“Child psychology is my dream. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do,” I said, anger starting to bubble below the surface.
“I know you’ve said that, but maybe you’re only still thinking that because it’s all you’ve ever really considered. Maybe you just got it in your head that that’s what you’re supposed to do. You should try other jobs and see if maybe there’s something else out there that you would like,” he said.
“We love you and just want you to have a happy life,” Mom said, tying the whole disaster of a conversation up into a nice bow.
“Alright, I’m done,” Nick said. He got up from the table and put his napkin down beside his plate. “Go pack your bags. You’re staying with me.”
My parents looked horrified, and I shook my head. “It’s okay. I don’t need to do that. I really am fine here.”
I wasn’t entirely sure why I didn’t take him up on his offer right then.
“Are you sure?” Nick asked.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Well, keep it in mind.”
He sat back down and ate, keeping his head tucked down for the rest of the meal. After dinner, he barely spoke a word other than reminding me again that his place was available to me, then left. I went back into the dining room to help clear the table and found my mother shaking her head as she piled the dishes up to carry them into the kitchen.
“I don’t know what his problem is,” she said. She let out a sigh and scooped up the pile of dishes to go into the kitchen. “Actually, yes I do.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, gathering up what she wasn’t able to carry and bringing it in after her.
“The divorce really messed up his head. I hate that he went through that. I hate that either one of you had to go through what you did. That’s what I was talking about. I never should have let either one of you leave the house,” she said.
I mirrored her sigh as I put the dishes into the sink to start washing them. I couldn’t just let her continue on this way. I needed to stand up for myself and make sure she understood I hadn’t come back into town for her and my father to rescue me. I wasn’t crawling back into the womb anytime soon.
I put down the sponge, turned off the water, and turned to look at her.
“Mom, listen. I understand you and Dad want me to be happy. And I appreciate that. But I’m going to be happy with the job I want. That I’ve always wanted. I’ve got this. I’m an adult now. I don’t need the two of you to hold my hand and get me through life. Please stop worrying so much about me. And about Nick. We’re both going to be okay. Like he said, people hit speed bumps. They make mistakes. We have to make them in order to grow. And you have to let us. It’s the only way we’re going to get through.”
7
Tyler
For the first time in what seemed like forever, I had the night off, and yet I found myself heading to another bar. Granted, this time, it was in another city, and I wasn’t with my brothers, but Nick. He was fiddling with his phone, trying to find music the two of us agreed on to stream through the radio as I drove.
“So which bar are we going to?” I asked.
“It’s called Twisters. You can’t miss it,” he said, still cycling through songs. It was driving me nuts since a second or two of each song would play before he would hit the next button.
“Will you just pick something, already?”
“Fine.” He put the phone back down on the magnetic holder on the dash. “Yanni it is.”
“It better not be,” I said, glaring at him.
“It’s not. Just drive.”
We’d passed out of the city limit and into another town a good twenty minutes ago, but I wanted to go even further, all the way out to Seaview. I rarely got a chance to get out of Astoria, and the beachy area near Seaview had a couple of bars that I remembered hitting up with Nick before my brothers and I ended up owning one.
Every once in a while, I just needed to blow off steam somewhere else. My initial plan for the evening was to stay at home, put on sweatpants, invite Nick over, and watch a pro wrestling pay-per-view. But after much haranguing by Nick, he convinced me to go up to Seaview and have dinner and drinks at the bar up there, which coincidentally also showed wrestling pay-per-views.
Pulling into the parking lot, I noticed that it was considerably less packed than I was used to. Being at the bar we owned had gotten me so used to wall-to-wall people and fighting for a parking space that it was actually kind of foreign to just be able to pull in and not have a wall of sound coming from the building. When we walked in, the hostess asked if we wanted a table, but we both opted for the barstools and took our places directly across from the main television behind the bar.