good enough for me. I just wish she had told me. I have so much to make up for, son."
"Hold up there, buddy. Don't be calling me son yet," I said.
"Of course. Let's go to the hospital. My soon-to-be stepdaughter is a resident physician at Santa Monica General. She can help expedite a DNA test. After that, we can figure out what to do from there."
"All right then," I said.
I still wanted to punch the guy, but he was being so decent about everything. I guess the only thing that was left to do was go to the hospital and get the DNA test.
I didn't really know what else I wanted from him except to punch him in the face. I hadn't thought that far ahead. I looked around his place. All of a sudden, I had a possible father who was some kind of fucking billionaire. That came out of left field.
I would have been happy to live my life fighting, fucking, and drinking. At the end of the day, that's all that I ever really wanted. Now I was standing in the lap of luxury with a man who was calling me son. I didn't really know what to think of any of it.
What I should have done was just get the fuck out of there. I didn’t know this guy. He didn't know me. I didn't know if I wanted him to be any part of my life. But I knew at the back of my mind that my mom would want me to go get the test. She'd want me to know my father now that we were standing face-to-face.
I didn't really understand why she never told the guy about me. Maybe she’d just been hurt that he had rejected her. My mom was a sensitive woman. She could only take so much bullshit before she ran and hid.
I was thinking that was probably the reason she'd never told either of us. I didn't blame her. She'd been way too good a mom all those years, all by herself, to ever blame her for anything.
I honored her decisions to the end. But now, I felt her sitting on my shoulder telling me, “Crash, you go with your father and find out for sure. This is a missing part of your life. Maybe it will fill that empty hole inside you that you're always trying to fill with your fights and your booze and your women.”
"All right, fine, let's do this.”
"We can drive down there in my Ferrari," he said, smiling at me for the first time.
He gave me a gleaming white grin that reminded me of myself. He thought the Ferrari would impress me. Well, maybe it would. We went outside and walked down the line of sports cars, Humvees, and motorcycles under an overhang that allowed for his collection to be showed off.
He opened the front door of the Ferrari and stood there looking at me with a grin on his face. All of a sudden, he threw the keys to me, and I caught them.
"You drive, son," he said.
"I told you man, don't call me son," I said, stepping towards the driver’s seat of the Ferrari. Don must have really loved my mom to believe her word about my paternity so unconditionally.
"All right, we’ll give it time."
He went around the passenger’s side, and we both buckled up. I slid the key into the ignition and turned over the motor. She purred like a baby. I wanted to slam this bitch into action.
I peeled out of his driveway, ripped around the turn, and sped up the driveway to the road. Don was looking over at me like he was some kind of proud daddy at his son's first football game or some shit.
He started giving me directions to the hospital, and I followed them all the way there. I sped into the parking lot, screeched into a spot, and shut off the motor. Damn. That was fucking awesome. I wasn’t going to tell him that, though.
"Did you like it?" he said knowingly. Of course I fucking liked it.
"It was okay," I said.
I followed him through the parking lot and into the front door of the hospital. The smell of antiseptic cleaners hit my nose, and I instantly wanted to escape. It just reminded me of what my mother had just been through.
"This way," he grunted, waving me down a hallway.
I followed him to a nurses’ station. The nurse looked up at him and smiled.
"I'm looking for a
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