Letting Go...

Chapter 3

   I walked into my house and slid my bag off my shoulder, calling out to my mom.

   “Hey, sweetheart! How was the first day back?” She asked with a smile, her matching hazel eyes meeting mine.

   Me and my mom were surprisingly similar, while my father and I were polar opposites, in every possible sense of the word. I hated my father, while I adored my mother. I had her chocolate waves and easygoing smile, along with her contagious optimistic attitude. She gave me and my brother all the best traits and our father gave us the ones that he thought would help for our “survival.”

   Mr. Damian Maxwell, owner of Maxwell Housing, a renowned company that owned more than sixty-percent of the countries apartment buildings. My father had built the company from the ground up, starting with one apartment building then over time doubling that, then tripling, to now multiplying by  hundreds.

   My father was a cold man who never spent quality time, or any time really with his family.We occasionally saw each other for dinner but mainly he kept in his office all day and if not then he was at one of his realtor buildings. It was rumored, mainly by my mother, that he wasn’t always such a statue, that once upon a time he laughed and cracked jokes. Now we’re lucky if he even cracks the door open.

   He drilled into the minds of my older brother and I that you must live a no nonsense life and keep focused on being successful and rich. Now I know it doesn’t sound so bad, that all parents want their kids to be someone important and able to provide for themselves, but my father took it to a whole other level. He believed that everything that didn’t correspond to work was nonsense and a frivolity. If it didn’t make you rich it wasn’t worth the time.

   My brother and I never had a normal birthday party, but instead went to a fancy dinner with our parents and some of our father’s business associates. As a child we never did extracurriculars or sports because father believed that doing so would distract us from what was really important. It wasn’t until high school that he began to give us the benefit of the doubt and I have my brother, Noah, to thank for that.

   Noah, now twenty-two years old and enrolled in Stanford University, fought with our father constantly as a teenager and now they barely spoke. Noah had the dream of being an architect, he was getting his degree in engineering, and our father thought is was a waste of time and money to go to college to become a “construction worker”.

   He was a bit of an ass about it.

   Noah set up all of the future opportunities for me. He got father to let me go out with friends, join the football team, and have a girlfriend. Of course my girlfriend had to have been bred from the same fine roots as I. Noah never got to experience any of this in his teen years but he made damn sure that I did.

   Noah and I were as thick as thieves, next to Greg he was my best friend. We spoke every couple of weeks and he visited as often as he could, and sometimes I would make the trip to Massachusetts instead. He told me it was a nice change of scenery and that he was happy not to have so many rules and regulations thrust upon him.

   I could sure as hell understand that.

   “You know, it was actually quite great. I’m even excited to go back tomorrow!” I laughed, thinking about how fun today had been. Bothering Charlize was an ebullient way to pass the time and I could see why Greg liked doing it to everyone else. Though I doubted that anyone reacted the way that she did.

   After English, Greg and I had football practice and today we were running laps on the field. There was a gym class also out and high and by, guess who was there, sitting on the bleachers looking as miserable as physically possible. She had gym last period and I considered that as us having four classes together.