Courting Mrs. McCarthy Read online

  Courting Mrs. McCarthy

  By Ian Thomas Malone

  Courting Mrs. McCarthy

  Copyright © 2015 by Ian Thomas Malone.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: June 2015

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-163-8

  ISBN-10: 1-68058-163-5

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  In loving memory of William Brown.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 1

  Though his girlfriend’s party was lively that Friday night, and many of his friends were there, Nathan found himself constantly scrambling to prevent debauchery from turning into catastrophe. As the evening wound down, he was looking forward to some alone time with Sarah as he made his way into her bedroom. He was not expecting her apparent disappointment.

  “You didn’t pay any attention to me tonight,” she complained, from the supposed comfort of her king sized bed. There was sincerity in her tone despite the potent smell of vodka on her breath. The faux socialite could not hold her alcohol. She looked at Nathan as if she expected him to end her emotional pain.

  “I was keeping the place under control, Sarah,” he replied. He had tried his best to remain relatively coherent in an effort to be the responsible one at his girlfriend’s house party. “When are we supposed to clean up tomorrow? Your parents will be coming home. Besides, you told me to make sure people were having a good time,” he added, while struggling to deal with her peculiar behavior.

  “That didn’t mean I wanted you to spend all night smoking pot on the back porch with your friends while everyone looked at me like I was some helpless idiot for wondering where you were.” Sarah’s eyes were watery, but there were no tears. Not yet at least.

  Maybe the tears would have helped. It might have caused him to take her more seriously when she asked, “Do you even care about us anymore?”

  The word love was thrown around so much in high school that it sometimes became empty of all meaning. He’d only been dating her for three months, but they had been hooking up since early December, after Nathan had been on a record-breaking relay for his school’s swim team.

  Despite the short amount of time they’d known each other, they were already making arrangements for the summer that they would spend on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Sarah would be interning at a law firm in Prague, which was owned by a friend of her father’s. Sarah knew nothing about Czech law, but the prospect of spending a summer in Prague was all she needed to hear. Nathan had decided to do the same thing he’d done last summer. He would relax at Seers Point, the yacht club his father belonged to, with his buddies.

  He lived in Roxburgh, New York, with his Aunt Cassidy and Uncle Martin. Cassidy was his father’s sister. His father, Jerome, had taken a VP position for his company in London, but Nathan remained behind to finish out his last two years of high school. He had no desire to travel with his father, or uproot with so little of his pre-college youth left to live, even though he relished adventure.

  This wasn’t the first time Nathan had found himself in a state of abandonment, though it wasn’t something he often considered consciously. His mother, Hilary, had taken off with the bassist of a rock band when he was four. She died when he was six. He didn’t like to think about that. Instead, he thought about his girlfriend.

  Sarah went to a different school than Nathan. She had already taken her finals in preparation for her travels, which began the following morning. Beyond the excitement of a European internship, she liked that her father had stiff-armed her school into letting her take finals early. It made her feel important even though it was not her own doing. Private schools generally caved to whatever the big donors wanted.

  Nathan had thought about visiting Sarah in Prague, though the idea was quite daunting for him. His father would have been glad to finance the trip on the condition that he visit him in London as well. This would have been no burden to Nathan, who would have loved the opportunity to attend a play or musical in West End.

  Despite how often he thought of Sarah, and how much he cared for her, he wasn’t going to say he loved her when he didn’t—even if it saved their relationship. Nathan wasn’t about to lie just to save his high school romance.

  “Well?” she pressed, as he remained silent. “Where is our relationship going?”

  “Sarah, you know how much you mean to me,” he hazarded. “You…you’re an important part of my life.” Something inside him was motioning for him for an airing of grievances he’d had with his girlfriend over their time together, but he wasn’t sure how to express himself in a way that didn’t exacerbate Sarah’s already overemotional state.

  The truth was, Sarah hadn’t been a great girlfriend. She frequently berated him for failing to text her back promptly, even if he had a good reason not to. Then she’d complained when he had to babysit his cousins instead of going with her to shop. Sarah’s parents hadn’t taught her the word no and she didn’t like that she couldn’t always get her way with him. Nathan’s similar financial comforts made him immune to the allure of power that Sarah depended on for leverage in disagreements.

  An even bigger problem had loomed over his head ever since their two month anniversary dinner at a fancy, overpriced New York restaurant, an extravagance paid for by Sarah’s father, who was either unaware or just plain oblivious to the fact that most kids their age did not have the palettes for fine dining.

  Sarah was nervous because they hadn’t had sex yet, and she was apprehensive about their first time together. What bothered Nathan was that she rambled about this for weeks, and he wasn’t as emotionally torn up about planning every detail as she was. She wanted their first time to be perfect. He learned it was probably best not to interfere with Sarah’s grandiose plans.

  Nathan spent many nights lying in bed wondering why a seventeen-year-old girl needed to concern herself with sex as much as Sarah did. He didn’t even know any girls who would admit to having sex just yet. It wasn’t the act that bothered him, but rather it was Sarah’s insistence upon talking about it for hours on end without any potential solutions offered. Nathan had never put any pressure on her and quite frankly just wanted to get it over with.

  Especially lately, text messages, dinner visits, even Skype dates were dragged on and on by Sarah’s need to plan every minute detail of their first sexua
l encounter, though she seemed unconcerned with planning anything else they might do together. Nathan couldn’t understand it, but he knew better than to attempt explaining to Sarah that she was overreacting.

  As Nathan planned his every word with intense scrutiny, he wondered if Sarah was putting in even half the amount of effort into this conversation that he was.

  “Why can’t you tell me you love me?” she asked, her eyes bloodshot from the puke and rally session she’d engaged in an hour prior.

  “I don’t know what that word means to us yet,” he admitted. “You know these things don’t come easy for me. I can spend hours thinking about how to please you, and then the slightest mistake has you slamming the door right on my face.”

  Nathan didn’t mean to get nasty, but the reaction was natural. He’d heard his father engage in countless phone calls where he raised his voice to make his point. Sometimes brutal honesty was exactly what a person needed to hear.

  It wasn’t what Sarah needed to hear, though.

  “Nathan,” she said brokenly, “you know what saddens me more than anything else you’ve done this year?”

  “No,” he said, while trying to act as sympathetic as possible. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what would come next. With Sarah as drunk as she was, and known for exaggerating, Nathan couldn’t accurately gauge the severity of the situation. Perhaps because he didn’t particularly care much about the outcome. He was starting to lose patience.

  “You never asked me to stay this summer,” she said. “I told you I was leaving to go to Europe for three months and you didn’t even blink an eye. You didn’t care.”

  The smell of vodka and orange juice was almost as obvious as the melodrama filling Sarah’s every word. Nathan’s mind wandered to thoughts of the nice collection of House Hunter episodes that would be waiting for him on his TiVo when he arrived home the next morning. He liked his television viewing to be uninterrupted and uncorrupted by commercials.

  As he thought about this, his mind wandering, he remained calm, collected, and distant. His presentation in conflict was perhaps the greatest attribute he’d picked up from his father.

  “I do care,” he said somewhat absently. “I just want what’s best for you.”

  “Do you think we’re what’s best for me then?” This was presented as more of an accusation than a question.

  Nathan stared at the mess that was his girlfriend. Filled with a disdain for her current behavior, he started to relish the potential opportunity for an easy way out of this predicament. He thought about saying no. He hadn’t quite reached that conclusion, but his hesitation was too much for his intoxicated girlfriend.

  “I didn’t think so,” she said, voicing what he was thinking. Sarah rolled over to face the other direction in her bed.

  “I’m sorry,” Nathan muttered. It was all he could think to say. He wanted to get out of there, and find the joint his friend Griffin had undoubtedly prepared for their return trip home the following morning.

  Griffin was presumably asleep somewhere in the large house. He often had a tendency to show up at the right time, whenever Nathan seemed to need him. Nathan hoped he’d come bursting into the bedroom to end the awkwardness.

  As he headed for the door, she stopped him. “Wait, will you sleep here tonight?” she asked. “I don’t want anyone to know we broke up before I leave tomorrow.” She seemed to be making some sense for the first time. Selective cognizance did achieve its desired effect. Nathan decided to stay.

  Sarah pushed her duvet cover open, beckoning for her recent ex-boyfriend to join her for one last snuggle. He didn’t think she’d be beckoning him to join her for anything else considering what had transpired. Nathan, being a man of some principle, went to the closet to find a spare blanket and pillow.

  “I’ll sleep on the floor” he said.

  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.r />
  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.