Page 19 of Worth the Wait
Nathan bit back the first thing he wanted to say and nodded instead. It wasn’t worth it. It never was.
He pushed off from the counter. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
Ron raised the can in a lazy salute. “Don’t forget the pickled onion.”
Nathan inhaled the demand, then made his way into the living room.
The telly was on some Sunday night antique show and Nathan glanced over to the narrow, carpeted staircase leading directly up from the back of the room. Steep, familiar, and claustrophobic in that way only childhood homes could be. He sighed. He hadn’t had much luck getting through to Alfie yet. Conversations lasted a few sentences, and most of them ended with a door shutting in his face. Still, he couldn’t walk out without trying again. So he climbed the stairs, every step creaking beneath his weight. They hadn’t used to. He’d added muscle and bulk while deployed. No longer scrawny, he’d become the fighting machine his dad always wanted.See, compliant.Unlike the kid behind the door he rapped his knuckles on.
This room used to be storage. Filled with dusty toolboxes, bags of old clothes, a broken vacuum cleaner that Ron swore he’d fix one day but never did. Now it was Alfie’s room. Or at least, a version of one. With a narrow fold-out bed shoved under the window, still creased from being sat on rather than slept in. The rest of the space was crammed with boxes of Nathan’s childhood, of Ron’s life. Old army kit bags, yellowing photo albums no one looked at anymore, and junk he should’ve binned a decade ago. It was a space filled with ghosts and clutter, a constant reminder that nothing here ever really changed.
When Alfie didn’t answer, Nathan pushed the door open. The kid lay sprawled on the fold-out bed, hoodie up, earbuds in, phone in hand. A cliché in motion. His eyes were closed, foot tapping to a beat Nathan couldn’t hear, but could feel through the floorboards.
Nathan stepped inside, cleared his throat. No reaction.
So he nudged the side of the bed with his knee.
Alfie cracked one eye open and looked at him as if Nathan was some nuisance he’d learned to ignore.
“You fancy fish and chips?”
Alfie shook his head.
“You need to eat.”
No response.
Nathan tried again. “What do you usually go for then? Cod? Haddock? Sausage in batter? Saveloy?”
Alfie closed his eyes again.
Nathan clenched his jaw.Right then.
“Oi.” He kicked the base of the bed. Not hard, but enough to rattle it. “I’m talking to you.”
Alfie pulled out one earbud. But he didn’t say anything. Ron would call it disrespect. Nathan recognised it for what it really was. Apathy. Not rebellion. Not attitude. A kid who’d shut the world out because he’d learned it didn’t matter if he screamed or begged, no one was listening.
Nathan rubbed a hand over his buzzed scalp, the stubble rasping beneath his fingers. “Look, I know you don’t want to be here. Believe me, I get it. And I’m sorry that you are. But can we at least try for basic respect?”
“I already said no,” Alfie barked. “Ain’t hungry.”
“You’ve not eaten all day.”
“The feds gave me a sandwich when they stuck me in the cell.”
“Did you eat it?”
Alfie gave him a withering look. “It was tuna sweetcorn. Fucking hate tuna.Andsweetcorn. Together, it’s vomit between bread.”
Nathan pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaled slowly through his teeth, and reminded himself,again, that this wasn’t basic training. This was a teenage boy.Histeenage boy. And he had no idea how to reach him.
“Then I’ll pick you up some chips and watch you eat them while we talk about what happened today.”
Alfie rolled his eyes, put his earbuds in.
That was the best Nathan was going to get.
He left the room, went into his and changed into running shorts and a tee, then rushed down the stairs despite his stiff leg, shoving the front door open as if the air inside choked him. The cold hit him instantly. Bitter and briny, rolling in off the sea. He pulled in a deep breath, lungs burning with the bite of it. But it was cleaner out here. Harsher, yes. But honest. And he needed to run. Shake the shit off his shoulders. Outrun the walls closing in every time Ron looked at him as if he was still a fuck up. Escape the way this house,this town, shrunk him down to someone he didn’t recognise.
