Page 2 of Bad Like Me

“Okay, Ray. Do what you have to do but don’t flush your dream job down the drain just to rush home and take care of us.”

“I won’t. It’ll be okay. Jerry will understand; he’s a down to earth type of boss,” I lied again, knowing damn well as soon as I informed him I was leaving, I wouldn’t have a job waiting for me when I returned. At this point, I didn’t care. I could always find another job, but no one in this world could ever replace my dad.

“Are you sure?”

“One-hundred percent. Everything will be fine on my end, Mom. There’s just no need for you to worry about me right now.” I reassured her, breathing another white lie of comfort into her ear. On a general note, I hated lying. Right now wasn’t any different, but what else was I going to say? Mom, I’m leaving my job and have no fucking clue what I’ll do for income. The answer was no. I wouldn’t tell my mom I was dropping everything to rush home for them. It wasn’t what any good child did once they grew into adulthood, much to the contrary. Parents spent a good deal of their lives giving everything they had to ensure their children had everything they needed—any parent worth a shit anyway. It was the morally right thing to try and take care of your parents when they couldn’t quite care of themselves anymore. It was the law of nature, so to speak. All of this made sense to me, but to someone else, it might be a foreign concept. Other people didn’t matter in this situation. For me, nothing else held importance, only my parents and their well-being. After all the madness settled, I would be left to collect the shambles of my so-called-life, and then I would figure out my next move. But for now, it didn’t matter. I had to get to them. Any second I wasn’t with them was wasted time.

“Just as long as you’re sure,” she weakly said, sniffing back the new wave of emotions that hit her.

“I am.” Once again, I deceived my mom because it was a necessity, fully aware I was fucking over everything I’d work toward in the past seven years, and yet, not caring about it.

I wished it had been Wren on the phone wanting to talk about something trivial, but I now realized, she more than likely didn’t want to mindlessly chitchat and wanted to find out how I was handling things. Wren had probably talked to Mom first, so I texted her.

Me: Dad is sick.

Tears of regret streaked down my face as I stared at those three bold words on the screen in my hand, and my bottom lip quivered as I tried to keep it together in the shop. A soft sob left my mouth, and I covered it behind my cupped palm, pushing the shop door open and running into our breakroom. Walsh was right behind me, no doubt searching for an explanation. None of my coworkers had ever seen me cry—not too many people had, actually. I avoided it at all costs since I wasn’t a dainty crier. When I cried, I sobbed. It was as if once the tears finally broke free, the amount that fell made up for all the times I refused to shed a tear.

“My dad’s cancer is back,” I told him in an almost inaudible tone, trying to compose myself. Maybe if I talked about it, I could calm down. Perhaps it could make sense as to why such a good man had cancer not once, but twice. I guess it was possible his body had the disease all along and we didn’t know about it.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a similar voice and took a seat at our table, pulling a seat out for me to sit beside him.

The phone vibrated in my palm, and I glanced at it.

Wren: I know :( I tried to catch you before you left for work, but I had to keep Bologna for Logan, and lucky me, he found a rat. Ham just wanted to play with it…Never mind. I’ll tell you later. How are you doing?

A laugh bubbled through my body and then another. The first came at the thought of my best friend having a rat in her apartment—she was terrified of them. The second because those two were the only people in this world who would name their animals after lunchmeat. Bologna was Logan’s horse of a dog, and Ham was Wren’s black cat.

“It’s funny?” Walsh looked at me over the black square frames of his glasses and kept his attention on me.

“Yes. Well, no. This is.” I dropped into the blue plastic chair beside him, setting my phone in front of him.

“Does Wren…uh, you know?” He pinched his thumb and pointer finger together and hit an imaginary joint.

Another laugh shook my body and quickly left as I swiped away the remaining tears off of my cheeks. “No.”

“No? Her ham is playing with a rat that bologna found,” he pointed out and shrugged, forcing a fake smile. “I mean, I’m not one to judge, I smoke, but hell, that’s a little farfetched even for me.”

“Ham is her cat, and Bologna is her brother’s dog,” I explained, typing out a reply to Wren and began planning what would have to be done before I could leave for Ohio.

Me: No fucking clue, but I’ll be there as soon as I can. You have a rat?

Wren: Apparently. Huge fucker, too. I’ll be here when you do

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