***

I park in front of Lucky’s Tavern and make my way inside the dimly lit bar. I don’t hear the commotion I’m expecting, only the typical Friday night crowd noise that’s blending in with the sound of the music blaring overhead. Scanning the room, I spot Ray behind the bar, and he motions me over, empathetic frown in place.

“What the fuck? Where is he?” I ask when I reach the wooden countertop.

“Sorry, man. I tried to keep him here but once he heard you were coming, he bolted.”

Of course. This is the shit I need right now.

I exhale roughly through my nose, shaking my head. “God fucking damn it. Do you have any idea where he went? Did he say anything?”

He proceeds to wipe the counter in front of him with a rag. “I’d try the liquor store a few blocks from here. It’s the closest place for him to get booze.” He looks up at me, his hand stilling on the counter. “Have you tried talking to him about maybe checking into rehab? I know a few recovering alcoholics I could set you up with. I’m sure they’d be interested in helping you get him set up somewhere.”

I glare at him. “You’re a fucking bartender, Ray, not a therapist. Don’t try to give me advice on shit I don’t care about.”

“Whatever, man,” he says in a clipped tone, flipping the rag onto his shoulder and straightening up. “He could get help. That’s all I’m saying.”

I don’t give him a response because I’m not in the mood to hash it out with Ray right now. And if I continue talking to him, I might knock his ass out, which would piss me off further because I really like the guy. So I leave, pushing my way back through the crowd and out into the muggy air.

I get in my truck and proceed down Taylor Avenue to the liquor store close by. But I don’t make it there, because slumped on a curb a block away, with a bottle in his hand, is the reason I’ve been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night.

I’d rather be dragged out of bed to rub my cock over those perfect…

God, I’m fucking pathetic.

I pull over and put my truck in park beneath the light post that’s illuminating the dark street. As soon as I slam my door, he startles. His body jolts violently, causing the bottle to slip in his hand. He recaptures it before it hits the ground, and slowly lifts his eyes to me.

“Get outta here, kid. I’m not going anywhere.” He tips the already half-empty bottle back, gulping four times before lowering it and wiping the back of his mouth with his hand. He looks dirty, as if he’s been on a week-long drinking bender and living with the homeless who rotate through the abandoned buildings in town. His long, blond hair is matted and hanging in his face that he keeps turned down, avoiding my judgmental stare.

I step up behind him, grabbing underneath one bicep and hauling him to his feet. “Get up. I’m taking you home.”

He rips his arm out of my grip, pushing his hair back to glare at me over his shoulder. “Off! What’d I say?”

I step into him and he stumbles, staggering forward and bracing himself with a hand on the sidewalk. Some of his liquor spills and he curses before righting himself and his precious bottle. “See what you did? What you always do! Get the hell outta here.”

My patience just ran out. I knock the bottle out of his hand, sending it crashing to the pavement. Glass and amber liquid stain the cement, and I grab him by his shirt with both my hands, bringing his face an inch away from mine.

“You think she’d be proud of you right now? Of the man you turned out to be?”

“Don’t talk to me about her,” he snarls as he tries to evade my grip. If he weren’t piss drunk, he wouldn’t have a problem. Not with the twenty pounds of muscle he has on me. My dad’s a big guy; he always has been. But the only time I see him now is when he’s fucked up like this, incapable of standing too long without falling over, and no longer a match for me. For the past twelve years, this is the only version of my father I’ve known.

“Why? ’Cause you know she’d be ashamed of you? Because I am. I’m fucking done with this shit.” I drag him to the truck, shoving him in the passenger seat with more force than necessary since he’s not fighting me. But I don’t care. He deserves worse.

“You don’t know… You’ll never know what this feels like,” he says, head hanging down as I pull away from the curb. His body tremors as the sound of his sobs fills the car.

The only thing I hate worse than a drunk is a sad drunk.

I grip the wheel so hard the muscles in my forearm begin to burn. “You really believe that, don’t you? You think you’re the only one who lost her. Why the fuck would her dying affect me? Right?”

“She was my wife.”

“She was my mother!” I yell, so loud he leans away from me and slouches against the window. “And I didn’t just fucking lose her that day! Did I? Fuck you! It should’ve been you!” My body throbs with blinding rage as I try and focus on the road. I’ve never said that out loud before. I’ve thought it, hundreds of times, but I’ve never spoken those words to anybody. Not even myself.

His soft cries settle me down and I look over as he bends practically in half to put his head into his hands. “I loved her. Oh, God, I miss her so much.”

I drive faster, turning up the radio to drown him out. I don’t want to listen to this; his excuse for the way he’s been the past twelve years. It isn’t worth dick to me. Not when he acted like I died right along with her. I was only fifteen years old and I stopped existing to him. My father became a stranger; no longer resembling the man I looked up to, and becoming the version of himself he worked so hard to get away from. He wasn’t the only one who lost her, but I sure as hell felt alone while he drank enough to forget both of us.

And now he wants my sympathy? Fuck that. If I had any compassion to give, I sure as hell wouldn’t offer it to him.

I loop his arm around my neck, grabbing his wrist with one hand and holding onto his waist with the other as I maneuver him into his house. He grumbles incoherently as I deposit him on the bed, his voice muffled by the pillow before his body goes lax.

I’m never in this house except for nights like this; when darkness and dead silence surround me. It might as well be vacant it’s so eerily quiet. We moved here when I was five years old, and after my mom died, I thought my dad would sell it and we’d go somewhere else. Just him and me. But he couldn’t leave her. He couldn’t leave the house she fell in love with and all the memories of her it held. And I think that makes him worse, because every time he looks around, he sees her. Standing at the stove cooking a meal, or sitting in her favorite chair and working on the blanket she had been trying to finish for years. He never changes anything about this place, either. It still looks exactly how it did when she was alive, down to the smallest detail. Even the bedroom they shared remains the same. Her clothes are still hanging in the closest, her favorite book is still on the nightstand, and I know seeing that shit every day drives him to drink. He’s weak; he can’t even handle the memory of my mom without letting it pull him under.

My dad hasn’t been living here. He’s been slowly dying here.

I open the door to my old bedroom and step inside, flipping on the light. I took most of my stuff with me when I moved out nine years ago, except for the twin bed I was too tall for and a few things I didn’t want. I grab the guitar case that’s leaning against the wall in one of the corners and set it on the bed. Turning around, I open the bottom drawer of my old dresser and take out the Mason jar full of guitar picks I’ve always kept in there. I rattle it around a bit, seeing some of the old ones my dad gave me from when he used to play, before tucking the jar under my arm and picking up the guitar case. After leaving with the only two items left in the house that mean something to me, I lock up and head home.