Cold Hearted Bastard

Chapter 3

I idly tried to change my train of thoughts from that salsa incident as I drove home. The grocery manager ended up having to come out of his office a few minutes after the same grocery lady had walked in and most probably explained the situation to him. It was the icing on top of the cake as I waited for them to tally the broken bottles' worth. The line had kept on growing behind me, annoyance all over the faces of the persons waiting to cash out. I kept mumbling sorry to them or myself who knew. That situation had cost one hundred dollars more than I was planning to spend. Yeah, dad was going to be annoyed when he saw the credit card statement.

The familiar buildings of the town that I knew and loved were coming into my view. Coffee shops, when I was fourteen that I would spend hours at. Mr. Jones' paint shack where I had my first sip and paint for my sixteenth. Of course, the sipping consisted of non-alcoholic beverages, but one of my friends that I grew up with since the age of five, Chase, had snuck the good stuff when the adults hadn't been looking. Chesterbrook was a small quaint town with maybe a little over four thousand inhabitants. It was hard not to know the faces of almost everyone. It was one of those places where everyone was so close. Everyone knew about you and your business before you did. I had a love-hate relationship with that small detail.

The main town faded in the background as I made my way through the winding road. Pine trees on either side of the road in my view. I turned into the hidden side street on the left and drove up the deserted road until I reached a massive white gate. It swung open revealing the long driveway towards the rustic mansion on top of the estate I'd known and loved my whole life. I didn't realize how much I'd miss it when I decided to get an apartment off-campus for the semester. The first year I did the whole commute back and forth to school. But that had been an hour each way and by the time I got home on an evening, I had little time to relax and unwind before I had to sleep, wake up and repeat. It was too taxing. So the best option for me was to live there. I wouldn't have minded it much but the lack of friends and me missing home sometimes sent waves of depression each day I was stuck there alone.

"Dad? Meredith?" I shouted while unpacking the white plastic bags that took me several trips to and from the garage. I jumped, as something furry scurried across my feet.

"Hey Spinks," I said, as I patted our 8-year-old cat. She was a grumpy old thing, but she was obsessed with me and me alone. She had been the only thing that made me miss home.

The house was as expected, pristinely clean and stark when I had arrived. Thanks to my dad being a big shot surgeon, he had OCD about keeping everything sanitized. Every morning he would start his day with those yellow rubber gloves that people use to wash dishes and clean the entire ground floor. He refused to hire more than one housekeeper and our house was too big for one person to clean. So every morning he would clean downstairs and Mable would clean upstairs. I honestly think he was better at cleaning than her even though that's what she had been hired to do.

"That damn cat has been giving me allergies all morning," Meredith entered the kitchen, rubbing her red, blotchy nose, "Did you get the stuff for me?"

"It's all here," I said, motioning at the kitchen counter.

"Wait what happened to you?" Her perfectly waxed eyebrow raised as she surveyed my torso.

"I had a salsa fight."

She seemed to ponder on that for all five seconds before changing the subject. "I need you to be ready for five, my brother's coming to stay with us for a little while."

"You have a brother?"

She rolled her eyes, "yes Wynter, I told you this several times. He's going to be in town for a few days. He has...a few things to work out."