Page 97 of Done with You

Jordan was quiet for a moment, his gaze on the screen of his treadmill, watching the numbers drop as his speed slowed for his cool down. “I appreciate that,” he finally said. “It means a lot.”

“You were younger than me and I should have protected you,” Aiden went on.

“You’re only two years older than me. And we’re both adults now. I just as easily could have reached out sooner.”

“But back then, I should have been the one to report Dad for hitting Dallas and driving off. I should have been the one to take the brunt of the family’s anger. The lion’s share of the town’s hate.”

“Charlet Heights is more like a cult than it is a town and we both know it,” Jordan said. “The fact that nearly everyone backed Dad. That they turned on us after what he did, just goes to show you it wouldn’t have mattered who turned him in, me or you. We both turned on him and for that, we’re pariahs.”

“I’m fine being a pariah to those lunatics. Defending a drunk. A child-killer, while going after the dead kid’s mom until she throws herself off a bridge. Then turning on us. Teenagers, for doing what any sane person would say was the right thing. Don’t need any of those Kool-Aid guzzling nutjobs in my life.” Aiden blinked a few times.

It was surprising how easy it was to talk about what happened all those years ago. He hadn’t murmured a word about it in decades because of how badly it hurt. How much hate and anger it stirred up inside of him. Like the silt on the bottom of a pond being disturbed after ages of just sitting there, piling up on to itself, becoming more like quicksand, so that when someone finally took a step, they got sucked in up to their waist, unable to break free.

But he didn’t feel like he was being sucked into the depths of silt. His layers of hate and anger weren’t nearly as disturbed as he anticipated.

Maybe it was because Jordan knew exactly how he was feeling that he could talk about it. But whatever it was, talking about it helped.

Go figure.

“I still think back to all the times I had to drive us home, starting at eight-years-old after Dad would get too drunk to drive when he’d take us out hunting with him,” Aiden said. “And he was the fucking mayor.”

“Beloved mayor,” Jordan added. Their treadmills stopped, so they hopped off, cleaned their machines, and headed over to the leg press machine.

“Not gonna lie,” Aiden started, spotting his brother as he flipped off the lock and started to bend his knees into his chest, “I’ve kept tabs on Dad and that judge that let him off so easily. Well, I did until the judge died a couple of years ago. But Dad is still kicking. Not sure how.”

“He’s pickled. Pickled shit lasts forever,” Jordan said with a grunt, pushing the weights back up until his legs were almost completely straight. “What about Mom?”

“No fucking clue. Even though Dad was the one that hit Dallas, even though Dad was the drunk, I just—”

“Mom enabled him,” Jordan finished.

“Yeah.”

“She didn’t have our backs. Said that we should be grateful that our father wasn’t an abusive drunk like her father. That it could have been a lot worse. She abandoned us and enabled him.”

Jordan nodded, grunted again, and switched the lock on the leg press for a break. “I just can’t with either of them.” He swallowed and looked up at Aiden, his face flush, beads of sweat dancing along his hairline. “Is that why you don’t drink?”

Aiden nodded. “Yeah. I just can’t bring myself to try it after seeing what it did to Dad. To our family. But I don’t judge you for drinking, to each their own,” he said quickly.

Jordan’s lip twitched. “Bet you haven’t always felt that way.”

“No, I haven’t. But I’m trying to change. It’s hard, though. Dallas was only twelve.”

Jordan shook his head, his jaw tight. “I know. A twelve-year-old boy with Downs Syndrome doing his first-ever solo walk to the corner store to get a hotdog. After weeks of planning and practicing it with his mom. And in the middle of the fucking day, our drunk father struck him with his car and fled the scene.”

Aiden pulled in a deep breath through his nose. “I feel like if maybe I’d disabled the transmission somehow … done more than just hide his keys.”

“He would have taken Mom’s car, or the neighbor’s, or found another way. Or it would have been a different time when we didn’t hide his keys, and he would have hit someone else’s child. It’s not our fault. We did what we could. We were still kids, too. And we had jobs. We couldn’t just sit at home and babysit a grown-ass man. We had lives and jobs and our own shit going on. We did everything we could, aside from tying Dad down to the couch. What happened is ultimately on him.” Jordan flicked off the lock on the leg press machine again and did more reps, grunting and sucking in air through clenched teeth.

Aiden spotted him, made sure he wasn’t doing too much, then when Jordan nodded that this would be his final rep, Aiden helped him push the press up the last couple of inches so that they could flick the lock. Jordan had packed on a lot of weight and that couldn’t have been an easy set.

Then it was Aiden’s turn.

By the time they were finished at the gym, Aiden’s legs were the consistency of Jell-O and his heart felt lighter.

They arrived home at Jordan and Rayma’s apartment to find a rental car parked out front. “Oh fuck,” Jordan murmured when they climbed out of his truck.

“What?” Aiden followed his brother to the front door.

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