“Yeah, I know he’s arrogant,” Joey responded to my less than impressed reaction. “But it doesn’t make him any less good at what he does, you know?”
“So you want to be ‘just like him’?” I asked, crooking my finger to make air quotes.
“Ha, ha. Not just like him, no. But I bet it’s probably hard to keep a wife and kids happy with the hours he works. Who knows, maybe she has her own life too. If you know what I mean?”
“That’s so incredibly sad, Joey.” Irritation surged through me. “Surely no woman marries someone knowing they’re going to be having affairs on each other for the rest of their marriage. What would be the point in getting married?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she just wanted to marry a rich doctor. She had to have known he wouldn’t have time for a real relationship.”
My blood pressure was zinging dangerously close to needing a cardiac specialist myself. “Are you listening to yourself? You’re sounding as douchey as he is. And he does have time, he just prefers to spend it screwing my mother.”
Dammit. Me and my big mouth.
Joey stopped and stared at me. “Shit,” he said.
“I suspect,” I amended and downed another massive gulp of my drink.
“You know, don’t you?”
“Joey, you should continue to live in ignorance, thinking the sun shines out of his ass.”
“Look. I’m not saying it’s okay that he and his wife live separate lives. Okay?”
“It sounded that way.”
“It’s not what I mean. Whatever, let’s drop this.”
We continued walking, this time in silence, the sound of the waves washing up and back over the sand.
“I want to be a doctor,” Joey said.
“I know—”
“Just listen to me for a moment.”
I snapped my mouth closed.
“I want to be a doctor. A damn good one. I want to save lives and do something important. Help people like Nana stay around a bit longer. But more than that I want to do something solid and stable, dependable. I owe it to Nana and Keri Ann to keep the house and make sure I can always provide.”
I laid a hand on his arm, but I didn’t speak.
“My father never did find his passion or what mattered to him,” he went on. “Always searching for a quick success. Unwilling to put in the time and work to really do something grand. He was away all the time, worked so many hours, was away from his wife and us, his kids. And for what? For nothing. Spinning wheels. If you asked what my dad did when he was alive, I couldn’t even really explain it to you. Sales? Who the hell knows? But he wasn’t changing the world. He didn’t have something that mattered.”
Joey stopped and walked down to the water until the waves washed over his feet.
I joined him.
He shoved a hand into his pocket, downed his drink, and stared out into the dark horizon. “But my mom? I know who she was. She was a dancer. Or should have been. That was her thing, you know? The thing that mattered. But she gave it up for my father to fuck around figuring out what he wanted to do, and it killed her spirit. Weird, that I’d recognize that even though I was a kid. I couldn’t have put it into words back then, but I knew. It was hard to miss. She should have left him. But she was too good to him. He should have at least done the honorable thing and cut her loose. She could have lived her own life. Remarried someone who believed in her. Something.” He kicked a foot in the waves. “Fuck, she may even still be alive if she’d done that. So no,” Joey looked at me briefly. “I don’t want to be like Dr. Barrett and fuck around on my wife.”
Because you won’t have a wife. I wanted to finish his thought because I heard the words clear as day, even if he didn’t say them. It was an echo of his I don’t want or need a girlfriend speech.
“But I do want to be a damn good doctor,” he finished. “That’s my thing that matters.”
“Mrs. Barrett could be like your mother was,” I said and squeezed his arm. “Maybe she has a thing that matters, something she gave up. I bet she didn’t know what she was signing up for when she married him, but I bet she gave up her own dreams to be with him.”
“Probably.” Joey let out a breath. “Fuck. Talk about bringing the tone down. Sorry.” He looked down into his empty cup, then into mine.
The alcohol made my limbs feel languid and my head feel bold. I snaked a hand around Joseph’s taut waist. “Hey Jay Bird, I think some kissing could up the tone a bit, don’t you?” I pulled a lip between my teeth and gave him what I hoped was a saucy look.
“Hell, yes,” he answered with a smirk.
I SPENT THE day of my eighteenth birthday working my ass off. Literally, I think my ass actually shrank. I took an early shift for Resort Housekeeping. Then I was on lifeguard duty, and as I parked my shrinking ass in the deck chair, my mind wandered to my father. I hadn’t had a chance to call the law firm yet. Or maybe I was stalling.