Dean's Life

John

Dean's pov

Over coffee this morning, Dad told me about his plans to take Katie to Chuck E Cheese when she gets out of school so I got Cass to cover the second half of our shift solo, this way I can go with them and we'll take Drew too. The kid's have early dismissal today so they'll be done around 1pm. Sammy has a job interview so he politely declined our invitation. We've got about an hour until we have to pick them up so Dad and I are just chilling in the kitchen, shootin' the shit.

"Hey, your mother wants you to finish your homework before dinner tonight cuz she's gonna take you to Bobby's later to help him with some stuff," I told Alex, as soon as he walked through the side door, now home from school.

Ignoring me completely, he shoved past, purposely shoulder bumping me on his way out of the kitchen.

Grabbing his arm firmly before he was out of reach, I asked, "Did you hear me?"

Pulling out one earbud after ripping his arm from my grasp, he snapped, "Yeah I heard you, I'm not deaf."

"Then make sure you get it done," I reiterated.

"What?" he questioned rhetorically, knowing damn well what I was referring to.

"Your homework," I replied stoically. I'm trying not to lose my temper with this boy.

"Whatever. If she wanted me to do it so bad, why didn't she tell me herself?"

"Because she didn't want to text you while you were in class and she had to get back into the courtroom to do her job," I stated sternly, quickly losing my patience with my girlfriend's oldest son.

"What does Bobby want me to do anyways?" he sniped, sneering at me, defiantly displaying his rude flippant typical teenager persona.

"I don't know and it doesn't matter. Just get your homework done before we eat, like your mother asked," I responded through gritted teeth, as I felt my anger level rising, knowing my dad was harshly, yet silently judging my parenting skills through every word of this conversation. I have to give him credit though for keeping his mouth shut this long.

"Yeah, I don't see that happenin'. I got better things to do," Alex retorted, before grabbing two chocolate chip cookies off the counter and stuffing both of them in his brash mouth as he strode confidently out of the room.

Hands on my hips, I rolled my eyes and shook my head, silently requesting divine intervention to keep me from committing filicide as I raised my gaze towards the heavens.

"Why haven't you taken your belt to that boy's backside yet?" my dad asked.

I know he's not being facetious, he's dead serious.

"Dad, it's not that simple. He's not my kid, not at least til we're married anyway," I feebly offered up an explanation. Truth is, I can't even justify to myself not beating the boy's ass, but I can't let my dad know that. I'll never live it down and I'll sure as Hell never hear the end of it.

"Bullshit!" My father interjected, swiftly and loudly invalidating my argument. "I don't care whose kid he is, you shouldn't allow him to speak to you that way. By the time you and Sammy were that kid's age, you knew the sting of my belt quite well. Didn't you?"

"Dad..."

"No, don't feed me that line of crap, boy."

I just shook my head and sighed as I rubbed the back of my neck out of frustration. I love and respect my dad but he can be a real difficult pill to swallow sometimes.