“You always say we have to be honest with each other. So, let’s be honest.” He turns from Mum to me. “We do still worry you’ll go off the rails again. And yes, we thought this week would be a trigger.” Dad looks back at Mum. “Is that the right word? Trigger?”
“Yes, well done, darling.” My mum drops my hand to pat his arm, but with her other hand she whisks the newspaper further away from him.
“Then I'll be honest with you,” I say with a sigh. “I nearly had a drink last night, but I didn’t. I didn’t. And honestly, in general, I don’t miss drinking. Really, I don’t.”
“Personally, I've never thought you had a drinking problem, son,” my dad says.
“Says the man drinking a beer at nine o'clock in the morning.” My mother points at the bottle in his hand.
“What? I'm on holiday and we rode nearly seventy kilometres earlier.” He toasts me with the bottle and I jovially return it with my coffee cup.
“I get why you don't want me to drink,” I turn to Mum, “and frankly, I don't want to drink for the same reasons. I know I have to feel all the shitty things that I was trying to run away from when I went AWOL. And I am. Sort of. I’m working on it. I may not always show it to you guys, but I am.”
Mum takes a moment before she speaks again which should have been my first clue. “So last night, before dinner, where were you?”
“I was here in the resort,” I say sounding like the smartass I’m trying to be.
“Well, that was assumed but you were gone all afternoon and no one can stay in the gym that long, and why didn’t you come home with Maeve after she found you?”
I swallow before speaking. Do I tell her the truth? That I met this really interesting woman and she made me laugh, a lot, and I’m not sure I'll ever forget the way her skin glowed in the last licks of the daylight as the sun went down...
No, best not tell her that. Best tell a whopping great lie instead.
“I ended up meeting the hotel manager in the bar. Got talking to him. Had a few drinks -mocktailsbefore your blood pressure peaks - I watched the sun go down, and then I came to dinner.”
“The hotel manager? What's he like?” My mother's interest is piqued now, and I internally applaud my own brilliance.
“Nice. Gay. Arse looks great in linen shorts.”
“Oh, okay,” my mother stutters.
“I'm teasing. I don't fancy him.”
“He must be too old for you too, surely,” Dad adds, and I choke on my mouthful of coffee.
“You can't say anything about that,” my mother says tilting her head back so her hat lifts as she looks at Dad. It's almost impossible to notice the ten years between them now, but I do remember some kids having questions when my dad’s hair went grey a lot quicker than their parents’ did. I never saw it as a big deal. They loved each other and they’ve always been good parents. In some ways too good.
“Fair enough.” Dad gives her a wink that she blushes at, which I try to ignore.
“Anyway,” Mum refocuses on me, “I wanted to also ask you about your meds.”
My skin is suddenly a lot tighter all over my body.
“You said yesterday that you’ve stopped taking them,” she continues.
“Yeah, I did,” I say, recalling how I blurted that out in one of the few stressful conversations we shared on the journey to Crete.
“Why?”
“Because... because I hate taking them. They make me feel broken,” I say, and I know I am, but I don’t want the reminder every morning and every night.
“That’s not what they mean. If anything, they mean the opposite,” she says and she swallows, pausing. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? It’s not even been six months and often that’s when they actually start to work. You know when I was on Prozac after your sister, it took a few months for me to start feeling better and then, when I came off it, I had to do it over a long period of time.”
“I know, Ma.”
“When did you stop?”
“Last week,” I reply, my eyes on my plate even though I’m just moving the food around it.
