Aiden sat in the McDonald’s restaurant, shaking his leg under the crumb-ridden table. His flavorless burger was cold and the ice had melted in his soda cup. He checked the time on his phone as he waited for Gregory Bernard to stand him up, for the second time. The man was four minutes late. After he’d picked his heart up off the ground when the guy had called him the day before at work, the man had requested they meet face-to-face. He didn’t like doing these sorts of things over the phone and definitely didn’t want to go back and forth online. Aiden agreed to meet him and even let the man pick a neutral location.
Aiden nervously snatched his phone back up from the table and called his best friend…
“Addison, he’s not here yet. Watch, he’s going to be a fucking no-show.”
“Aiden, calm down. He’s not that late. It’s rush hour. He could have gotten caught up in traffic. You’re never nervous, so I know you are in a bad place right now emotionally for you to be freaking out like this. It’s going to be okay. Just wait a bit longer, all right?”
“I really wish you would have come with me.”
“No, baby, this is between you and your father. He said he was coming alone, and you should as well. Now, for future visits, should there be any, you know that I will be there.” He swallowed some of the watered-down Coke as he looked through the windows, trying to catch a glimpse of an old motorcycle guy with brown and gray hair.
“Shit… I think I see him.”
“Well, good! Call me after it’s over.”
“No! Wait!” But the woman hung up, leaving him to his own devices.
A man in a white bandana, jeans, black boots, and a long-sleeved black t-shirt parked his big motorcycle right in front, then made his way into the place. Long hair swayed behind him as he walked like he owned the entire world. The guy snatched off his sunglasses, placed them atop his head, and looked around. In a matter of seconds, they locked eyes. Aiden slowly got to his feet, his heart beating a mean percussion within him. He could barely breathe and thought he might pass out. As the man approached, his cowboy stance softened like putty. His lower lip began to quiver and his eyes filled with tears.
“Jesus Christ!” he cried out as he hastened his gait, grabbed him in his arms, and squeezed hard. “It’s you! Don’t need no damn DNA test. You look like an exact copy of my son, Steve.” The man let him go and looked him up and down. “I can’t believe this. I can see the resemblance even more in person. Aiden, shit!” The guy flashed a toothy grin, but the tears flowed. Aiden was proud he hadn’t broken down. Yet.
They took their seats at the table and looked at one another as if they were science experiments.
Same eyes… same nose… same smile… same body type…about the same height, but Gregory has on boots so I might be a little taller.
“So, uh, I’m not sure where we should start,” Aiden stated before taking a bite out of his burger. He wasn’t certain why he did that; he sure as hell wasn’t hungry.
“I think I better do the talkin’ since I was the one that disappeared.”
Aiden nodded in agreement.
“All right, there’s no way to pretty this up, but here’s the truth.” Gregory rested his big palms on the table between them. “When you wrote me on Facebook, I was shocked. I had to think about how to tell my wife, Aiden. She knew nothing about me and your mother and definitely not you. I knew I had to tell her because I refused to just ignore this message you sent, pretend like it never happened. You sought me out and you found me.”
“Wait… wife? My mother said you were divorced. Are you saying you got remarried to someone else and she wouldn’t understand?”
“No.” The guy lowered his head and shook it. “You see, I lied to your mother, okay? I told her that I was divorced, but I was still married and hadn’t even thought about leaving my wife when I got your mother pregnant. It was hard ’cause I loved both of them, okay?”
Aiden swallowed the bit of beef, lettuce, and bread in his mouth in a hard gulp. “So, you had a family already and you were having an affair?”
“Right. Me and my wife was going through some rocky times. I met your mom at this store she was working at. She was beautiful.” The man offered a sad smile. “I shouldn’t have done it. I should have resisted I guess, but I didn’t. I asked her out. She gave me her number and we started dating. I knew if your mother found out about my wife, she’d dump me, and if my wife found about her and the baby, she’d file for divorce.”
“Mmm, Mom made no mention of you being married. She must’ve really thought you were single, I guess.”
“I was at your mother’s place more than I was at home, so, I guess, in that regard, she believed it was just me and her exclusively. Then, when I and your mother were still messing around, my wife, Vicki, got a hold of me and told me she was sick. She’d gone to the doctor and they found a lump in her breast. By then, your mother was like six or seven months pregnant. I had to go home, Aiden. I had to be there for my wife so I tried to leave it all behind… I figured you’d be better off without me.
Selfishness… excuses…
“She called me when you were born and I didn’t want to see you ’cause I knew it would break my heart. You were my first boy. I already had a daughter when you came into the world. I went to the hospital anyway, saw you, and just wanted to die.” Another tear rolled down the man’s cheek. “There was no way I could accuse your mom of sleeping around once I saw you. I figured, or maybe even hoped a bit, that you wouldn’t look like me. But even as a little baby you did, and you looked a lot like my Rebecca, my first born. I held you in my arms in that hospital… and I knew I had to back away. I couldn’t be with you, not like that, not at that time.”
“Are you still with Vicki and is she still sick?”
“Yeah, we’re together, Aiden.” The man dropped his head for a spell, then looked him in the eye as he said, “She beat cancer. It was caught in time.”
“Then why didn’t you try and find me after that?” Aiden’s jaw tightened as he repressed his urge to completely blow up on the bastard.
“I… I was afraid. I didn’t want my wife to leave me. She and I had gotten closer, and we’d mended our relationship after she had that health scare. I really figured you were best with just Barbara. I didn’t have nothin’ to offer you, Aiden.” He threw up his hands and fell back into the seat. His hair moved just enough where he could now see a faded tattoo on his neck, a large black spider. “I ran with a motorcycle club. I was involved in a bunch of shit I shouldn’t have been doing. I didn’t have a job at the time. I got an arrest record that would blow your mind and to me, that wasn’t the kinda thing you needed in your life.”