My Baby, My Darling.

“Dexter, can I talk to you for a minute.” Annie said from in front of him and Dexter’s eyes moved to meet hers.

“About what.”

“I just…Look, please don’t hate me okay.” She spoke quickly, biting her lip in hesitation after the words left her mouth.

He raised his eyebrows. “What did you do?”

Someone cleared their throat behind me and Annie’s eyes dropped to the table. Dexter clenched his jaw and turned to look at the source of Annie’s sudden submission.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Dexter spat and my eyes followed his spiteful stare to an empty-eyed man in a dark suit.

“Hey, little bro.” Ben said, moving to sit down in the seat beside Annie.

Dexter looked at Annie. “You did this? You invited him here.”

“You two needed to talk. I’m sick of listening to both of you complain about how much of an asshole the other is.” Annie said and Dexter stood from his seat abruptly.

“Chelsea, we’re leaving.” Dexter said, not looking at me. Instead, his eyes were transfixed on Ben, who was staring just as intensely as Dexter. There was something going on, and I was the only one that had no idea what was happening. Annie cleared her throat in front of me and shook her head.

“Dexter. Sit down. Will you please just sit down?”

“Yeah, Dex. Will you just sit down, man?” Ben said, and I immediately regretted the words for him.

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do.” Dexter spat and customers around us turned their heads to look at him. “Where do you come off telling me to sit down?”

“Dexter-“ I started and Annie shook her head, silencing me. I bit my lip and watched Annie stand up and walk over to Dexter. She whispered something into his ear and I watched him steady his breathing and scan around the restaurant. Then his eyes moved down to me and his expression lightened. After Annie finished whispering, he cleared his throat and moved to sit back into his chair. Once he was situated, I felt his hand move to rest on my thigh. I placed my hand on top of his and he kept his gaze on Ben.

“Now that we’re all calm.” Annie started, sitting back into her chair. “We can talk like adults.”

Both were silent and she sent me a look as if to say, “See what I have to put up with?” I gave her a small smile and she looked at Ben, who was staring just as intently at Dexter as Dexter was him. And the resemblance between them was uncanny.

“Firstly, neither of you are going to speak until I say so. Is that clear?”

“What the fuck, Annie?” Dexter muttered and I squeezed his hand. I knew why Annie wanted me here. Dexter wouldn’t listen to Annie or Ben if I weren’t here. I could tell that she used me as some sort of anchor to keep everything civil. And I don’t know why, but I wanted to help her and play along. I don’t know much about what happened between them, all I knew was that they weren’t talking. And when Dexter mentioned this, I didn’t push him for further information, thinking he didn’t want to talk about it.

“Neither of you are going to speak until I’m finished talking.” She said again, glaring at her brothers. And that was the first time I saw how much authority she actually had. She had a natural presence about her that demanded obedience. Even though she was the youngest one here, she was calling the shots.

“Now, what happened at the court house. That was a complete misunderstanding on both parts. Both of you are at fault. Ben, you should have told Dexter exactly what mom’s money was used for. And Dexter, you should have listened to Ben instead of slamming him against a wall and threatening him in front of a shitload of witnesses.You two should have talked to each other instead of, you know, suing each other like children. Dad’s an asshole and he screwed you both over. Hell, he screwed me over, too. But that is what he does. He screws people over. That shouldn’t be news to you guys.” She looked between the two of them and Dexter looked impassive, no longer staring at Ben, but past Annie, like her words held little meaning to him. I looked over at Ben and he was fiddling with the cufflinks of his suit, like the conversation did not interest him at all.

“Mom gave us that money so we could start families without those stupid ties to Dad’s company. I’m sure she wanted us each to find some small suburban home in like Jersey or something where we’d all live on the same block and have white fences and all that stuff. She wanted us to be independent and that’s why she set up that fund. She did not set up that money so we would fight over it like this.”

“Ben. You taking that money was a shithead move. And the fact that you will literally never lend me a twenty when I ask you is also a shithead move, but that’s not the issue right now. The fact is, you were a greedy asshole, and that was sucky of you.”

“But Dexter, Ben did not use the money on his honeymoon. Rachel’s parents paid for their honeymoon. What Ben did with the money was much more stupid than that.” She narrowed her eyes at Ben and cleared her throat. “Ben, do you want to tell Dexter what you did with the money?”

“I know exactly what that fucker did with the money.” Dexter muttered and Annie narrowed her eyes at him.

“Are you going to let him talk?” She snapped and Dexter shrugged, rolling his eyes like a child.

“Fine. Whatever.”

“Ben.” She nudged his arm and Ben cleared his throat.

“Um. About a year ago, Dad made a really bad deal with some overseas company. He said it was a sure thing and that it was guaranteed to increase our revenue by 200%”

“Let me guess. It ended up being bullshit.” Dexter spat and I cleared my throat.

“It was.” Ben looked away from Dexter. “It ended up draining all of our assets and the company faced foreclosure. Foreclosure, Dexter. What was I supposed to do? Just let dad go bankrupt. He was about to lose the house. We grew up in that house.”

“Get to the point, Ben.” Annie said, urging him on with the story.

“I knew about Mom’s account. I knew how much money was in it. And I knew the conditions, that it could only be accessed if one of us had a child. We were each allotted about a quarter million, originally. But since I was mom’s legal heir to her accounts, it didn’t take much work for me to access all of it. I didn’t know about Lydia at first. I…I just did a lot of digging. I knew a guy from the Seattle office that lived in the same apartment building as Monica. Apparently, they dated a few times. When I came out to visit the Seattle offices, I ran into her there and that’s when I found out about your daughter. And I just figured, if I could pass off the kid as mine, then I could access all of the money and get dad out of his debt. And that’s what I did. Except, I didn’t think that Monica would risk coming back and telling you about the daughter. I didn’t think she’d have the nerve to-“

“So you were just going to keep Lydia a secret from me.”
“Dexter!” Annie hissed, but he ignored her.

“You knew I had a daughter and you were just going to pretend the whole thing never happened.”

Ben looked at Annie and she pulled her lips into a thin line, averting her gaze from him. This was one hole that she couldn’t dig him out of.

“Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know. I probably would have told you about it eventually, after I figured out a way to tell you guys about the bankruptcy.”

“What is with this family and their fucking secrets? The money and the scheming and the lies. Where do we draw the line, huh? And how far are you going to go to protect dad’s money?”

“I wasn’t protecting dad’s money.” Ben narrowed his eyes. “I was protecting the house we grew up in.”

“So you expect me to believe that everything you did was for me and Annie.”

“Almost everything I do is for you and Annie, Dexter.” Ben snapped, exhaling sharply.

Dexter let out something between a laugh and a scoff. “Yeah. Okay.”

“You don’t believe me.” Ben laughed sarcastically, unbuttoning the jacket of his suit. “Do you think I wanted to be dad’s fucking bitch for all those years. No, I didn’t. But someone had to. Dad didn’t give two shits about your college fund. I made your college fund. Did you ever think about the fact that you were the only intern at the hospital that had no student loans to pay off? Before I took control of Dad’s assets, you would have paid for college by waiting tables and shit.”

“And what about me.” Annie suddenly said, narrowing her eyes at Ben. “You didn’t set aside shit for my college. What, because Dexter’s the genius of the family and I’m the screw up, no college for Annie.”

“You had a college fund.” Ben said. “Dad used it to put you in rehab. Rehab which you basically blew off.”

Annie scoffed. “That place was a living hell, okay. Rehab is the whole reason I moved out when I turned 18.”

“Because that did you so much good, right? Now you work at a minimum wage paying CD shop.” Ben condescended and Dexter narrowed his eyes at him.

“Well, I’m sorry. Not everyone could go to college.” She retorted.

“You not being able to go to college and fucking up your life is not my fault, Annie.”

“You act like it was so easy! We can’t all be you, Ben.”

“All I’m saying is that it wouldn’t be as hard had you not spent all of Dad’s money on drugs and rehab.”

“You weren’t there.” Dexter snapped, his jaw clenched. “I don’t give a shit if you put aside money. You were never there. You do not get to criticize Annie for her choices when you weren’t there to witness what lead up to them. I was the one that sobered her up all those times, forced her to fill out job applications, drove her home when she called me in the middle of the night, drunk and high and half-dead. Don’t glorify yourself as the brother benefactor that could. You weren’t a brother at all. After mom died, you were never around. You had no idea what was going on, what we were going through. You didn’t do us any favors by saving that house because that house was not our home. It wasn’t. And if you didn’t completely bail after mom died, then you would know that.”

Dexter stood up and this time I found myself standing with him. “If you were half the brother you say you are, you would call your niece by her name: Lydia. And you’d be the uncle that like takes her out for ice cream after her ballet recital and shit like that. But no. You’re always just going to see her as a business opportunity. That’s how you measure the value of people and it’s fucked up.”

Dexter looked over at me as if to ask if I were ready to go and I nodded. He grabbed my hand and turned toward Annie. “You getting home okay?”

“Yeah.” She nodded, a feigned smile on her face. “Thanks.”

Dexter cleared his throat and nodded, his eyes moving to Ben before he led me past the table, guiding me out the doors of the Thai restaurant. It had stopped raining.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked once we were in the car and he looked over at me. His eyes were wide, as if he suddenly realized my existence. He didn’t say anything, he just looked at me. I could tell he was concentrated on something and I couldn’t tell what. I didn’t know if his thoughts were about what just happened or about me or maybe something completely unbeknownst to me.

“Yeah.” He nodded after what felt like an eternity. He still hadn’t started the car and I wondered why, but I didn’t say anything.

“Do you want me to drive?” I asked after a while and he smirked.

“No. No, I do not want that.” He said, referring to my adept driving skills.

“Okay.”

“I love you.” He blinked and I grinned.

“Okay.” I whispered and watched his expression falter slightly. He cleared his throat and nodded, forcing a tight smile as he started the car and pulled away from the curb.

When he pulled up to the Cafe, I asked if he wanted to come inside. I didn’t want him to be alone. He was unusually quiet the entire drive and I was afraid of what he would do if he drove off in the state he was in. Based on his track record, he would probably venture to some bar, get shit-faced, and call to ask me to come and get him at 4 in the morning.

“Sure.” He mumbled, “I’ll come up.”

The trek up the stairs and into my apartment was just as silent as the car ride. When we passed the kitchen, I noticed that there were still a few crew members left behind to close everything down. My door squeaked louder than usual when I pushed it open and I’m not sure if it was because the aura around us was entirely silent or there was something wrong with my door. Dexter didn’t notice it.

“Do you want me to cook some eggs?” I asked and Dexter’s eyes snapped to mine.

“We didn’t eat. Shit, I’m sorry.” He looked down at the counter.

“It’s fine.” I said, pulling a frying pan out of my dishwasher. “There were more important things going on.”

“No. It isn’t. We were supposed to be celebrating tonight.”

“And we are.” I smiled, mostly to make him feel better. The truth was, I didn’t care about whether we celebrated or not. I was just hungry.

“Everything is just so fucked.” Dexter said, not looking at me. I think the comment was more to himself than to me. “When did everything get so fucked up?”

I was quiet as I cracked eggs into the frying pan. The sound of the oil splattering against the eggs filled the silence in my apartment and I watched Dexter rack and re-rack his mind.

“My dad has no money. He’s broke.” He said after a long time.

“But he’s going to be fine, Dexter. You’re dad’s going to get through it.” I said, moving the now cooked eggs onto a plate.

“No. It’s terrible. I’m not worried about him. I’m…relieved. Is it bad that I’m relieved that he’s broke?”

“Um…”

“No. It’s terrible. I’m actually glad that he has no money. Now he knows what it’s like when money isn’t the center of his life. Now he has no choice but to realize what he’s lost. You know that he has bailed on every single Tuesday dinner for two months. He probably doesn’t even care.”

“Dexter.” I moved to stand in front of him.

“I’m an asshole.” He laughed, “I’m such an asshole for saying that.”

“I think that you have valid reasons to be angry.” I said, my hands moving to cup his face, forcing him to look at me. “You’re hurt. But I’m being completely honest when I say that you aren’t an asshole.”

He smirked, turning away from me. “That’s funny, because you’ve called me an asshole at least twice everyday since I’ve met you.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.” I said and he grinned, shaking his head.

“You say it all the time because I am. I am an ass.”

“Look at me.” I narrowed my eyes at him and he raised an eyebrow. “You. You do not deserve what’s dished out to you, okay. You deserve a family that looks out for you, not the other way around. You’re responsible for things that you should never be responsible for. It was your dad’s job to get Annie sober. It was Ben’s job to be there for you guys after your mom died. It was Ben’s job to tell you about Lydia as soon as he knew about her. You are not an inconsiderate asshole. You are just too considerate in saving everyone’s asses.”

His lips curved into a smile. “Nice play on words.”

“Thank you.” I said, moving to kiss his lips and spinning around to the plate of eggs on the counter.

“Hey, back in the car…” He cleared his throat, causing me to glance over at him.

“Yeah.”

“When I told you that I loved you,” He began, his brows furrowing in concentration. “I just…you know, are we okay?”

“Yeah.” I said, turning to give him my full attention. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

“Nevermind. Just forget about it.” He cleared his throat, turning and moving into the living room. I stuck two waffles into my toaster while I fried bacon slices on the stove. When I carried the plates of food into the living room, I found Dexter seated on the couch, flipping through the channels. He settled on some CSI show that I hadn’t seen before. I put both plates onto the coffee table and kicked my shoes off, tucking my feet under me as I sat onto the couch beside him. When I handed him the plate, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he just stared at it, like I’d given him a plate of lizard feet or something. I didn’t say anything, but just fixated my eyes onto the television and nibbled on a piece of bacon. After a while, I felt his eyes burning a whole into the side of my face.

“What?” I said, my mouth full of chocolate chip waffle.

“Move in with me.”

I choked, bits and pieces of waffle fighting their way back up my esophagus. “What?”