The Bad Jokes #1: The Redhead

Chapter 19: Who To Choose?

***TW for gun violence***

In the four days since my father and Rixson had made an appearance, my father had really upped his game, relentless in his efforts to get me back. He was five years too late, though. Maybe before, when I'd still carried that little boy desperate for his father's love and approval inside of me, but five years ago, he'd killed that little boy when he'd walked out of my hospital room. Once I'd recovered, I'd walked out of the hospital and into a new phase of my life where the only person I had to please was myself.

It was so fucking freeing. I'd never realized just how much that desire for approval had been a weight around my neck. Every decision I'd made, every action I'd taken had been with the goal of gaining my father's notice or acceptance. Yet nothing I'd done had ever worked. After the accident, it was like my eyes had been opened or a switch had been flipped because I'd finally seen that my father's approval was meaningless if it had so many strings attached to it. I finally realized he should have just loved me because I was his son, not because I was the top student, the top athlete, the top what-the-fuck-ever. He'd never had time for me except to criticize everything about me and go along his way.

Now? Now he called me at least five times a day every day. He was getting angrier and angrier with each call, so I kept answering when he called.

Because it amused me to frustrate him. He wasn't used to not getting what he wanted, so fuck me, but I was enjoying the hell out of it.

To hear him losing it because he no longer had a son who was trying to be the perfect son, who no longer gave a shit about anything he had to say or threaten me with, was priceless after a lifetime of not good enough. Why keep beating your head against the wall your entire life? Why try to gain the approval of a toxic asshole just because he was, biologically, my father? In no other way had he been a father to me.

So I listened to him rant, I listened to him sputter, I listened to him rage. 

"You can't walk away from your family legacy like this! This company has been run by a Wright for generations! After all I've done for you --"

"Speaking of," I interrupted, "did you get the check for the Yale and Harvard education payment? Plus interest?"

"I don't want your fucking money!" he'd practically screamed. "I want you to start acting like a man and take your rightful place at the company! A Wright needs to be running the company."

"Fortunately, you have Rixson," I said. "I'm sure you've been training him. He'll do fine."

"He's not a Wright! He'll never have the head for business that you do, and even if he did, I would never hand over the reins of a family company to him. That's why you need to come back."

"Why now? Why are you contacting me now, after five years without a word?"

That had been bothering me. What was with him trying to draw me back into the family fold after he had fucking pushed me out of it so completely?

"Because I had a heart attack!" he shouted, frustration evident.

I knew I should feel something at that, but I didn't. Not one damn thing. "You should probably calm down then," I advised him. "So you don't have another one."

"I'll calm down when you tell me you'll come back and run the business."

"That's not going to be happening."

"I need someone to take over the business," he said. "And you're the only blood Wright there is. No one else can run it."

"You should have thought of that a long time ago," I told him. "You should have thought of that before you turned your back on me. You should have thought of that before you walked away from the only blood Wright you had, then."