Timmy doesn’t respond.
I exhale sharply. “Fine. I’ll be there in an hour.”
When I get to the beach where we agreed to meet, Timmy is nowhere to be found, and he’s not answering phone calls or text messages.
I call his dad, who sounds annoyingly chipper. “Well, great news Margaux! I was speaking with him earlier, and he told me he’s going to go work with Parker now. Really great he’s going to be making some money and contributing. He sounds really excited about it.”
I roll my eyes and use every grain of strength to not pull my hair out. “Phil! He getsdrunkwhen he works with Parker! Don’t you understand that?”
There’s a pause. “Oh, well no, I didn’t know that. That’s no good.”
“How did he get drunk this time, anyway?” I ask, my irritation barely contained. “He said you sent him money for alcohol.”
“Oh no,” Phil says, sounding confused. “He told me he needed money for soda.”
I’m livid, and I almost slam on the brakes. Like…what the fuck, dude?
“You… sent your almost forty-year-old son money for… soda?” My voice drips with disbelief.
“Yeah,” Phil replies. I can almost hear the shrug in his tone. “Well, I’ll give him a call and tell him to come and meet you at the truck.”
I shake my head. Blood pounds in my temples, and I hang up, seething.
I’m not sure what this guy is playing at.
And I’m also feeling quite outraged.
Because this ‘father’ is sending his grown son secret money while he knows a woman—me—is paying for the roof over his head and everything else in his life.
It feels like a double deception.
Surely, if his dad wants to contribute to his son’s life, he would send the money directly to the person paying his son’s rent, or he and his son would be transparent about this secret income.
What does his dad think—that I’m withholding soda from his son?
Make any of this make sense.
Given his son’s alcohol addiction, Phil’s not just making stupid decisions—the guy is literally playing with my life, placing his bet on a self-described man child who has demonstrated he’s very capable of killing me, especially while under the influence.
He’s enabling his son’s behavior while I’m footing the bill for everything else.
And now I’m stuck cleaning up the mess.
If his son hurts me, Phil carries a certain liability.
For the ‘man’ he created and continues to support without any sense of accountability.
I’m starting to think that maybe the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.
I eventually find Timmy, stumbling around and chatting up paramedics as they try to attend to someone. A beer can dangles from his hand.
“Timmy!” I call.
He waves goodbye to the paramedics and saunters over, hopping into the truck. “Hey, baby,” he says with a grin. “Thanks for coming to get me.”
“I was waiting for ages,” I reply, frustrated. “Why were you talking to the paramedics?”
“They wanted to chat with me,” he says breezily. “They were nice.”