Phineas

Phineas~

I listened to my father’s voicemail, then quickly deleted it. He still liked to believe that he could tell me what to do because his last name was so powerful, but I stopped letting the man tell me what to do when I cashed my first check from snowboarding.

Phineas Moore the Second owned Moore Industries, and he had enough money to be golfing buddies with kings and diplomats all around the world. My father dealt in renewable resources, but he’d never been in it to change the world. Phineas Moore was as ruthless as they came, and I couldn’t recall a time when he’d ever apologized for it, not even when my mother had passed on.

Much to my father’s dismay, my mother, Rita Moore, hadn’t fallen into the role of trophy wife quite like he would have liked. Though my memories of her were few, what I could remember was that of a loving, kind, attentive mother. Every picture that I had of her or of us together, she’d been just as happy or as dirty as I’d been. Beautiful in every way, I could remember feeling safe with her. I could also remember being a devastated six-year-old when she’d been taken from me. A drunk driver had run a stop sign and had changed my life forever.

Now, while I’d been trying to understand it all, trying to understand why my mother was never coming back, my father had already been scouting for his next wife, and he’d found her. Not a year later, my father had married Candy Swartzman, and I’d been left to the housekeepers, maids, cooks, and gardeners to raise. Then, at the ripe old age of thirteen, Candy had gotten pregnant, and I’d been sent off to boarding school, my father pretty much washing his hands of me.

Now the upside to being raised by the help was that I’d learned quite a bit of life lessons from them. I had also learned how to speak German, Spanish, Japanese, and Italian, giving me a weird kind of accent that didn’t really exist anywhere else in the world. Though I sounded fluent when speaking any of those languages, my English had been bastardized, but I didn’t mind. Growing up the way that I’d had, I liked having something that was all mine, and my dialect was definitely something that was all mine. Well, that along with any mental or emotional issues that Phineas had plagued me with.

In hindsight, him shipping me off to boarding school had ended up being the best thing to ever happen to me. He’d sent me to Candlestone Preparatory Academy in Maine, and that’s when I had fallen in love with snowboarding. It had started out as just something to do, but then had quickly turned into my only passion in life. Well, apart from the female species. My teenage years had been eventful ones, considering that Candlestone had been co-ed and there’d been lots of girls that had been mad at their parents for shipping them off to the middle of nowhere. Nothing was wilder than a teenage girl pissed off at her parents, and my teenage dick had never been so grateful.

At any rate, my teenage hormones aside, snowboarding had ended up taking over my life, and my natural skill had turned me into one of the best around. Of course, my father hadn’t wanted to hear any of it, so I’d done the whole college thing, though I’d done it as more of a backup plan for my life than to satisfy my father. After all, Candy had given him two additional sons to take over the family business one day, so he hadn’t needed my compliance as much as he’d had before.

“You better make this right, Phineas.”

Despite him being an awful parent, and his current wife being a gold-digging nincompoop, I liked my younger brothers. After all, it wasn’t their fault that Phineas had left me with the hired help while they’d been half-assed raised by the mother that they still had. Yeah, if given the choice, Candy would rather be shopping than raising my brothers, but she was still around, and that was more than I could say for my father. It was also no secret that he cheated on her like STDs didn’t exist, but as long as Candy had access to his bank accounts, she really didn’t seem to care, and for the most part, neither did I.

However, Candy and Phineas had chosen not to send their sons off to boarding school, so they were subjected to any gossip that went around about their parents, and I hated that for them. I also didn’t want them thinking that cheating on your wife was the acceptable thing to do. As far as I knew, Phineas had been faithful to my mother, but I’d been six when she had passed, so what could I really know about their marriage?

Now, while I had no problem with spreading the love around if you were single, I believed in loyalty if you weren’t. Granted, with my track record and reputation, no one would believe that I felt that way, but I did. Despite my father’s marriage, I believed in commitment. Or maybe it was in spite of it. I just knew that I’d never want a marriage like my father’s, and I definitely had no desire to follow in his footsteps, business or otherwise.

So, regardless of how I’d been not raised, I didn’t resent my younger siblings or have a strained relationship with them. Like most teenagers, they thought it was cool that I was a professional snowboarder, and they bragged about that fact every chance that they got. There was only one thing that annoyed me about them, and that was their names. Candy, being the flighty bimbo that she was, she’d chosen to name them Cotter and Cutter, and my father hadn’t cared since he’d already gotten his Phineas Moore the Third with me.

“You better make this right, Phineas.”

The twins went to Seeland Prep Academy in Quince, Virginia, and I’d always done my best to see them before the new school year started. However, this year, instead of making time for them like a good older brother, I’d gone to Ripley’s cabin for Roark’s annual friendship reunion, and I seriously would have been better off visiting my brothers.

Two years ago, Ripley had gotten himself into a fine bit of a pickle with Junie Baylor, and as his best friend, I’d gone to give him some moral support. Though Roark had been there, Roark was a bit of an enigma with his views on women, so it hadn’t been shocking to anyone that he’d been on Junie’s side. So, in an attempt to keep Ripley from screwing the pooch, I’d gone to offer my help like the good man and friend that I was.

However, my good intentions had definitely paved the road to Hell when I’d met Sheridan Gates that weekend. Used to beautiful women, it hadn’t been her stunning looks that had rendered me stupid upon meeting her, it’d been all that attitude that’d been packed inside her tiny five-foot-one frame.

At any rate, we’d ended up in bed together, and while I’d been falling in love, she’d been just using me for a good time, and karma really was an unfeeling bitch when she finally made an appearance. I’d spent all of my life insisting on one-night stands only, not eager to settle down or have random children scattered about, and the one time that I’d wanted more, Sheridan had gone about her business on our last day at the cabin, not even asking for my number. She’d given me the cold shoulder on our final morning together, and short of causing a scene, I’d had no choice but to let her go.

The following year, I hadn’t been able to invite myself because Candy and my father had chosen to attend some foreign diplomat’s daughter’s wedding, instead of getting my brothers ready for school, leaving me to take care of all their parental obligations. At the time, I hadn’t minded much. That year had been a brutal one with all the up-and-coming snowboarding talent, so I had entered more competitions than I normally did. As a result, I hadn’t seen my brothers much that year, so it’d been easy to choose them over visiting the cabin, though I’d made it up for the day to see Ripley finally propose to Junie.

So, with Sheridan having given me the cold shoulder last year, I had invited myself this year to finally ask her what the fuck was her problem, but I hadn’t gotten that far. My purpose had been cut short upon hearing her prattle on and on about her new boyfriend and what a gem he was. For the first time in my life, I had experienced my first heartbreak, and I still hadn’t recovered.

When my phone chimed on the couch next to me, I almost didn’t look at it. It was probably just my father, demanding that I go see my brothers since I hadn’t seen them off to school this year.

The fucker.

Nonetheless, knowing that it could still be someone else, I grabbed it to see who it was.

Cutter: R homeroom teacher is (fire emoji) (smiley emoji)

Despite my father putting me in a sour mood, I laughed. If I had to describe my brothers, it’d be Cutter setting the fire while Cotter planned their escape.

Me: If she’s ur teacher, then she’s 2 old 4 u

Cutter: That doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate her from afar

Me: I’m coming 2 visit u next week, so stay out of trouble

Cutter: Sweet. The girls will b all over us

I laughed again, remembering what it was like to be young and dumb. Nowadays, even though I was still at the top of my game, my head was a fuck of a mess thanks to a woman that I couldn’t have.