Six

DANIEL Addas




These days keeping up with my long list of fuck buddies is not easy. Keeping up with the lies I tell is damn near impossible. Clara branded me a compulsive liar. A title I somewhat own. I lie a lot. Often tell people exactly what they need to hear. Lying with a straight face is as natural as breathing. At least for me. It's truly a freeing way to live.
I watch my perfect sister maneuver the conversation with ease. Or maybe I'm reading the situation wrong. I'm not good with reading people anyway. Let alone Clara. She's an allure. A mystery. She's so one dimensional. So perfect that I sometimes (which is quite often) think Clara presents the world only five percent of her personality. Like if I open her chest, her head, I'd stumble on something sinister. A monster. Something very unlikeable. Pure evil.
But that's just me. I always think the worst of everybody.
Clara is a magnet for all things holy, and good and sweet. She's the complete opposite of me.
Clara tilts her head back and laughs. Her bald head catches the glimpse of the sun and I notice how... bald it actually is. As though she was born without a single strand. She suffers from a great case of Trichophobia, that's why I'm clean shaven and I keep my hair locked in a baseball cap when she's around. Papa though is as hairy as a Tarantulas spider.
A girl walks by and smiles. I return her flirt but mine is timid. She drunk texted me once. Told me the reason she gave me her Virginity was because she loved me. I blocked her whiny ass seconds later. I bang her once and she suddenly views me as husband material? Hell no.
I'm no longer interested in the few girls I haven't slept with. I've realised the best way to cure my bizarre sexual promiscuousness is to scout naive women online. We all know that type: waiting for a fairytale, Prince charming, knight in shining armour. The romance novel bullshit. That's why for the past three months I've been going by the name John O'Connor. Prior to that, I was Mike Lorenzo and before that I was Braun James. It's so easy to get a new identity on online dating sites.
As John I had a girlfriend, Wendy Sherman. I thought she was in love with me until she just... stopped calling and I never heard from her again. I thought she was done with a guy that refused to put her first. That she'd finally seen her value. That she'd found someone better. Someone that deserved a girl like her. Someone who would take lazy strolls along the beach with her, candlelit dinners, stollen kisses in the rain. That sort of vanilla romance novel crap.
Until five months ago when she appeared on the news. My beautiful Wendy. (I may or may not have cared about her. But I definitely wasn't in love). Apparently she had been murdered and buried in an abandoned warehouse ten miles from here. Her murder is still an on going investigation. Thank Goodness the police have no way of tracing John. Papa would kill me, literally, if I brought our family under journalists scrutiny.
That's why I'm waltzing far away from dating sites. I told Amber from biology I'd see her tonight, or tomorrow or was the appointment for last night? I think I need a diary and a PA in order to stay on top of things.
I still have to cancel on Zane. Suzie, the chick with a fine ass from down the street, invited me over tonight. And I'd be a fool to let this kind of opportunity slip through my fingers.
There has always been a string of 'friends-with-benefits' with beautiful girls but I always ghost the second they try to make the friendship of sorts a cuddle-on-the-couch-watching-The-Game-of-Thrones kind.
I've never been good with woman, neither good to them. It's not by choice. No, really. My mother clocked out of her motherly duties and left us to deal with dad alone. I felt safe with her. Just being near her gave me a measure of comfort. I felt secure and... and... Protected. Something I never feel when I'm with my dad. It's so uncomfortable when I have to sit through dinner with his pretentious friends and pretend we have the banter-over-a-soccer game father-son kind of relationship. He calls me Kid for christ' sake. I just can't forgive him for alienating Mama. He might not have kicked her out but no sane woman could stand being a punching bag. That's why I faked a running stomach last summer.
Clara and I are usually forced to spend summer vacation in Hawaii with Papa and his 'lady friend', Beatrice. She's a shrink that Clara sees weekly. Plus I can't stand Aunty Beatrice's pink dressed guinea pig. That god awful pig would serve a much better purpose on the grill. I wouldn't bother calling her Aunt if she wasn't well over sixty. People with time ravaged skin make me nervous. Her blood-speckled eyes seem to lazer in on me as though I am an unpleasant character. Much like my father's. Maybe they do make a great couple.
"Yoh, Dan, you okay, man?" My boy Nathan asks me.
I frown at him. Men shouldn't ask other men of they're okay. "Yeah, sure, bro."
"Is that Armani?" He points at my purple shirt. Awed and shit. He always wears clothes from the department store. I'd never. "Man!"
I smile. Now this is a much more manly talk. "Yeah... Wiped the old man clean last weekend."
Purple reminds Papa of my mother. The worst thing my mother did after cleaning out my sister and I's college funds was leave Papa for another woman who wears only purple t-shirts. At least that's what I like to think happened. Which I know didn't. It doesn't hurt to fantasize she's not dead. That she simply... eloped.
She didn't.
Papa is playing mind tricks with us. The woman Clara and I just saw wasn't Mama. She'd never try to kill me.
I refuse to believe that Mama disappeared without a trace. She's out there somewhere. She's not dead. I lie to myself. Everyday. A wandering mother hurts less than a dead mother. I don't know why. Maybe it's her love for the ocean or maybe its my imagination running too wild.