“I can help you.” My father ignored my bullshit, which was rare for him. He never let me get away with being a dickhead. Not even at thirty.

“With what?” I laughed.

“With your self-destructive spiral. And with understanding the truth better.”

“Your truth cost me six hundred thousand dollars.”

“You know money isn’t the issue here. It never was, Dean. I had no indication that you were ready for the truth to come out, so I left it for you to decide. Son,” he placed his glasses on the table, pressing his thumbs to his eye sockets, “your mother and I miss you. We want to make this right.”

I looked down at the phone on the table. Vicious texted me that morning saying he still hadn’t managed to defrost the LeBlancs and talk them into letting me see Rosie. I had nothing else to do, anyway. Might as well burn the time by listening to my piece-of-work dad.

“Hold on, asshole,” I muttered as I got rid of the quilt and turned the heater on.

Dad watched as I tucked a blunt into my mouth and puffed a cloud of smoke, pursing his lips. He didn’t like it. But this time, he was going to have to suck it up.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” I asked when he stared at me for a minute straight. What the hell was wrong with him? He looked like he’d been crying, which made me feel uneasy. Not that I thought that men who cried were pussies—okay, I’ll rephrase: that depends on the amount of crying, situation, and circumstances—but it felt odd to think that Eli Cole produced actual human tears. Normally, he looked so unflustered by the world. While he could be sentimental, he was always collected. Extremely so, down to the smallest bone in his body. And right now he looked very, very scattered.

Dad shook his head. “Nothing.” He tapped the round, oak dining table, ignoring the healthy amount of F-bombs I showered him with. I tried to keep my language PG-13 whenever I was around my parents, but I wasn’t feeling very respectful toward my dad at that moment.

“I’m always in awe of how alike we are.” He pinched his lips together.

“You have a weed and alcohol problem, too?” I laughed, tipping the ash into an empty vodka bottle and taking a sip from a half-empty beer can.

“I did,” he said.

My jaw almost dropped at this revelation. That was definitely news to me.

“Elaborate.” I took another hit of the blunt, before he snatched it from my hand and put it out.

“Hey.” My eyebrows pulled together. “What the fuck?”

“The fuck is that I’m your father, and you’re going to act in accordance with the social codes we ingrained in you from a young age, at least around us. That means you don’t drink or smoke weed in front of me and cut back on the F-word, Dean. It doesn’t make you tougher. It makes you sound like a goddamn thug, and I spent a lot of money on your education. Enough to assure that you’re not a thug. So, while I am content with indulging you when you and your preppy, trust-fund baby friends talk the big talk behind closed doors, to me you will be polite and straitlaced. Understood?”

Hello, bucket of ice to the face, thanks for sobering my ass up.

Dad stood up, snatched a can of beer from the table, and started walking around the kitchen, pulling a small trash can and throwing all the vodka bottles, rolled cigarette butts, and beers into it as he talked. “Back to our main topic—addiction. Yes, Dean, I was an addict like you. Not weed. Where I grew up in Alabama, weed wasn’t a rich man’s vice. But after I graduated from law school and married your mom, I had a lot on the line. I had my own father to impress, and he was far less thoughtful and supportive than I am. The only way I could take the edge off of all the pressure was to drink. So I did that. Excessively. Every. Single. Day.”

I smacked my lips shut and stared him down, trying to figure out if I was hungover, drunk, or in that sick space in-between. I drank so much that weekend I constantly felt like throwing up. I didn’t remember when my last meal was, but I was pretty sure it didn’t stay in my stomach after all the late-night puke-fests I was throwing for myself.

“I was drunk ninety percent of the time. A high-functioning drunk, mind you, but I don’t recall a day between the ages of twenty-two to twenty-eight when I wasn’t tanked-up. Even at work, when I couldn’t risk smelling of whiskey, I would get into the bathroom and drink Listerine before important meetings. I was far worse than you, Dean. Far worse.”