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Brian sat alone in the spare room, glass of wine in hand. It had been a long time coming. The papers had been signed, everything was finalised - with a few other legal troubles that would have to be battled later. But right now, everything was official. Brian was divorced.
He still hadn’t found a house of his own, which did cause some issues (and certainly awkwardness) these days, but he was looking around with the money his newly ex -wife Penny had lent him to ‘just get out’. She was the one with the money, after all. The house was hers. The cars were hers. Even their son, according to the legal documents, was hers.
That hadn’t been much of a surprise. Especially after that one night, the night that hammered the last nail in the coffin. Both of them seemed to have had enough. Things were said and done, and they agreed to get a divorce. Though it was a bit less civil than it sounds.
Brian looked down at the wine glass in his hand, which was almost empty. He remembers drinking on the Last Night of the Proms, he always did. He hated the Proms. His wife's horrible sister and husband would get especially patriotic, not even having the common decency to sing the songs correctly, and he knew he'd have to sit there and bear it all. That night had been his son's first Last Night of the Proms, and would probably be his last Last Night of the Proms.
Most of the evening was a blur - he'd drank so much and woke up so hungover that he could scarcely remember half of it. He knew what he'd done, though. Everyone made sure to remind him. The bloodstains he hadn't quite managed to wash out of the wrinkles on his fingers made sure to remind him too.
Penny didn’t tell the Judge, of course. Nobody else knew what had happened - nobody that they knew of, anyway. They had gotten away with it. Well, technically only his father-in-law did, but the rest were witnesses, and all had a hand in clearing it up afterwards. Everybody was legally responsible. No, she had just made up other reasons, some true and some inflated for impact. Brian initially tried to fight but gave up upon realising that his son probably didn’t want to spend time with him anyway. He didn’t think he wanted to spend time with his mother either, come to think of it.
There was always a pang of guilt when he thought about that, though it was soon stamped out by an anger, which he would calm down by retreating into the spare room he’d been assigned, and drinking wine until he didn't have it in him to be angry anymore.
Speaking of wine, Brian had almost run out. With a groan, he slid off the bed and drained the last dregs from his glass as he slinked out the room and down the hall towards the stairs.
Penny was out at work. The house was empty, save for Oliver, who was probably in his room doing whatever it was 18-year-olds do. Nevertheless, he didn’t make too much noise on his way to the kitchen. He wasn’t one to talk to himself. He was a sulker.
Eventually he reached the kitchen and found it occupied. His son was standing there, slightly awkwardly, staring at an open fridge.
“Don’t leave it open.” Brian said, “The food will go off.”
Oliver turned around quickly, surprised by his father’s sudden appearance, and closed the fridge. “Sorry. There’s nothing to eat.”
Brian looked at him. “There’s a fridge full of food!”
“Yeah, but that’s... grown-up stuff. I don’t want to eat lettuce.”
“Maybe you should. It’s healthy.”
Oliver didn’t say anything. He continued opening and closing cupboards to no avail, making sure to stare into each of them for a few moments before he moved on to the next one. Brian filled his wine glass from a new bottle of wine and looked at his son once more. He sighed.
“Would you like me to cook something?”
With slight hesitation, Oliver looked up at Brian. Seemingly coming to a conclusion, he gave a small nod, which morphed into a shrug. “It depends what you want to cook.”
“Well, I’m cooking for you. What do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
Brian sighed, this time slightly exasperated. “We have some basil, nuts, cheese, oil and garlic. I can make you a pesto pasta.” It had been a while since he had made a homemade pesto, but he remembered well. It was a simple meal which was hard to completely ruin. In fact, he could probably produce a decent quality pesto even on a few glasses of wine.
Oliver gave him a small okay and Brian told him to sit down while he cooked.
The hob was turned on and the kettle boiled while the ingredients were gathered and prepared. There was not a lot of oil, but thankfully enough left. As he pulled the basil leaves from the stems he decided he’d make a bowl for himself - why not? Maybe he could take the opportunity to have a last gasp of bonding between him and his son who (and he knew it well) wasn’t going to speak to him once he left for university.
When he took the knife out of the block to cut the garlic and nuts, he hesitated slightly. It wasn’t the same blade, he knew. But he blinked hard anyway and continued.
The kettle clicked and bubbled and he poured the water into the pot on the hob, then tipped two bowls worth of farfalle into it. Then he took a smaller bowl out and began grinding the basil. Once it was a paste, he tipped in the rest of the ingredients, softening them with the oil as he continued grinding. By the time the pesto was finished, so was the pasta. He stirred it a few times and leant back on the counter for a moment, letting the pasta soften for a bit longer before he pulled out the colander from a bottom cabinet and strained the pasta in the sink.
Brian took the two same bowls he had measured with, and scooped it as evenly as he could, then stirred the pesto into both of them with a fork. He looked down at his work proudly, then took the bowls to the table where he found Oliver sat, looking at his phone, not acknowledging him as he put it down on the table.
“There you go. Eat it while it’s warm,” Brian said. No response. He clenched his jaw, but picked up his own fork and took a bite. Not terrible, but not his best. “It’s nice.” Still no response. Oliver continued to look down at his phone, clearly immersed in whatever it was he was typing.
For a few minutes, he didn’t press. He hoped that Oliver was just finishing something important and would soon turn his attention back to the meal he had just made for them, but after too long had passed he felt the irritation bubble inside of him.
“Your father has cooked you a meal ,” Brian said firmly with a slight hiss. The tone was familiar and made Oliver look up from his phone. “Are you going to eat it? Or do you want me to have wasted my time?”
His son looked at him anxiously, his posture slumping slightly as he muttered an apology and picked up his fork and slowly began eating. He saw Brian glancing between him and his phone in hand, his dark eyebrows pointed down in a scowl, and put it down beside the bowl.
They lapsed into silence once more, though this time it was far more unpleasant. Neither of them knew what to say. The atmosphere churned inside of Brian, twisting and writhing resentfully. He swallowed his most recent mouthful of pasta and put down his fork.
“So,” he said with a cough, “what were you doing on there that was so important?” He pointed to Oliver’s phone. Oliver looked down at it, then back up at his father.
“I don’t see why you’d want to know,” he replied, his face curling into an amused smile. It wasn’t an unkind expression at all, more confused if anything. It made Brian seethe. He pulled a sour expression and contemplated his words in his mouth, turning them over with his tongue as his face became impossibly sourer by the second.
Soon, he pounced for the phone. Thankfully for Oliver, he was quicker than his father, and swiped the phone away before his hand could fall over it. Brian made another reach for it, but Oliver stood up out of his chair and backed away. His father pulled himself off his front on the table and sat back down, glaring through his eyebrows.
“What the fuck?” Oliver yelped, still stepping back out of shock, catching his heel on his chair as he did and stumbled. Brian huffed and sat forward again.
“Maybe I’m curious as to what my son’s up to,” he snapped.
“So you, what, try and snatch my phone away? Like a three year old?”
Brian scoffed.
“You never tell me anything. Everything I know about you is from when you were twelve.”
“Because you do things like this! It’s not all about you, Dad. I’m starting to see why Mum wanted a divorce.”
Something inside Brian snapped. He felt the kettle in his chest boil over and hiss out his ears, bringing his palm down sharp against the table with a loud bang , rattling the bowls and cutlery. He stood up. His hand (still stinging) pointed harshly at him.
“How dare you speak to me like that! I am your father !”
“Act like it, then!” Oliver shouted back. Brian bristled with steel and exploded.
“Ohh, I try, Oliver. Lord knows I’ve tried. It’s not my fault every time I try and free myself of these shackles , your mother and her abhorrent family smack me back down. You’re the only good thing to come out of all this, but you’re always on that bloody mobile phone,” Brian added with a hiss, spitting through his teeth. “Can you not at least try ? I’ve cooked for you - what are you going to do when you're in university, eh? What will you do then? You can’t live on pot noodles for the rest of your life!”
To exhaust the rest of the pent-up energy, he stormed back over to the kitchen counter and poured more wine into the already quite full glass, and took a large swig. “And anyway, I did try and keep the marriage together. It’s your mother who gave up in the end.”
Oliver laughed calmly. “Do you really call sitting alone in your study drinking wine and watching Drag Race instead of talking to us ‘trying to keep the marriage together’? Mum was always bending over backwards to help me out through college - she said you were bending over forwards in the gym instead.”
Brian didn’t know there was anything left in him to snap, but it did. The fragments of his shattered composure snapped again and again. He scoffed with all of his chest.
“Just because I like looking at men all sweaty doesn’t mean I didn’t try! You have no idea!” he retorted, and then immediately realised what he said. Oliver looked at him, seemingly realising too. With a sigh, Brian picked up his wine glass once more and took an even larger swig than before and sat down heavily.
“What?” Oliver asked quietly. It wasn’t a question, he just wanted his Dad to confirm what he thought it meant.
“I thought I was attracted to your mother. I think she knew I didn’t have an interest in women before I did. Maybe she felt sorry for me,” he spat. He took one more sip of wine before he felt his face flush. In an attempt to stop himself crying he put his free hand over his eyes, but he couldn’t stop it. His head fell to the table and he began to weep.
It was a pathetic sight.
“I knew, too,” Oliver said after a moment.
Brian lifted his head up, his face twisted in a mix of despair and fury. His eyes were wet. “Great. Great! I’m glad everyone knows I like cock. I suppose your Auntie Dawn and Uncle Mick know too? Perhaps their dog has had in on the gossip as well?”
“It’s alright, Dad. Nobody hates you for it. Well, Mum was just a little miffed that she’d, um... her words, ‘wasted all those years’, but I don’t think she’s angry at you or anything. I don’t think Auntie Dawn is going to want you near Mick, though.”
“It’s lucky I’m never seeing that bitch again, then, isn’t it?”
Oliver stayed quiet. He put his phone in his pocket and sat back down at the table, still on edge.
“So... you are gay, then.”
“Yes!” Brian said sharply, and took another sip of wine. He coughed a sob and wiped his face aggressively with the heel of his palm.
There was a silence filled only with the occasional sniff or muffled sob, until Oliver spoke. “This isn’t going to make me dislike you any less, by the way. I think you know, but I’m not going to be coming back home for many visits once I’ve left for uni. I don’t like you very much because you’re not a very nice person. I feel like you love me, but you have a strange way of showing it and it makes you a bit unpleasant.” With a light laugh, he added; “The divorce will probably do you some good.”
Brian eventually sat up straight, his face still slightly pink and eyes bloodshot. “Yes,” he said, lifting the glass back up to his mouth, “I think so too.” Another swig, emptying the glass. “I’ve been looking at a house, recently came up for sale. Within budget, nearer to work. I’ll be gone soon.”
“I’ve found an apartment with some friends near uni. I’ll be gone soon, too.”
Brian nodded. They sat in silence. Oliver picked up his fork and began to eat the cold pasta, not even looking at his father as he ate.