Calling The Parents
Presley took a deep breath and dialed out to her father.
“Hey P.” He answered on the first ring. “How lucky am I you’re calling me twice when you’re angry?”
“Daddy,” she whined, “don’t.”
“What do you need baby? Do you need me to get your mom?”
“No. Though she should be there for this conversation. Is she with you at the office?”
“She is out in my reception area but I’ll get her. Hold on a minute.
“Wait. Before you get her Dad, is she okay? I’m feeling really badly about the other night and hurting her. I
tell texted her a couple of times yesterday to check in on her and she said she was fine but she’s not going to
me.”
“She is hurting P, but she deserved to know what Odin was saying. He’s been blocking all our calls but I want him to explain to her and to me what the point is, She has the right to confront him for his lies. I threw him out of here the other night because I caught him in my computer again.”
“Wait, Dad, I forgot he was in your computer. Mom and I figured he got my number probably from his mom’s phone but I’m trying to figure out how someone who has been screaming at me how he’s so broke he needs money suddenly had enough money to buy a plane ticket to Nice and my
resort.”
“Are you saying he’s there?” Gavin’s voice turned ice cold.
“Yes. Showed up this morning and confronted us in the lobby when we were heading to the beach. Cruz nearly punched him out. I almost let him. Maybe he got the money from your computer?” she knew her Dad kept his banking information with the “remember me” icon tapped.
“Hold on. Getting you mom.” The sound of her father’s voice telling her mom to come to his office immediately because Presley was on the phone,
The sound of her mother’s heels tapping on the floor in a rush made Presley smile. Her mom would always come running and there was a safety in her mother’s love she didn’t realize she needed at the moment but as it flowed over her, Presley closed her eyes and felt the tear dripping from her lashes.
“Baby, are you okay?”
“Hi Mom.”
“Are you crying, honey?”
“This whole trip has been such a nightmare and I’m so over it. I messed up, Mom.*
“How honey?”
“I hurt Cruz. My stunt, in such a public setting hurt him and his public image and it hurt him and I’m sorry for doing it but then again I wouldn’t have gotten to know him if it weren’t for this whole debacle.”
“True.”
“But it’s affected everything, Mom. Odin is off the deep end. I dragged Sloane into this stupid game and she sent Cruz’s ex a copy of our itinerary after he’s kept her blocked for months so she is here now. She’s
Calling The Parents
apparently so off her rocker, her parents have her under conservatorship and she refuses to take medication unless forced. They are ruining my vacation in the worst ways.”
“They are both there?”
“Yes. She made a such a huge scene yesterday, Cruz needed to get his security team to put a whole security team in place here at the resort. They follow us everywhere we go. Which is fine until it’s not, you know,” she
cracked a smile as her mother giggled.
“Have you been making out with Cruz Hawley?” Her father teased her. “I told you Scarlett there was more to it than a simple prank war. I knew if we put them together away from the rest of the world they’d see it.”
“Daddy!” she gasped. “Is this why you gave Cruz my itinerary?”
“Well yeah. By the way, I did call his father and let him know in no uncertain terms did I send Cruz to you to secure business with him. My daughter doesn’t come with a price,” he said words Cruz said earlier in the week and it made her smile. “I might to be the most smooth or suave of men, Presley and while I Inadvertently and consistently put my foot in my mouth, especially where my girls are concerned, you need to know I love you and your mom more than life itself. I’d do anything for either of you. I didn’t intend to hurt you, Presley. I just want you to be happy and you’ve been holding so much anger over your youth with Cruz and I knew it would be resolved if you were forced to spend time together. Like the old trick my auntie used to do with my cousins when they were fighting and locking them in a room together until they sorted it out.”
“Um, didn’t your cousins actually break each other’s arms in one of those forced confined things?”
“It was for the greater good, P. Her father chuckled.
She giggled, “I guess because Cruz and I actually seem to get along really well. I mean there are moments want to strangle him but today he put the bathroom door back so progress
“I’m glad to hear it.” He cleared his throat, “but sweetle you need to stop flying off the handle all the time. Before you freak out, stop and listen to him, okay.”
“To him or to you? I kind of flipped out at you.”
“Yes but you’re my spoiled princess and I created the monster of you by giving you everything you ever asked for your entire life. Of course you’re going to snap at me when I cross you. I can take it. I know once you calm down you always come back to me and we can have these conversations. You always just nee Besides, you get your temper from me, so I also need take the blame for it.”
“Daddy, you’re not nice.”
- ne.
“Nope, however it is also another trait I passed to my daughter. You can be downright mean too. I love you P because you’re my mini–me. Despite how much everyone says you look like your mom, you are me and my temperament through and through.”
“I can’t even argue with you. You know who else has our shitty temper? Odin.”
“I’m logging into my laptop now,” he sighed. “It didn’t even occur to me to check to see if he was in my banking app”
Scarlett’s voice cut in, “what do you mean in your banking app?”
“Odin’s been going off about being broke all the time. We know he’s drinking and partying his money away and his rent in the condo building on the waterfront is astronomical and his car payment is the nearly the
Calling The Parents
same as his mortgage payment since he bought a car you could probably compare to a house price in any other province,” Gavin sighed, “which wouldn’t be an issue if he was working but he’s not. He’s existing solely on his trust fund. Though it still doesn’t explain how he’s going through twenty grand a month. His rent is four grand, his car payment is three grand. Where is the other thirteen grand going?”
“Based on the smell of him when he got here and Cruz calling him a functioning alcoholic, I’m guessing booze. He smelled like a gin factory,
Dad.”
“He does drink a lot but thirteen grand worth of alcohol seems a lot.” Her father then muttered a very thick curse, his rage palpable through the phone, “that motherfucking shithead stole ten grand from my savings account. I never check the account so he knew he’d get away with it.”
“Dad, I’m sorry.”
“I’m going to call the police and have him arrested the minute he sets foot back in Vancouver.” Gavin said bluntly. “My office has security in it and there is video. It will catch our entire altercation when he was in my
computer.”
“Gavin, you can’t have him arrested.” Scarlett tried to reason.
“He needs to learn, Scarlett. Christ the poor girl he coerced at the office refused to press charges despite me begging her to. I paid her a chunk of change so she could get treatment and therapy and I did everything I could to get her started over because she wouldn’t press charges. I wanted her to, God help me I did but she just wanted to leave it behind. She kept saying she agreed to sleep with him so it was partly her fault but it wasn’t sitting well with her. No f*****g wonder it wasn’t sitting well. He was threatening her.” Her father was off on a tangent now and Presley could almost picture the way her mother would be moving to stand behind him to rub his shoulders and stroke all the way up his neck to his ears to try to settle him back down. “1 keep begging people who get into his crosshairs to hold him accountable and they all back off.”
“He tends to drop the Hawley name.” Presley said quietly. “He did it last summer I guess in Toronto when he visited Cruz there. He got arrested for a drunk and disorderly in a strip bar and then dropped the Hawley name and all was forgiven.”
“He probably tried to grope a stripper,” Gavin grunted.
“Yeah, we have a new theory on that,” she said quietly. “Or at least Algernon did.”
“Who is Algernon?” Her mother asked curiously.
“Well, he’s a very creepy man who was hitting on me hard at the beach the first day Cruz got here. Cruz chased him off,” she ignored her father’s telling laugh, “but since then he’s been around a bit.”
“Is he attractive?” Scarlett asked.
Gavin cut in, “what does it matter if she’s there with Cruz.”
“A little competition never hurt any man, Gavin,” Scarlett scoffed. “If it weren’t for competition, I never would have gotten pregnant with Presley Remember the guy I went on a date with? You dragged me out of the restaurant and we made Presley right there in the alley next to the restaurant First time we ever had s*x without a condom,”
“Mom!” she squealed in horror. “I did not need such a recap of my creation!” She fought valiantly to remove the mental picture her mother painted while her parents both laughed in low husky tones. “Ick!”
Her mother giggled, “someday you’ll have babies you can traumatize with inappropriate content. You can
Calling The Parents
simply leave one of your books out. Narnurs from Cockaigne would be a good place to start.”
“Cruz has been going around telling people like Algernon how he has two cocks.” She giggled as her parents roared with laughter. Presley let out a sigh, “Mom, this whole thing has blown up but Algernon saw Odin and Ramona, that’s Cruz’s ex, in the bar this evening plotting on breaking us up. They were supposed to invite us for drinks to talk or something and then drug Cruz and make me catch him being inappropriate with Ramona. Odin said I’d go home to Daddy crying with my broken heart, we’d have brunch and he’d get paid out and then Ramona would have Cruz back once she beds him or something.”
“F**k what is wrong with the boy?” Gavin growled furiously.
“Algernon hypothesized it’s unrealized s**** identity.”
“What?” her mother asked in shock.
“Algernon pegged him for gay the minute he saw him. Said he couldn’t figure out why a gay man was hitting
on a waitress.
“It would make sense but I’ve never noticed him even looking at boys growing up.”
“Maybe because his wrestling and rugby team beat it out of him,” Cruz called out as he stepped on to the patio. “Anderson called a couple of guys from the rugby team who were also on the wrestling team. He said that in grade eight, they caught him staring too long at one of the players. Odin was in his towel after showering and it was clear he had a boner. They beat the s**t out of him. Then every time they got him alone between then and graduation if he even looked sideways at any of them, they laid a beating on him. It was why they were dropping all the slurs every time the three of us were around. They were giving him a warning,” “Shit.” Presley sighed as she heard her mother start to cry in the background.
“Gets worse.” Cruz warned, “turns out, one of the guys found out not only was the kid on the team Odin’s secret crush but so was Anderson. I guess they saw Odin more than once eyeballing Anderson hard. They would threaten him all the time if he told anyone who was beating him up for being a pervert, they’d out him to Anderson and he’d lose his best friend.”
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