Taming Tyler

Chapter One

Tyler

M y beautiful mother looks comatose as she absentmindedly straightens the fabric of the sheer silk skirt that’s as smooth as her olive skin. Isn’t it strange how you can know someone your entire life and then not really know them at all? It’s like they’re a stranger staring back at you with eyes so similar to your own that it’s crazy they don’t see you. So yeah, it’s not Dale the Dipshit who’s surprising the hell out of me right now, if you can even talk about surprise at this point. No, I know he hates me. Or loathes is perhaps a better word. Hate takes real effort, whereas loathing implies that you don’t really have to try that hard. It comes naturally to you, as it does for Dale Wilmington Jr., who has never really had to try for a single day of his life.

From day one, ever since my mom introduced me to him at a luncheon—yes, luncheon , Dale doesn’t do lunch—at the posh golf club where they’d met a few weeks prior, he’s loathed me. The reason it’s in italics is that I want you to understand how he sneers when he sees me, his nostrils flaring, like it’s physically repulsive to him to even be in the same room as me. If I forget to put it in italics, please feel free to do so yourself. There’s bound to be a lot more loathing later.

Right from the start, I could tell he saw me as nothing more than a piece of dog shit stuck to the bottom of his thousand-dollar loafers. There’s the telltale tick beneath his left eye when he’s agitated. Tick . Tick . Tick . Like it’s trying to tell me in Morse code how much he loathes me; his nose all scrunched up like he’s smelling something foul. Something that should’ve been tossed a long time ago. His mouth curved into a repulsed sneer, almost as if he could hardly contain his surprised disdain. My mother, the beautiful woman with raven-black hair and stunning cinnamon eyes, came with a fucking kid.

Because that’s what I was. A kid. A kid who’d just had his heart broken. Yeah, don’t go there, Tyler. Fuck, I haven’t cried since I was thirteen. No reason to start now. Unless you’ve got 5.6 inches—yes, believe it or not, but eight inches isn’t the average penis length in the US—rammed down your throat. Funny how the fuckers always love and get off on it when you cry, pretending to be choking on their dick.

Yeah, I have no gag reflex. Otherwise, I’d be puking all over Dale’s Italian marble floors right the fuck now. No need to get Dale to throw his favorite sentence at me, though. “You destroy everything, Tyler. Look at your poor mother, aging before her time.” Fuck you, Dale. My mom doesn’t look a day over forty. The Botox you pay for makes sure of that. Besides, if you stick around long enough, folks, I’m pretty sure that it’ll come. The famous sentence. Not the tears. You can wait until hell freezes over before I cry in front of a piece of shit like Dale. But, wait, I forget myself.

It’s my mom, Catarina, the pride and joy of her Mexican immigrant parents, who’s turned out to be the second greatest disappointment of my life and probably hers too as she sits there, manicured hands clasped in her lap, a semi-uncomfortable frown between her black, well-groomed brows. We don’t talk about the greatest. Never. As usual, Mom lets Dale Wilmington Jr., jet-set real estate agent extraordinaire, take care of this one.

“Do you have any idea what it cost me to keep your delinquent ass out of prison? Do you?! Do you even care? What I had to give up because I love your mother?”

Don’t you mean own , Dale? You own my mother. You have for eight years now. Besides, I don’t know. Don’t care. But I’m sure that Dale will tell me any second. What he had to sacrifice this time because, yes, this ain’t your boy’s first rodeo, aka my first encounter with the law. Dale might call me a delinquent, but I am, in fact, a hardened criminal. I have a criminal record that’ll blow your mind, people. Although, up until three weeks ago, my crimes against humanity or the state of California were minor; like shoplifting, trespassing, and public indecency.

“Do you?!” Dale booms and even my mom wakes from her Valium-induced slumber. I shake my head just a little, though, because I have the hangover of all hangovers. And a butthole that appears to be… wrecked ? Huh. I must’ve had sex last night. Forgettable like the vast majority of my drunken midnight encounters.

“The Oceanview Project! I had to give that SOB the Oceanview Project!” Dale positively shakes, and although the guy has no soul, he kinda looks hurt. Well, it only seems fair that Marcus gets the Oceanview Condo Project since I burned down his seaside villa—yes, that’s how Marcus referred to it when he swept me away for one weekend fuck fest after another. Right up until I had the audacity to catch feelings for the asshole, and he dumped me. Then I burned his fucking house down. Marcus probably had a hard time explaining to his wife why Villa Seabreeze was now nothing more than a truckload of ashes.

Suits him just right. Dale, not Marcus. Well, Marcus too, but Dale even more, since he was the one who introduced me to his biggest competitor in the Californian real estate empire. Really, Dale is to blame for all this, introducing a fine-aged snack like Marcus to me eighteen months ago. No way I would’ve been able to keep my talons off that one.

“I worked three years to secure that project!” Dale looks one second away from stroking out on his Italian floors while my mom nods her head like she’s never heard anything more profound in her life. After all, Dale’s word is gospel in their Bel-Air mansion. Bel Air. Funny how I can never breathe properly as soon as I turn up their drive on my bike. Mal Air. It should be called fucking Mal Air.

“Marcus has only agreed to this deal because he’s been salivating over the project for years now,” Dale drones on, and I’m officially bored. Just tell me what the punishment is already, Dale. Am I grounded? Or have you closed my credit card, Stepdaddy Dearest? Or wait, do I have to do anger management again? Please, no, Dale. Not the dreaded counseling that I actually really like, by the way. Because it’s the only time someone actually has to listen to me.

The first time they sent me to see a therapist was when I ran away at fifteen because I was gonna go look for… No, Tyler, don’t go there. Anyway, I liked it. I liked Doctor Singleton. And all the doctors that came after. Needless to say, it’s a list as long as my rap sheet.

“Marcus…” Blah, blah, blah. What an epic disappointment Marcus van Linden turned out to be. Not dick wise. No, not that. Top-tier dick on that guy. Marcus comes from superior European genes, after all. The average penis length in the Netherlands beats the American with a whopping 0.74 inches. Choke on that, America. All 6.14 inches. But the lies that came out of his mouth. Yeah, disappointing. If it hadn’t already been broken years ago, he could’ve done a real number on my heart. No, it was just my pride that got hurt. I credit another asshole for breaking my heart.

The next thing that comes out of Dale’s boring mouth catches my attention though, like nothing has in a while.

“... suspended sentence, including community service.” Excuse me, what? No, what the fuck is the point of having a rich, influential Stepdaddy if he can’t get you a sweet deal? Community service? Nah, I don’t think so, Dale.

“You’ll report Monday morning at exactly nine at the Division of Adult Parole down at the California State Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Miles will make sure you get there in good time.” Miles is Dale’s driver because Dale has hands made of pure gold or Chinese porcelain or some shit like that which inhibits him from driving his car like the rest of us. Not that I own one. I have my trusted Patricia. An Indian Scout Classic . Sweet ride.

“Your parole contact officer will set up a plan for your community service.” Dale must hear my loud groan because he points a leathery, tanning-salon wrinkled finger at me. “If you fail to show up or cooperate, you will be taken directly to the California City Correctional Facility to serve the full sentence.” Fuck my life.

“What’s the sentence?” I ask, pretending to be bored. It’s the first word I’ve spoken thus far, aside from a raspy ‘ Hi, Mom .’ Wrecked from both ends, apparently. Was I in a spit roast last night or was he just an eager motherfucker?

“Six months,” Dale the Dipshit spits like he’s upset that he can’t say forever . Shit. Six fucking months. I have zero illusions about my pseudo-bad-boy act. I wouldn’t last a fucking night in prison. My hole might feel wrecked this very minute, but still, there are degrees of being wrecked. And I’m a pretty boy, taking after my mother, with my near-black curly locks, huge cinnamon eyes, olive complexion, and pouty lips. I’d be a real catch for Boris the Beast or Dean the Demolisher. Yeah, I would be their trophy bitch before I could blurt, ‘ I’m good!’ They would fight over me and parade me around, I’m sure. I might be Tyler the Destroyer, but that’s just an act to piss off Stepdaddy Dearest.

Shit. They’ve got me. Dale’s got me, and I can tell by the winning smile that could sell you anything worth selling in California, that he knows it, too. I’m fucked. Thoroughly and utterly fucked.