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addiction is a long journey.”
    “I don’t want it to be a long journey. I want it to be a short one. I want the problem dealt with.”
    “This isn’t a business decision, Archer. This is your life. The first thing you have to do is admit you have a problem but the second thing you have to do is understand why you drink.”
    “I know why I drink.”
    “And why is that?”
    “I drink because I really am lonely,” his answer is blunt and honest. “I don’t have any real friends and my family are pathetic.”
    “What about the people from the party?”
    “Hangers on. I don’t even know most of their names. Some of the women are even hired to make the party wilder. Even the people who I do know are only friends with me because I have money. I buy people stuff so that they stay around longer.”
    “Really?” I ask in surprise.
    “The only thing that I come home to is this penthouse. I have nothing to show me any love and affection except for my fling of the week,” he says. “I even thought about getting a dog once but since I’m never here, I know that it would probably die or mess up everything in the house. The maids would probably try to poison it so they wouldn’t have to clean up behind him.”
    I look at him in disbelief.
    Maybe this is why rich kids were so out of control?
    Money doesn’t buy love.
    “Well, I can kind of relate to the loneliness. My Mom died when I was two and then my Dad remarried a couple of years later to my stepmom and brought along my stepsister. My Dad was always away working and I really hated my new family. Cinderella had it easy compared to what I went to through.”
    “They were that bad?”
    “They were always nice in front of my Dad, trying to make him believe that we were the perfect family, when we were far from it. What happened behind his back was a totally different story. Whenever I would try to tell him, he would say that I was making it up or exaggerating when I really wasn’t. He went out of his way to make them feel comfortable but it in return, it made me feel sad and alone, and I was his only child. His own flesh and blood. You would think that my stepsister Joanne was his own daughter the way that he put her up there on a pedestal. I really resented him because of that and I still kind of do to this day.”
    “Have you ever talked to him about it?”
    “I did and he apologized, but the damage was already done.”
    “Yeah, parents can suck,” he says. “I think those who don’t know how to treat their own kids should have to give them to someone who can make them happy instead of having them grow up resentful and hating the world.”
    “Tell me about it,” I say as I look at him.
    I can see the hurt in his eyes and I know that his pain runs deep, which explains so much about him.
    “I still say mine were way worse than yours. I was all alone in a big house trapped with nannies who barely spoke any English,” Archer continues. “But I am very fluent in Spanish now.”
    “I had a stepsister who cut my hair in my sleep and then lied and said that I did it,” I retort, “My stepmom convinced my Dad that I was doing it for attention and I ended up grounded for a week.”
    He smiles, “That’s pretty bad. What did you do for revenge?”
    “I got some type of revenge. For the entire week that I was grounded, I kept placing Joanne’s hand in warm water when she was asleep so that she would pee up her bed. Her Mom was mortified and took her to the doctor to see if she had a bladder infection,” I say. “Joanne knew that I was probably behind it but she could never prove it.”
    He laughs. “You actually made her pee her bed? You’re a secret evil genius.”
    I nod my head. “She deserved it. She cut one whole side of my hair off. I had to get it cut to make it even lengths and I looked like a little boy for about a month or so. All of the kids at school picked on me but as long as I got my revenge, I was okay with it.”
    “My parents left the