My brows furrow in confusion. “But it’s a grief camp for younger kids now, isn’t it?”
He nods. “Ryann, my sister, she passed away too. Overdosed in some shady flop house somewhere, after going missing for a couple weeks. Feeling like I owed my sister more than what I had been able to give her when she was alive, I took on raising Morgan, my niece. She was eight at the time, when her mom passed. Watching her try to process her grief, I changed the mission of the camp.”
Oh my fuck, that’s a heart-wrenching story. I suddenly no longer have an appetite for my treat, and I reach over and toss it into the trash. Part of me wants to reach for him, seeing how lost and grief-stricken he looks right now. It’s like he’s looking through me, not at me, as he recalls his sister’s overdose. How his life had to change suddenly when he started raising an eight-year-old… one who I had thought was his daughter, not his niece.
Christ, this man in front of me—he’s a damned martyr. One of the things he said, though, strikes me...
“You—you mean, as in just yourself—changed the mission of the camp? Where did Kai go when it came to running the camp together?”
He sniffs lightly, the only sign that he’s barely keeping himself together right now. “The night it became official, that I was Morgan’s emergency kinship placement after Ry’s OD, Kai—well, he stood his ground and said that living together and raising a child wasn’t a task he felt up for.
“I mean, he still came through with the financial backing on the camp itself, which I’m so grateful for. I wouldn’t have been able to come up with the start-up costs, and he had a trust fund that he had access to. With all the times I had to come up with quick cash to helpmy moms bail Ryann out of jail, my credit was toast. Still is,” he smirks sullenly, “but that’s just because Morgan’s so involved in everything. I want her to have every single opportunity she sets her sights on, which happens to be a heck of a lot.”
My fists ball on the legs of my jeans. When I feel the lump in the front pocket, I push up from the table to take a few steps back towards the edge of the parking lot, and I light up a smoke. Brooks eyes me as I take a long drag, releasing the smoke out through my nostrils. I’m sure he’s judging me about my smoking, but it’s the only thing keeping me from coming unglued right now.
Kai was supposed to be Brooks’ partner, and he justleftBrooks to deal with this alone? And Brooks is sitting here rattling off platitudes for why that’s okay? Nah, that’s not being a man; that’s taking the coward’s way out. That doesn’t sit right with me.
“It is what it is though,” he carries on. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the ever-loving heck out of that girl, but sometimes I do have to wonder where my life would be right now if I had done things differently when Ryann was still alive. I mean, I feel like I’m always going to feel this overwhelming guilt nagging at me, that I could have—that Ishouldhave done more.
“I feel guilty that, when I first went through the process of getting custody of Morgan, it was because I felt I owed Ryann something, for the way I’d pretty much cut her out of my life. I felt like that step I took to cut her off was for self-preservation, and then she died. That was my cosmic punishment for being a crap brother, and so I felt obligated to tip the karma scales back to even by adopting Morgs—even though I knew it would be at the cost of my relationship with Kai.”
He sighs, then carries on, “It was selfish. I was selfish, and I know that now. He had every right in the world to leave; me expecting him to stay and help me raise a child wasn’t anything I should have thrustupon him. I wouldn’t trade a minute with Morgan for the world, but knowing that I originally felt bitter about her coming into my life, and thus ending things with Kai, it’s something that I feel pretty shameful about.”
Not knowing how to react to all those feelings laid bare, I just nod and toss my butt, stamping out the cherry with my boot. I think back to the day Miranda called me to tell me she’d taken a pregnancy test by herself after school in one of the locker rooms, too nervous to have her parents find out if she’d taken it at home. We were just kids—kids who didn’t know a damn thing about safe sex. We hadn’t been dating for very long, but when she told me it was ‘positive’, I knew that I’d step up and do whatever it took to do the right thing.
To make sure that she knew she wasn’t alone.
To be present one-hundred percent, so she knew that we were in this together—both scared as shit, and wondering how we’d finish high school, figure out what we’d do after graduation, and how to do that with a baby while we ourselves were still just babies.
I worked my ass off to support her career goals, however. She saw it as me distancing myself from her and Colt, but I saw it differently. I had to work that hard, so I could finance her dreams.
Kai having a trust fund means he didn’t have to work for his money at all. He just threw it at Brooks, and essentially told him to ‘have a nice life.’ I have half a mind to put my fist through Kai’s nose once I get back to camp and install this new battery for Brooks.
I don’t know how long Brooks and Kai were together before Brooks got custody of Morgan, but I do know it makes you a fucking utterly worthless shell of a human to not man up and stick around when your partner needs you most. And I might not have always been the most outspoken about my feelings when it came to Miranda, but I thoughtmy staying—by working endlessly at a ton of odd jobs to provide for my little family—would make it obvious enough that I was worthy.
Fuckin’ Christ, you really are the apple that didn’t fall far from Wagner’s tree. You worked yourself so hard, to fulfill that sense of duty as the man of the household, that to do anything less than work from dawn-till-dusk, was considered failure. And for what? You have no better relationship with your own son than your dad does with his. You swore you’d never go out on that boat so you didn’t miss out on your kid, yet still missed so many of Colton’s firsts anyway. But you did it all in the name of doing the right thing without being a ‘married to the sea’ Waters, you worthless hypocrite.
I watch as Brooks stares across the parking lot, absentmindedly crunching the rest of his cone, as if having to deal with the crushing weight of having to do everything on his own is just—normal. An everyday occurrence. I know better than anyone, that it’s damned hard. Granted, Morgan seems like a much more well-adjusted kid, so that has to help.
Maybe it’s because the death of her mother isn’t as raw as it is for Colt. He was a well-adjusted kid too, I thought, before Miranda died. The vandalism, the car-keying, the blatant targeting of Gordy’s pub—that was never even anything I thought he was capable of, until he lost his number one. His clear favorite parent. The only one who he claims everunderstoodhim.
“Shall we head back? I have my doubts trusting it with Kai, but I don’t see smoke over the treetops yet, so there’s hope the camp might still be standing when we get back,” he notes with a chuckle, pushing up from the picnic table.
Just as I round my side of the table, Brooks manages to catch me, wrapping his arms around me and pressing his body close to mine. I am oddly feeling it impossible to tell this man clinging tightly tome that I’m not a hugger. I can probably count on all my digits the amount of hugs I ever recall randomly getting in my lifetime—and one-hundred percent of them were from my son, who was under the age of ten when he still doled them out to me, before it became ‘skibidy toilet.’
Still trying to figure out whatever the fuckthatmeans.
With Brooks’ face buried into my chest, I find myself pulling him closer to me, holding him securely, and noting just how much he feels like a missing puzzle piece that’s just found its place in the bigger picture. How well his body fits against mine. I rest my chin on the top of his head, feeling him breathe deeply in my hold—almost like he’s relieving himself of a pent-up breath.
It feels…good.
“Thank you for listening to me,” he sighs into my chest.
I lift my head, so that I can peer down at him. He doesn’t look back up at me, so I nudge his chin. When he does finally return my gaze, his expression is etched with vulnerability and a hint of shame—as if what he shared with me, just now, wasn’t allowed.
“You don’t need to thank me,” I tell him, because honestly, I don’t need to be thanked for just listening. I can’t even offer him any sage advice. Nothing he doesn’t already know anyway, given what he does for work.
“Well, I’m just sorry you had to witness my trauma dumping all over you,” he says, his lips downturned as he pulls away from me. “I swear, I’m not usually such a negative Nancy. This was very nice, stopping in for ice cream, and here I am, whining about my financial woes and family struggles to someone I just met a few days ago,” he explains over his shoulder, heading back over to my bike.
