“Wife or tattoo?” he jokes, cracking open his beer. “Yeah, just the one.”
“Want any more?” I ask.
He shakes his head, finishing a long sip. “Nah, I’ll leave that to you.”
“Right,” I say, opening my beer and drinking. I turn toward the window behind the bar that overlooks the brewery as I look at the can’s label.Ace of hearts,it reads.“I like this one.”
“Hmm?” Nik says, returning from where he’d drifted off to. “Oh, yeah, me too.”
I nod, taking another sip. Nik taps his fingertips on the counter as our knees keep time, bouncing at the same pace. Minutes pass in uncomfortable, stretched-out silence.
“Look,” I say at the exact same time Nik says, “Listen.”
We both laugh, then I scratch at my brow, bowing to him. “After you.”
“I was just going to say that…I’m sorry. I tried to force you to open up before you were ready, and I get why you shut me down. I understand not wanting to talk about it. That’s where I was for a long time. But I don’t want us to just”—he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose—“not talk at all because we can’t talk about the past.”
“I’m sorry too,” I say before taking a long sip and placing my can down between us. “I’m…” I put my palm flat on the bar, tapping my fingers against the mahogany stain. “Yeah, I’m just really sorry. For a lot of things. For making fun of this,” I say, tapping my fingertip against a coaster that readsMANS Brewery.“For shutting you down when you tried to talk. For not calling more. For not being around. F—” I reach up and scratch next to my ear, an absent-minded distraction as I gather courage. “For never properly thanking you for the role you played in my life.”
“Oh,” Nik says, shaking his head as his eyebrows push together. “No, no we don’t—”
“I love you,” I tell him, and let him see with my eyes that Imean it before he turns his face away. “And it’s going to take some time for me to open up. It’s going to take alotof time, I think, but I’m going to try now. I—” I breathe in, long and slow. “I don’t want to keep running from the shit that happened to us. I don’t want to”—I move a clenched fist up and down the center of my chest, unsure of how to express this dense heaviness I feel there—“keep thisshitlocked up anymore.”
“I know,” he tells me, looking downward as he drops his hand on my shoulder. “And I, um”—he shakes himself, patting my shoulder twice before gripping it tightly—“I love you too, brother.” Nik drops his hand, moving to rest it on the bar top.
“I guess there are some situations that ABBA can’t fix,” I tease, reaching for my beer again.
Nik’s face twitches, a shy smile appearing as he turns softened eyes under stoic brows toward me. “You remember that?”
I swallow the last of my beer. “Of course I do,” I tell him. “How could I forget?”
His lips pout, nodding slowly before taking a swig of his drink. I study him for a silent minute, noticing the subtle, prideful expression he’s wearing as he taps his ring finger against the can in his grasp.
“I wouldn’t have gotten through half of—” I cut myself off, fearing the other side of that sentence and the memories it could bring in. “Not without you, man. I know you were just a kid too, but you—” I stop speaking when I see his bottom lip quiver. He immediately covers it with his calloused hand.
“I could’ve done more,” he says, then clears his throat. He throws back his can, finishing it off with a loud swallow. “I should’ve done more. I should’ve never left you two there with them. I know that now.”
I shake my head, but can’t bring myself to respond to that. Forgiving him for leaving Nads and me behind feels distinctlylike forgiving myself for leaving Nads a few years later. And I cannot do that. At least, not yet. “Have you heard from them at all?”
“Mom and Dad?” he clarifies, and I nod. “No,” he answers, scraping a palm over his chin. “And, honestly, I hope I never do.”
“Don’t you think we have to forgive them?” I ask. “Isn’t that the only way to release all of this—” I wave my hand over my chest again and that dense, heavy feeling that lives in there.
“Anger?” Nik suggests. I nod, realizing that’s exactly what it is.
“I don’t think so, no. My, er, my therapist told me something a few months back that really…well, it stayed with me.” He clears his throat, looking up to the ceiling with squinted eyes. “You can decide someone doesn’t have a seat at your table without hoping that they starve.”
I look away as I nod slowly, taking it in.
“I think of it like this,” he says, turning toward me. I meet his gaze. “I am the one who gets to decide who’s in my life now. I don’t have to forgive Mom and Dad, because I doubt I ever could. But I can also decide that I don’t need them to suffer in order for me to move on. And, as it is, I’ve already got a lot of mouths to feed sitting around my table.” He chuckles dryly. “I want them to be my focus, the kids. So, I need to put this shit behind me so I can put them first. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” I say, wishing I had another drink to reach for. “But, like,how? How do we just…”
“I don’t know, man. But I do know that we didn’t choose to be born to our parents. We certainly didn’t choose for them to hurt us the way they did. I know that it makes merealangry sometimes. I know that there are days where I’d like to drive over there and let them have it. I know that there are moments where I just wish they’d call me and beg for forgiveness too. Mostly, I knownowthat I have to let all of these feelings run through me,instead of ignoring them. Otherwise, they’ll just rot me from the inside out.”
“I still want them to hurt,” I confess quietly, mulling over his words. “I think I’m still…there.”
“That’s okay,” Nik tells me, smiling lopsidedly with a shrugged shoulder. “For now, that’s all right.” He pats my forearm before reaching behind the bar for two sampler glasses and filling them under the beer tap. “We can work on that…. You’ll move past it.”
