Page 106 of Whiskey Throttle
His muscles twitch in response. Caught off guard, yet he doesn’t move away. I don’t breathe, holding everything in. Waiting for him to lash out and push my hand off.
“I don’t know how to fucking forgive that.”
He turns around. My hand returns to my side. His face is wrecked. Bloodshot eyes. Stained tear tracks and a bruised jaw. His busted lip trembles even as he tries to steel himself.
“I don’t know how to fucking forgive you. I get that you were young. Alone. Depressed. But I was a kid, and I needed my mom. You could have poured into me. But you didn’t. You chose yourself over everyone, and instead, I got a checklist of things to accomplish by a drill sergeant nanny and a weekly schedule full of experts. I felt like a problem everyone had to solve but didn’t want to. No one wanted me. Not my asshole father. Not my depressed mother. Not even my fucking disaster of a sister. Hell, even paid people didn’t like me.”
His voice breaks completely, having said everything that he’s been carrying for years. Transferring the rejection, then heartbreak, and devastation to me. Its rightful owner. The cause and end of everything.
“I still feel that way sometimes.”
He collapses in the chair. Exhausted, destroyed, and so tired of everything. The silence afterwards is complete. Sacred as he stares at the rug, and I stare at him. With trembling knees, I clutch the arm of my chair and slowly sink onto the embroidered fabric to sob once again.
“You’re not a problem, Dom,” Hollister rasps thick with emotion. “You have us who love you. Like Diego said, we’re a family. You have four brothers who are always there for you.”
Hollister leans forward, his fist taps against Dominic’s forearm, and a show of solidarity. My son’s eyes slide to his friend, half suspicious, half accepting. Otherwise, he sits completely still, listening intently. He clears his throat and continues.
“And you have your woman now. She must love your ugly ass enough to accept you, faults and all. Especially if she got you working on quitting cussing.”
He huffs at Hollister’s injection of a bit of humor. Something only friends can do when things get too heavy and stale.
“Said the guy fucking my mother.”
And there it is.
The vulgarity of his words.
It cheapens how I feel about Hollister and what we shared. This time it’s said with less anger and venom, but it’s still something we can’t get past. Hollister stiffens and moves away. I quietly exhale. Both of us look at each other, in our shared guilt and possible remorse.
“No? Too early? Did I read the room wrong?” Dom’s gaze bounces from me to his friend and back. “We’re only taking potshots at me? Fucking figures.”
Then he’s back, the bitterness and anger surging forward. Eclipsing the vulnerable child, he let out, letting me glimpse and speak to him for a few fleeting minutes. Back into protection mode. Behind the hard shell of a man, protecting that boy who sat with his head pressed into my bedroom door, calling for me.
“I can’t rewrite the past. Not the one with you and me years ago. Nor the one from this weekend with Hollister,” I say quietly, gentle enough to bridge the gap between where we are and where I hope to get us.
Enough of a start repairing our relationship that we can move forward.
“But I want to do better by you. I want to work on things if you are willing. Repair what I have broken and be the mother you need now. However, you need me. But I can’t do that alone. I don’t know what you want or need from me, but I am here. Present. Trying to be better for you.” He looks at me. Really looks at me.
A man calcified by bitterness and resentment.
Holding on to a narrative that might no longer work. Challenging him to try something new. Step into the unknown with me and forge a different outcome to our story. Not wrapped in brilliance or a depressive state, but out of friendship and potential understanding.
“Yeah, sure,” he relents when I want more.
He articulated his feelings so well that I now want more of it. More commitment to work on this with me. More conviction that he wants this too. The flippant response is rough, hard to digest, but probably deserved after everything I’ve done to him. It’s a casual answer wrapped in steel to guard his heart from me once again. I don’t get the privilege of much more than that, but I’ll take it.
“Okay.”
I nod, sniff, and wipe my nose as the heavy emotions move out of the room.
“Just don’t fuck it up this time.”
I don’t know how to respond to that. I’m not sure if there is a response to that, but when he stands, Hollister and I do too. The anxiety that had abated slightly rears forward, twisting the handkerchief in my hands.
He doesn’t hug me.
Let’s his gaze sweep over me and then his friend, looking on edge. As if preparing himself to take action should anything shift the wrong way.
