before he could relax in front of the television, Nathan had to take a shower for a few reasons. He didn’t want his sheets to smell bad. His uncle always told him that a shower was the best hangover cure. Being stoned, Nathan thought otherwise, but the warm water certainly felt good.

Afterward, he checked his phone to see if he had received any texts from Sarah. There was nothing except an invitation to play a game, which he did not accept. He rarely accepted invitations to play games on social networks. People usually cheated, and it annoyed him.

Nathan had the whole third floor of the Thompson household to himself. It looked more like an apartment than many rooms occupied by people of his age, but this was largely his own doing. Nathan had taken a class in interior design at the local community center. He had been the only male in the class, but he didn’t mind because he now had a room that resembled one that might belong to a human with a much higher maturity level.

Nathan climbed into bed to watch some of the shows that he’d recorded.
House Hunters
and the other programs on HGTV were some of his favorites since he had taken his interior design class. When he was older and had his own house, he would not have to pay someone else to decorate it. He was had aspirations to eventually work toward not needing a realtor either.

After he had watched two episodes of the reality TV show, Nathan took a nap. Sleeping on the floor was not conducive to his REM cycle and he wanted to feel somewhat alert before he was expected to make small talk with the people of his yacht club. Most of these people regarded Nathan as more intelligent than his peers and he did not want to make them feel otherwise. They might be handy someday when he was in need of a job.

Of all the extracurricular activities Nathan was interested in, work was not one of them. He didn’t need the money and at his age could not find employment that was of more interest to him than his current activities. Griffin did not share a similar attitude.

Nathan had tried working with Griffin at the clothing boutique where he worked, but he did not share the same passion for fine clothing as Griffin. On top of that, Money was no object to Nathan because of his father’s guilt for not being around. Jerome sent lavish checks to his son as a substitute for love. Nathan occasionally took odd jobs to pass the time. He preferred not to babysit as the kids usually yelled too loud or made messes which he felt obligated to clean up.

Instead, he sometimes served as a driver for the children of a well-off couple who traveled extensively to exotic regions he had often never even heard of. The family paid him far more than what he felt the job required and it provided him with a deviation from his normal routine.

Sleep should have come easy for a weary Nathan, but it did not. He found himself checking his phone for contact from Sarah, even though the device would let him know if anyone was trying to get in touch with him. He did not want to contact Sarah first as he bore guilt for not fighting harder to keep their relationship intact.

The root of the problem was that Sarah and he were fundamentally different people. Nathan had little trouble getting along with her friends, and Griffin was more than pleased with that state of affairs due to the potential possibility that one of Sarah’s friends might be interested in him. Conversation was never an issue. Nathan found it easy to talk to just about anyone, except for his father of course.

But despite how agreeable Nathan was, Sarah had often said no to things he wanted to do. He once purchased a discounted kayak tour for the two of them, but she turned it down like everything else, and Griffin went instead.

Another time, he wanted to go to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. It was just the kind of romantic artsy date that Sarah was always going on about. A little too coincidentally, she was busy with plans just as he’d bought the tickets, so Griffin went instead.

While Nathan understood that his ideas for grand adventure might not be necessarily appealing to everyone, he grew displeasured when he purchased a five-course meal at a French restaurant with the hopes that their aspirations for romance and culture could finally reach some middle ground. She declined and made an unfunny and dated joke about a dislike of snails. Nathan had to exercise restraint when it came to questioning this conduct unbecoming of his faux socialite girlfriend. Griffin went instead.

The lack of compatibility wasn’t a huge concern to Nathan. He had read an article shortly after their courtship began that said the average person went on seventy dates before finding the elusive “one” who they were supposed to be with until death. Nathan grew disenchanted with the credibility of the whole process, having been surrounded in untraditional or broken marriages his entire life. The occasional Disney princess movie did little to make him feel otherwise.

What he did know was that Sarah was his first girlfriend, not his soul mate, as she often liked to suggest. She was by no means the last girl he’d ever call his girlfriend. Nathan was sure to remember that high school romance should be fun before it was anything else. He told himself to exercise caution before entering a relationship like that again.

This brought conflicting emotions which prevented him from taking the nap he so desperately needed. His relationship with Sarah was never going to last very long. Someone who couldn’t appreciate a fine French meal, no matter the age, was not fitting for a man of his disposition. But Sarah had been fun at times and he could not shake the idea that he was going to miss her.

He thought there was a chance he might have made a mistake. She wasn’t perfect, but he hadn’t encountered many girls who could appreciate him for all his eccentricities and interests that were not typically shared by other teenagers. Before he met Sarah, kissing was just something he saw on TV or read about casually in books. Nathan had seen people hooking up at parties. But the exchange of alcoholic slobber while mounting each other on beer soaked couches wasn’t the romance he was drawn to. It was a release of some sort of built up angst that Nathan just simply didn’t feel.

“You didn’t fight for a reason,” Nathan told himself as he tried to fall asleep. “It wasn’t right.” He couldn’t shake the sensation that this wasn’t just comfort speech to stop his mind from hammering him.

What Nathan didn’t realize was that these feelings came naturally at the end of a relationship. He was without much experience on the topic as a result of not having much guidance in his life at all. There wasn’t anyone to talk to about it and he doubted Sarah would want to engage him in an analytical discussion as to what went wrong with them. Even if she agreed that the events of the previous night had been some terrible mistake, now was not the time to fix what shouldn’t be fixed. Nathan continued to ponder the ramifications of his indifference and indecisiveness until he finally fell asleep.