Sheila brought me some ice cream and woke me up. I remembered some pictures of her and the waiter, and some of her naked boobs later on from last night. "Thanks", I said grudgingly. I had kind of wished someone else would have come for me, I do not know who. Maybe dad?

"Are you feeling better?"

I took a few hard breaths and a bite of that ice cream. "I could do with some heroin", I smiled wryly. She smiled back, I wondered if anyone had ever fallen for those fake cheeks. Oh right, I had fallen for them a while back. I regretted it ever since.

"Why are you still here?", I asked loudly and angrily.

"You were completely shitfaced. Where were your friends?", her voice was sweet like honey. Annoyingly sweet, really.

"Go fuck yourself, you are not my mother."

"I am sorry.", she looked down on the floor, pretending to be hurt. 

"Just go." My hands were digging into the sand.

She took a few breaths, then she grabbed her purse and went. Nothing real about that woman. Faker than an avatar.

I ate the ice cream and went to the living room. It must have been midnight. Mother was crying so I entered her room. Brielle had already gone to sleep so I sat down at the side of her bed to hold her hand. She sobbed and I could tell she was trying to keep it all in.

It took a few minutes for her to collect herself so that she could speak:

"He is not coming, Leo. He is not coming.", she started crying again.

Some holiday must have been coming up, maybe a birthday?

I left the room after a few more minutes. She was not going to calm down through the course of the night. So I sat down in my room, started a game with Sharky, and played all night. I swallowed a few more pills. That red-head had some pretty fine stuff. Hibiscus you can trust. She always gives you pure stuff.

Sharky quit because he had to go to Astronomy class. I booed him and continued playing for a few more hours. I did not want to go to class, not with this amount of drugs in my system. The game must go on. It always did.

Sheila texted me a few times but I ignored her. Bitch better learn to wait.

After what I assumed was a few days dad called me and said he had heard I was skipping classes. I listened to him rant about how my behavior reflected on our family, he was not going to have his son be useless and unemployed. I stopped the bender and decided to sober up and get some courses done. No hard stuff while I studied, just weed.

My father might have been right about not doing drugs. But I was not going to join the army for another 3 years or so and I wanted to enjoy every minute I had before that. Eventually, dad would want me to follow his footsteps. One soldier in the family just would not cut it I guess. Maybe if I was dead in a ditch, shot by some criminal, maybe then dad would be proud of me. But that would have to wait until I was ready to die.

My family belonged to the Lex, the ruling class of Lukra. Dad was a Lukrain hero. He was a legend, even among the Lex. As long as I followed the path to join my father into the army, I would be untouchable.

Royal blood always makes its way I guess. Acing all those exams was as close as I could get to my dad at the moment. He had done it before me, and his father, his father's father... Too many generations to count really. Being the only son of a man like that, there was bound to be either gold medals or death in my future.  

Going to class again really was not all that bad. I had learned about most of the subjects way before our teachers introduced them. My father had often visited me when I was younger. I remember sitting on his lap while he taught me to write and read before I ever even went to school. When my mother became sick, he stopped coming to visit. So I started learning in my own free time.

On my parent's anniversary, Brielle bought flowers for my mother. I texted Sheila and asked her to come over. She sent me a picture of her with some other guy. Luckily there were a few fallback options. I never did run out of distractions.