Tristan starts snapping his fingers in everyone’s faces when nobody answers.
“Words, boys. Answers. Do you have a ride?” he enunciates.
Chris squints at him like he doesn’t understand why he’s so loud.
“Yeah, man. Chill. Bennie’s wife is on her way.”
Tristan huffs. “Bennie’s pregnant wife, you mean. At two in the fucking morning. All class, guys. You’re all class.”
There’s a general sound of grumbling, but nobody has the balls to argue with him about it, clearly.
“Silas, Silas,” Cade’s oblivious to the tension, bouncing on his toes while he leans into me like he’s still full of energy. “You gotta hear about the plan. We have the best plan. We’re gonna race on Tuesday. Just a few of us, the old crew from high school. Chris’s uncle is going to let us use his track after dark. The whole thing will be off the books, he’s going to take bets and the winnertakes the pot, minus his cut. Come on, you should race with me. We’ll destroy them, and I can use the money for like, lawyer fees and shit. Get the girls. It’s perfect, right?”
The conflicting surge of emotions reaches my maximum capacity and then immediately surpasses it, so I do what I do best and shut the fuck down. Blank face, dead eyes, not really looking at him but keeping him from falling on his ass.
The amount of times I’ve done this for Dad is immeasurable. At least Cade isn’t telling me all the ways I suck in the process.
Tristan is pushing the three other guys toward the exit, half-listening to Cade talk. He’s tense, I can tell, but he isn’t saying anything. I don’t even know if I want him to. Instead, though, he starts yelling at the lady who let us in, telling her that if she lets any of these dumbcunts drive home he really will call the cops.
Once there’s a little distance between them and us, Tristan turns around and moves toward Cade.
Cade still hasn’t noticed that he is failing to match everyone else’s vibe with his good mood, but as soon as Tristan reaches for him, his eyes go wide and he leans back on instinct.
Tristan doesn’t stop. He grabs Cade by his hoody, fisting it with both hands and yanking him out of my grip. Then, with a lot less struggle than I would have expected, he pins him against the nearest wall with a rough shove, high enough for Cade to be on his toes.
“Hey!” Cade gets out, but it’s mostly an explosion of air from his lungs and it’s followed by a cough. “What the fuck?”
Bennie, Junior, and Chris also turn like they’re about to intervene, but one look at Tristan’s face makes them think better of it.
“You have clearly elected to be done with kid gloves. So I’m telling you very fucking directly right now,” Tristan says in a quiet, dangerous voice. He’s holding Cade in place as he leans into his space to keep talking. “You have fucked up. You havebeen fucking up, and it has gotten worse, and now you’re hurting people with it. I know you’re hurting, too. Sharon told me about Jaden.”
Tristan gets a little quieter as he says it, while Cade abruptly turns away from him and doesn’t answer.
“And I’m sorry,” he continues. “But you don’t get to use that as an excuse to go off the rails. You’re not your fucking parents, no matter what you keep telling yourself. So you are going to dry out, apologize to absolutely fucking everybody, and then find a constructive way to deal with your shit or I swear to god, I will drag your ass to rehab kicking and screaming the whole way.”
The silence in the bar is almost painful, and I can’t let myself think about how everybody must be staring at us.
Cade lets his mouth hang open for a minute, unable to find the right words as he stands on his tiptoes, held tight in Tristan’s grip. Finally, when the tension has reached fever pitch, he speaks.
“I’m sorry,” he says to Tristan before turning to me. “I’m sorry, Silas, I wasn’t trying to… You didn’t need to come down here. I had a ride. Everything’s cool.”
I can’t even look at him right now. The parallels between him and his dad and my dad are all too painfully clear, and I’ve heard this shit too many times to buy into it.
“Apologies don’t mean much when you’re still sweating acetaldehyde. You’re going to hydrate, and sleep, and then face the consequences of your actions. Understood?”
Cade nods, and it looks like the gravity of the situation is finally sinking in.
I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m hollow right now, having carved out all my insides and placed them somewhere else in time and space to deal with later. I know Cade is staring at me, looking for absolution or something, but I don’t have anything to offer him right now.
Tristan finally lets him go, and Cade sways again before finding his balance. He looks at the ground, and out of the corner of my eye, I think I see him blinking too much, like he’s trying not to cry.
My heart would break if I had one.
“Let’s go,” I say, still not looking at him. My voice is raspy as hell, and I have no idea why, but right now all I want is for this to be over.
Cade slumps as he walks, but he doesn’t reach for me and stays upright on his own. Tristan follows behind us silently, and I can feel him watching us. Nobody else in the bar says much either as we all pile out into the parking lot.
Tristan offers to drive Cade if I drive Cade’s car. I think he thinks I’m upset, but he doesn’t know how little I can truly feel, or just how much practice I’ve had doing this.
