Chapter 25

In my stepmother’s heartfelt gaze, in my brother’s puzzled grimace, in my father’s disappointed scowl, I had finally seen who I was.

I lived in paradise. I was wanted, loved, and adored everywhere I went. I surrounded myself with family and willing concubines. I had a roller coaster and waterslides. I had had blowjobs on both. Dakota had nearly drowned when we had finally hit the pool.

I was rich. No, I was wealthy. Successful, more capable than I had any right to have ever been.

“Olivia go sit at the bar.” I said. Dad nodded. My stepmother’s hands only left me when her arms couldn’t stretch back to reach. The fight, the fire, the familiarity I had seen in her eyes too many times was nowhere to be found.

“What the fuck?” Larry stuffed himself into his shorts and walked towards the gazebo Dad and me stood on.

“What did you think was going to happen?” I snarled sharply.

“I thought--”

“He’s not talking to you, Lawrence.” Dad put his hand on my shoulder. “What did you think was going to happen?”

I realized that he must’ve been right.

“She’s My Valkyrie.” I let Dad push me to the bar. I sat on the bench as Olivia slid closer. Dakota poured me a beer.

“I don’t have to take Charlie. I don’t have to start with six. I could hold off and stretch it out. It’s just, I’m--”

“So? He chose Shani. Lar’s got our taste. He’s going to pick the best.” I accused.

“Aw, I’m the best?” My Valkyrie piped up. Charlotte, just Charlotte now, JUST CHARLOTTE NOW.

“Don’t break glasses.” Dad sniped at me. I looked down. I spilled a lot of the beer when I had pounded the counter. The beer on my hand was hardly cold. If I wanted a real cold beer I had to go to The Strip.

“Look man, I need to know.” Larry sat down and flicked my forehead. Olivia struggled to look upset that I was being disrespected. What did I do to her? She just fucking slapped me! A slap I straight up needed. Larry flicked my head again. “Are we brothers? Are we family? Or should I just fuck off and start my own sex paradise?”

“Goddammit Larry! Look at Livvie!” Dad growled. Larry pulled back and looked sheepish. Dad looked at me. “Can she be fixed?”

“She’d boil out of it eventually on her own. Those paths in her brain are still there they just got detour signs on ‘em now.” I frowned at her. “Don’t hold shit back from Dad. He’s Dad. She’s Mom.”

“I’m whatever you need, Brian.” She promised.

“Don’t hold what back?” Larry scowled. “There’s not actually two Brians is there?”

“Thoughts are like ruts. You keep going down the same path and it’s easy to get your wheel stuck, to follow along.” I said.

“So those good ruts are there? Yet if she keeps this bimbo shit up, by the time I have my Livvie back, she’ll fall into fawning sycophant over and over again?” Dad understood. “What can you do for her now?”

I needed a scalpel and meticulous patience. I had used a sledgehammer and a temper. “It was his temper but my inability to give up anything.”

I turned on my stool. I could see the heights of the roller coaster, behind the fuck rooms, up the hill and over the trees. “It was your temper. You don’t get to offload your bad thoughts onto someone else’s shoulders. You have to own your brain, and every thought that comes out of it.”

“Thanks, Lar.” I said. The girls were gathered around, confused, waiting, and watching. “Do they know?”

“Do we know what?” Bethany asked. She elbowed the Vietnamese girl on her left but Anh shrugged.

“Dakota does.” Larry gestured. “She was on board.”

“Oh? Yeah, totally.” Dakota said. “I kinda thought, it’d be half a year here and then off to a boring normal life. I’m all in on being a mistress.”

“Us? Mistresses?” The girls looked back and forth. Anh lit up. Bethany was more than a little shocked. Charlotte frowned.

“I can handle them.” Larry said. “We handle everyone. It just takes a little. There’s no need to bring out the big guns.”

I grabbed Olivia’s jaw and pulled her eyes to me. It didn’t take eye contact to push. It helped me focus. Her perfectly straight teeth shone in her broad smile. Her dark eyes beamed like a loving puppy but they failed to show her personality. I wanted to feel struck looking at this woman. She was striking. She was so beautiful. She was undisputedly the ugliest woman on the island.

“Do you have a game plan? Will I get my wife back?” Dad demanded. There was another question, it shuddered to a halt on his dry angry tongue. Did I just rob my child of a mother? Dad had lost a wife already. I had lost my mother. I pulled back.

“She had hit me.” I sounded disgusted. I wanted to be clinical. I was disgusted with the clinical side of myself. Dad snarled. If he was a violent man, he’d--No, but maybe I was just too terrifying. He spilled his mai tai. He told Dakota not to pour him a second.

She was controlling me!

It took everything to throw the thoughts around the wrestling arena inside my head.

No, she was expecting better of me. Demanding better. I can give her better. She’s not a six month contract worker. She’s family.

How would she know what’s best for me? She wants her family, her way. She fought joining Rena, Shani, Amanda, and the twins until she had a handle on me. It was only right that I showed her who’s choice it really was.

Yeah, that’s when Olivia was all of her.

“I’m going to fix her.” I said. I looked over the girls surrounding us. If it wasn’t for the whiteins, for letting my shit get in the way, none of them would still be here. They looked amongst each other. I looked to Larry. “They’re yours, man. They’re all yours. Hell, only yours.”

“Serious? I never thought it’d get that far.”

“Except, if you want brides to have only been for you, you’ll just take your pick of the incoming girls.”

“Brian!” Dad interjected. “Is he making the decisions or are you making his decisions?”

“I don’t run Tannerpharm. I don’t run Fuck Island. I own them.” I said. I took a deep breath and stroked Olivia’s face. She was empty now, love and affection all that remained. She’d need someone to give her life meaning, direction, structure. If she could do that for herself, then when I came to her for love and affection, that’s what I would get. I didn’t want that responsibility, that control, that effort. I needed to put the upkeep of being alive, of being human, of being Olivia back into her hands.

It wasn’t the best reason to do the right thing. It was the reason I could agree on. I ground my teeth.

I held her ears. She touched our foreheads together. I had to push her back, get her eyes at a comfortable focused distance. She rubbed my hands.

“Dad, hold her hands. Larry, keep her shoulders down.”

“OK, but...” Larry looked around. He stood up and held Olivia down on her stool. He looked at me. “If I don’t have to take you sloppy seconds ... I mean, it sucks that this could’ve been avoided all together.”

“Are we not good enough anymore?” Bethany feared. “I’ll--”

“Everyone shut the fuck up.” I snarled. There was quiet. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I hadn’t even pushed for that but only Dad was able to open his mouth at the moment. He laced his fingers with Olivia’s and put them on her stomach.

I didn’t travel into her mind. There was no white space and our avatars there to sort things out. I was in her brain, but no more than I went into my mind to find the other paths, follow the other tracks, think the other thoughts. It was nature. It was thought.

I imagined the process as tearing down detour signs in her mind. Setting them up had been second nature. Finding them, pulling them away, was excruciatingly precise. I felt like I was inches away from finding clumps of brain and yanking the whole thing open.

How bad could this go? Could I make her a vegetable? Give her a stroke? I started shaking. I tried to focus on the variations of her irises. I didn’t breathe evenly.

“Garth, let me hold him.” She said. Dad let go and her hands came up to my face. I calmed in the coolness of her fingers. I pushed. I tore down. I cleared the path. “Brian, I’m going to slap you again.”

“What?” The crack jarred me. This wasn’t quick. The strike wasn’t hot with anger. It was louder than the shock of it. I fell in that rut again. It was all I could do to pull myself out and follow another instinct. Another thought.

“You need to do to yourself what you did to me in anger.” She said. “You can let go of my shoulders now Larry.”

I turned. She rubbed my shoulder. Dad yanked her into a tight and fierce hug. Larry sat down next to me.

“Thirty eight.” He said to me. I rocked my shoulders back and Dakota put new beers in front of us.

“Fuck, you are an old bastard. Happy Birthday.” I raised my glass and he clinked it.

“It’s not September, jackass.” He shook his head and we drank. Dad put his hands on my shoulder.

“Come find us when you put up those blocks. You have to be who you choose to be, Brian.” He squeezed Larry’s shoulder too. “Same to you, Larry.”

“Goddammit.” My brother said. I turned. I caught Olivia’s eye.

“Yeah, I didn’t get to choose who the father was.” Olivia gave me a flat stare. “But you know who I want for the dad.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. They left. Hand in hand. It was sweet. He made her happy. I don’t think I had put her back together without cracks. I leaned back against the bar. Larry spun around as well.

“Look at what the fuck I did.” I waved.

“No, you said it yourself. It’s what you own. You didn’t do shit, you just found the best people to steal it from.”

“Amanda.” I nodded. My beer was gone already. Larry handed me a replacement. The girls around were still shut up. I hadn’t even felt pushing Larry, Olivia, and Dad back to freedom. “My adolescent fantasy was the end result of her life’s work.”