ARMACH: So, she knew all this time and just never told you? Yeah, that’s kind of a dick move.
NOBLIN: That’s what I have been saying! I don’t get why everyone else is siding with her though.
ARMACH: I’m on your side
NOBLIN: Give it up for internet strangers
ARMACH: Come on. We met IRL; I’m no stranger.
NOBLIN: I guess…
ARMACH: Forget going to Battingham to hang out with the traitor squad; hang out with me instead. I know the owner of the café. I can reserve you a PC at any time.
I bit down on my lip while trying to formulate a response. Was it wise to put my trust in a whole new person right now? Probably not, but it wasn’t like there was anybody else who gave a shit about me currently.
A cold breeze woke me up from my contemplation. I had barely been paying attention to my surroundings; my full focus had been on my phone for the past 10 minutes. While Arthur's words warmed my metaphorical heart, they didn’t do anything to raise my actual body temperature. I had brought my summer coat, but clearly, the end of the fall season was already closing in, as the New England weather had gotten quite cold.
I scanned my surroundings; the street was dark and without any signs of human life, except for some bright yellow lights in the distance coming from O’Brien’s, a local Irish pub that also happened to be my father’s regular stomping ground. We have visited the place from time to time, and right now, it seemed like the perfect place to prevent the cold I felt coming on.
Stepping into a place like this as a scrawny 15-year-old, however, does cause some turned heads. I really should have expected that going under the radar in a place like this was nothing but a pipe dream, but I definitely wasn’t going back into the cold.
“Hey little J, where’s your dad at?” A stout-looking man yelled from behind the counter. His widows and peak and mousy face immediately made me recognize him as Mr. O’Brien himself, or just Rob as he was more regularly called.
“He’s coming in later; he just needed to get some stuff done at home before he would join me.” I lied. If I told him that I walked off the way I did, he would personally march me back to my father’s.
“Alright mate, you want me to start you off with a tonic?”
“I will just wait for my father to get in.” I nodded.
As soon as I slid my tiny posterior into a well-cushioned booth, my hand instinctively reached back for my phone. Eager to return to my conversation with Arthur, I opened Discord back up. Thinking back to the question he had posed, I looked at the socializing people around me. It only took a single minute, and with a simple shrug, I typed out my answer.
NOBLIN: You free next week?
ARMACH: Don’t you have that tournament?
NOBLIN: No way I’m playing that tournament with the traitor squad.
ARMACH: Do they know that?
I let out a physical grunt while leaning back. Of course, they didn’t know, but it’s not like Rachel ever told me anything. Why does everybody expect me to be the better person?
My mind drifted towards all the backstabbing I had experienced in the last days, or better yet, the last few years. One does not grow into a teenage loner without first attempting and failing to become a proper normal person with a normal social circle. If you would make a graph of the number of people that I would comfortably call friends over the duration of my life, the first 10 years would actually look pretty good. But as middle school drew to a close, and high school started rearing its ugly head, the line gradually started moving down.
One by one, the important people in my life would start leaving me behind, all culminating in even my own parents betraying their commitment to me and each other. All I had left was Riley, and now she was gone too.
So, if I can’t actually rely on anybody, why would I be reliable to anybody else? Why did I need to be a paragon of virtue while everybody else could be as unreliable as the average North American public transit system?
It was time to put myself first. If I want something, then I will take it.
NOBLIN: Not yet, but I’ll tell them when I’m back home.
ARMACH: Probably should. But yeah, if you want to hang out next weekend, I’m free. Let’s do Saturday.
NOBLIN: Awesome.
The prospect of meeting up next week made a wave of warmth wash over my entire body. Sure, I had to survive another full week of school, but at least I had something good to look forward to now.
I leaned back in the little booth while letting my eyes drift among the mostly familiar collection of patrons. Seeing their faces reminded me of the menagerie of stories my dad would tell me about all these people. Seated at the far-left side of the bar was a woman wearing some billowing jeans and a flannel shirt, her auburn hair done up in a messy bun. She was sipping from her signature brand of whiskey, John Walker.
My dad would call her Jenny No-Nose, even though her nose actually had quite a pronounced position on her face. No, that name had nothing to do with her nose itself, but her inability to smell. You could pump the concentrated smell of a durian under her face, and she wouldn’t even notice. Apparently, she works for a chemical company, and this also caused her condition. She used to be a simple manufacturing worker at the company back when protection wasn’t really a thing. Even when she noticed her smell got worse, her boss insisted that it was nothing.
Funny thing is, now she is the supervisor in the department where she worked before. And for obvious reasons, she has made proper workplace protections one of the most important points in the new company policies. Everything to make sure nobody suffers the same fate that she did.
A cold breeze suddenly blew through the pub as the door opened, and I got rudely awakened from my train of thought. The unmistakable sight of my father’s beard allowed me to recognize the reckoning that was heading my way. All this anxiety was punctuated by the sound of old man O’Brien greeting him into his establishment. “Hey there big J!”
I tried making myself small, hiding myself from my father’s gaze. But before I could even attempt anything similar, Roy was nodding his head in my direction.
At this point, the overly familiar sense of dread was bubbling up from under my loins, as my dad slowly made his way over to the booth I was seated at. He yelled out in Roy’s direction. “2 cokes for me and the boy please!”
I wanted nothing more than to slide down right under the table, going right through one of the cracks in floorboards, disappearing into the ground never to be seen again. This was nothing but fantasy, however, as my father sat down across from me and raised his eyebrows. “This is where you decided to run off to of all places?”
He was looking around the joint in a very performative fashion. “I know that new experiences scare you, but this was a little too easy even for your standards.”
Hidden under the table, I was balling my fists. He was still making jokes at my expense; it is like he is not even trying to understand me.
“I just needed some time away from your awful jokes and insults, but clearly, you are committed enough to them for you to chase me down,” I grunted.
“Come on kiddo, just lighten up a bit, will ya?” His goofy smile peeked from under that unkempt beard.
“Easy for you to say, your life isn’t collapsing around you.”
“True, that already happened 5 years ago. But because of that, I do now have some experience in the area; surely, I can use that to help you out.” He winked.
Every cell in my body wanted nothing more but to walk away again right now. Simultaneously, however, I was also very aware that my father wasn’t going to let me walk away this time.
“Can you just be serious for like 5 seconds!” I yelled at him.
From the corners of my eyes, I could see some heads turn; the people around the bar had clearly become more and more aware of the emotional conversation taking place between little J and big J. If I wanted to maintain that sliver of reputation I had down here, I better keep the emotional outbursts to a minimum.
“Of course. I can be serious. I’m just pretty sure you wouldn’t like it,” My dad said, shaking his head.
“Stop treating me like a kid, I can take it.”
My dad’s grimace betrayed the fact that he found my last sentence amusing in some way, before shrugging and leaning forward slightly highlighting his now straightened out face.
“You have pushed away every single person in your life that cares about you only because one person decided to keep some news from you that they knew would hurt you immensely. All while constantly lying to everybody yourself and not taking the slightest bit of ownership for it. You are being a massive hypocrite who runs away from their own problems while blaming others for doing the same.”
As he finished his sentence, I could practically feel the steam coming out of my ears. How dare he talk to me like that. Making it sound like this was all my fault? I was about to launch into a massive tirade about all the times he lied to my mother, how they would use me in their fights, and how he had abandoned me for the last 4 years. But as I lifted my finger and started to open my mouth, Rob’s mousy face suddenly revealed itself as he stood next to our table.
“There you go,” the elderly man said as he handed us two large glasses that were filled to the brim with sweet bubbling soda.
My father nodded, “Thanks Rob, you’re the best.”
The man smiled back. “No problem, I was growing worried for a bit seeing little J all alone here for a while. Tell me if you need anything else.”
“No need to worry, my little man here can take pretty good care of himself.”
I started to notice the pain of my nails digging into my hand palms. As this little intermezzo interrupted the wrath I was about to release on my dad. And instead of that, it allowed me to release the tension in my balled-up fists.
How does he do that? How does he insult my very being, only to go back to being the friendliest man in the world mere seconds later?
“I wouldn’t expect any different with the amount of luck he has for you to be his old man,” Rob said warmly before turning around and heading back to the bar.
Taking in Rob’s comment made me think of all the ways in which my dad, in fact, is a great guy. Sure, it sucks that I only see him on weekends, but unlike some others in my life, he’s never lied to me. He always tells me exactly how it is, and surely, he had just done exactly that. Should I really be blowing up on him because he’s doing what I want him to do? Was it true? Had I brought all these problems on myself?
My dad refocused his attention on my direction, giving off this incredible air of confidence. “You were about to say?”
The anger now sufficiently subsided, I decided on a different approach from what I had originally intended. “That’s not the nicest thing to say to your only child.”
“Whatever gave you the impression that I’m a nice man?”
I couldn’t help but give him a disarming smile. Holy shit, it feels so bad to slowly realize you might be in the wrong, let alone admit so to someone sitting across from you.
He smiled back at me in silence for a few seconds before continuing to speak. “Obviously, I don’t know what’s exactly going on between you and Riley, also because there seem some weird details you two are hiding from me for some reason. But what I do know is that both of you are feeling terrible about the current situation, and the only way to feel better about it is to tackle it together.”
His words of wisdom managed to dig deep into my psyche. That damn brutal honesty of his was once again working its magic. I was the one who had cut out everything and everybody out of life; the situation itself might be unchangeable, the way I handled certainly wasn’t though.
My gaze had been pulled down towards the table for the past few minutes. I took a large sip of my drink, and as I put it back down, I carefully looked my dad in the eyes and sighed. “I hate when you’re right.”
Tackling it together. That’s the real answer. That’s how I should be solving my problems. Including my biggest problem. The one my dad doesn’t know anything about. Yet.
“I’m always right,” he said back to me.
I couldn’t help but think about Riley for a second as she would say the exact same thing. And about the massive help she had been to me over the last few weeks. Without her, I would never have gotten to know about… Emily.
“Dad? There is something else I need to tell you.”
ARMACH: So, she knew all this time and just never told you? Yeah, that’s kind of a dick move.
NOBLIN: That’s what I have been saying! I don’t get why everyone else is siding with her though.
ARMACH: I’m on your side
NOBLIN: Give it up for internet strangers
ARMACH: Come on. We met IRL; I’m no stranger.
NOBLIN: I guess…
ARMACH: Forget going to Battingham to hang out with the traitor squad; hang out with me instead. I know the owner of the café. I can reserve you a PC at any time.
I bit down on my lip while trying to formulate a response. Was it wise to put my trust in a whole new person right now? Probably not, but it wasn’t like there was anybody else who gave a shit about me currently.
A cold breeze woke me up from my contemplation. I had barely been paying attention to my surroundings; my full focus had been on my phone for the past 10 minutes. While Arthur's words warmed my metaphorical heart, they didn’t do anything to raise my actual body temperature. I had brought my summer coat, but clearly, the end of the fall season was already closing in, as the New England weather had gotten quite cold.
I scanned my surroundings; the street was dark and without any signs of human life, except for some bright yellow lights in the distance coming from O’Brien’s, a local Irish pub that also happened to be my father’s regular stomping ground. We have visited the place from time to time, and right now, it seemed like the perfect place to prevent the cold I felt coming on.
Stepping into a place like this as a scrawny 15-year-old, however, does cause some turned heads. I really should have expected that going under the radar in a place like this was nothing but a pipe dream, but I definitely wasn’t going back into the cold.
“Hey little J, where’s your dad at?” A stout-looking man yelled from behind the counter. His widows and peak and mousy face immediately made me recognize him as Mr. O’Brien himself, or just Rob as he was more regularly called.
“He’s coming in later; he just needed to get some stuff done at home before he would join me.” I lied. If I told him that I walked off the way I did, he would personally march me back to my father’s.
“Alright mate, you want me to start you off with a tonic?”
“I will just wait for my father to get in.” I nodded.
As soon as I slid my tiny posterior into a well-cushioned booth, my hand instinctively reached back for my phone. Eager to return to my conversation with Arthur, I opened Discord back up. Thinking back to the question he had posed, I looked at the socializing people around me. It only took a single minute, and with a simple shrug, I typed out my answer.
NOBLIN: You free next week?
ARMACH: Don’t you have that tournament?
NOBLIN: No way I’m playing that tournament with the traitor squad.
ARMACH: Do they know that?
I let out a physical grunt while leaning back. Of course, they didn’t know, but it’s not like Rachel ever told me anything. Why does everybody expect me to be the better person?
My mind drifted towards all the backstabbing I had experienced in the last days, or better yet, the last few years. One does not grow into a teenage loner without first attempting and failing to become a proper normal person with a normal social circle. If you would make a graph of the number of people that I would comfortably call friends over the duration of my life, the first 10 years would actually look pretty good. But as middle school drew to a close, and high school started rearing its ugly head, the line gradually started moving down.
One by one, the important people in my life would start leaving me behind, all culminating in even my own parents betraying their commitment to me and each other. All I had left was Riley, and now she was gone too.
So, if I can’t actually rely on anybody, why would I be reliable to anybody else? Why did I need to be a paragon of virtue while everybody else could be as unreliable as the average North American public transit system?
It was time to put myself first. If I want something, then I will take it.
NOBLIN: Not yet, but I’ll tell them when I’m back home.
ARMACH: Probably should. But yeah, if you want to hang out next weekend, I’m free. Let’s do Saturday.
NOBLIN: Awesome.
The prospect of meeting up next week made a wave of warmth wash over my entire body. Sure, I had to survive another full week of school, but at least I had something good to look forward to now.
I leaned back in the little booth while letting my eyes drift among the mostly familiar collection of patrons. Seeing their faces reminded me of the menagerie of stories my dad would tell me about all these people. Seated at the far-left side of the bar was a woman wearing some billowing jeans and a flannel shirt, her auburn hair done up in a messy bun. She was sipping from her signature brand of whiskey, John Walker.
My dad would call her Jenny No-Nose, even though her nose actually had quite a pronounced position on her face. No, that name had nothing to do with her nose itself, but her inability to smell. You could pump the concentrated smell of a durian under her face, and she wouldn’t even notice. Apparently, she works for a chemical company, and this also caused her condition. She used to be a simple manufacturing worker at the company back when protection wasn’t really a thing. Even when she noticed her smell got worse, her boss insisted that it was nothing.
Funny thing is, now she is the supervisor in the department where she worked before. And for obvious reasons, she has made proper workplace protections one of the most important points in the new company policies. Everything to make sure nobody suffers the same fate that she did.
A cold breeze suddenly blew through the pub as the door opened, and I got rudely awakened from my train of thought. The unmistakable sight of my father’s beard allowed me to recognize the reckoning that was heading my way. All this anxiety was punctuated by the sound of old man O’Brien greeting him into his establishment. “Hey there big J!”
I tried making myself small, hiding myself from my father’s gaze. But before I could even attempt anything similar, Roy was nodding his head in my direction.
At this point, the overly familiar sense of dread was bubbling up from under my loins, as my dad slowly made his way over to the booth I was seated at. He yelled out in Roy’s direction. “2 cokes for me and the boy please!”
I wanted nothing more than to slide down right under the table, going right through one of the cracks in floorboards, disappearing into the ground never to be seen again. This was nothing but fantasy, however, as my father sat down across from me and raised his eyebrows. “This is where you decided to run off to of all places?”
He was looking around the joint in a very performative fashion. “I know that new experiences scare you, but this was a little too easy even for your standards.”
Hidden under the table, I was balling my fists. He was still making jokes at my expense; it is like he is not even trying to understand me.
“I just needed some time away from your awful jokes and insults, but clearly, you are committed enough to them for you to chase me down,” I grunted.
“Come on kiddo, just lighten up a bit, will ya?” His goofy smile peeked from under that unkempt beard.
“Easy for you to say, your life isn’t collapsing around you.”
“True, that already happened 5 years ago. But because of that, I do now have some experience in the area; surely, I can use that to help you out.” He winked.
Every cell in my body wanted nothing more but to walk away again right now. Simultaneously, however, I was also very aware that my father wasn’t going to let me walk away this time.
“Can you just be serious for like 5 seconds!” I yelled at him.
From the corners of my eyes, I could see some heads turn; the people around the bar had clearly become more and more aware of the emotional conversation taking place between little J and big J. If I wanted to maintain that sliver of reputation I had down here, I better keep the emotional outbursts to a minimum.
“Of course. I can be serious. I’m just pretty sure you wouldn’t like it,” My dad said, shaking his head.
“Stop treating me like a kid, I can take it.”
My dad’s grimace betrayed the fact that he found my last sentence amusing in some way, before shrugging and leaning forward slightly highlighting his now straightened out face.
“You have pushed away every single person in your life that cares about you only because one person decided to keep some news from you that they knew would hurt you immensely. All while constantly lying to everybody yourself and not taking the slightest bit of ownership for it. You are being a massive hypocrite who runs away from their own problems while blaming others for doing the same.”
As he finished his sentence, I could practically feel the steam coming out of my ears. How dare he talk to me like that. Making it sound like this was all my fault? I was about to launch into a massive tirade about all the times he lied to my mother, how they would use me in their fights, and how he had abandoned me for the last 4 years. But as I lifted my finger and started to open my mouth, Rob’s mousy face suddenly revealed itself as he stood next to our table.
“There you go,” the elderly man said as he handed us two large glasses that were filled to the brim with sweet bubbling soda.
My father nodded, “Thanks Rob, you’re the best.”
The man smiled back. “No problem, I was growing worried for a bit seeing little J all alone here for a while. Tell me if you need anything else.”
“No need to worry, my little man here can take pretty good care of himself.”
I started to notice the pain of my nails digging into my hand palms. As this little intermezzo interrupted the wrath I was about to release on my dad. And instead of that, it allowed me to release the tension in my balled-up fists.
How does he do that? How does he insult my very being, only to go back to being the friendliest man in the world mere seconds later?
“I wouldn’t expect any different with the amount of luck he has for you to be his old man,” Rob said warmly before turning around and heading back to the bar.
Taking in Rob’s comment made me think of all the ways in which my dad, in fact, is a great guy. Sure, it sucks that I only see him on weekends, but unlike some others in my life, he’s never lied to me. He always tells me exactly how it is, and surely, he had just done exactly that. Should I really be blowing up on him because he’s doing what I want him to do? Was it true? Had I brought all these problems on myself?
My dad refocused his attention on my direction, giving off this incredible air of confidence. “You were about to say?”
The anger now sufficiently subsided, I decided on a different approach from what I had originally intended. “That’s not the nicest thing to say to your only child.”
“Whatever gave you the impression that I’m a nice man?”
I couldn’t help but give him a disarming smile. Holy shit, it feels so bad to slowly realize you might be in the wrong, let alone admit so to someone sitting across from you.
He smiled back at me in silence for a few seconds before continuing to speak. “Obviously, I don’t know what’s exactly going on between you and Riley, also because there seem some weird details you two are hiding from me for some reason. But what I do know is that both of you are feeling terrible about the current situation, and the only way to feel better about it is to tackle it together.”
His words of wisdom managed to dig deep into my psyche. That damn brutal honesty of his was once again working its magic. I was the one who had cut out everything and everybody out of life; the situation itself might be unchangeable, the way I handled certainly wasn’t though.
My gaze had been pulled down towards the table for the past few minutes. I took a large sip of my drink, and as I put it back down, I carefully looked my dad in the eyes and sighed. “I hate when you’re right.”
Tackling it together. That’s the real answer. That’s how I should be solving my problems. Including my biggest problem. The one my dad doesn’t know anything about. Yet.
“I’m always right,” he said back to me.
I couldn’t help but think about Riley for a second as she would say the exact same thing. And about the massive help she had been to me over the last few weeks. Without her, I would never have gotten to know about… Emily.
“Dad? There is something else I need to tell you.”
