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“How about you start by explaining where my medication has been going?” she urged, tears filling her eyes. “You have been so good for so long. Months, Joey, months! And now we’re, what? Back to square one? Why would you do this to yourself, Joey, why?”
“When have I ever laid a finger on you?” I demanded, heart gunning in my chest as I snatched my hand back. “Or Shannon? Or the boys, for that matter?”
“I’m not talking about whether or not you would harm other people, Joey,” Mam replied. “I’m talking about the harm you’re doing to yourself. I don’t understand how you can throw your life away on a habit that you know ruins lives.”
“What do you want from me, huh?” I demanded, at my wits’ end. “You let that bastard stay, knowing what he tried to do to my girlfriend, so I leave. Then you text me three days later, begging me to come back and save you from him, so I come back and do exactly that. Now, you’re in my room, grilling me on being absent from school, accusing me of being cold to you, and calling me a fucking addict?” I shook my head.
“I’m here when I don’t want to be, when I would rather be anywhere else on this planet—and that includes a coffin—but I’m here because you called. Because you need me. Because they need me. Even though being inside this house makes me want to peel my skin off. I’m fucking here. If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, then I don’t know what to say. I really don’t.”
“I want you to love yourself enough to stop destroying yourself.”
“How do you ever expect that to happen when the very person who gave birth to me can’t love me?”
Mam reared back like I had struck her—and maybe I had, but it was with the truth.
“That is not true,” she cried, pushing her hair back. “You can’t possibly believe that.”
“Whatever.” Shaking my head, I dragged myself off the bed and moved for my clothes. “I’m not doing this with you right now. I have somewhere to be.”
“Somewhere like Shane Holland’s house?”
Remaining silent, I kept my back to her and slipped on my sweats before pulling a hoodie on.
“Don’t do it,” she begged, following after me as I pocketed my phone and wallet and moved for the door. “Think about your future.”
“I don’t have one of those anymore.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No.” I shook my head and yanked the door open. “He took her away from me.”
______________________
With a cigarette balanced between my lips, I spent an inordinate amount of time slumped on the steps outside of the Garda station, willing myself to just stand up and walk inside. Just walk my legs in there and give the Gards my statement.
Give them my truth.
My father should be behind bars for putting his hands on Molloy, and the resentment I felt at having my hands once again tied behind my back by a woman I loved and was desperate to protect was fucking with my head like nothing else. I’d hit my limit that night and screwed up, but I didn’t feel half the regret for using that I felt for keeping quiet.
When he put his hands on Molloy that night, he aimed an arrow right at my weak spot, and when she rejected me, when she compared me to him, that arrow had flown, striking me straight through the heel.
Bleeding out and wounded, I’d given up on any more bullshit pretenses about turning pages and fresh starts and had gone straight back to the only thing I knew would help me drown out the noise.
Drown out the fucking agony of it all.
Because the truth was, I didn’t want to lie anymore.
I didn’t want to cover up.
I was completely done with the bullshit, and if that made me a shitty son and a horrible brother, then so be it. Because the old man exposed something inside of me that night. A truth I hadn’t realized myself until he forced me to face it.
It shook the foundations of my very being to acknowledge it, but the truth was that something had shifted inside of me this past year. My priorities had switched. I had come to the realization that Aoife Molloy had become the single most important person in my world.
Unnerving as it was to admit, there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to protect her. Even if that meant going against my entire family to do right by her. Because, regardless of the consequences incurred by the rest of my family, I was willing to go against everything I had been programed to protect in order to protect her. Even if that meant going against every fiber of my being and remaining quiet about my father because that’s what she needed from me.
Conflicted and furious, I remained right there on the steps of the Garda station until the sky darkened and my anger waned, making way for my depression. And fuck if the depression wasn’t worse. Dying on the inside and burning on the outside, I stared down at the scars on my knuckles, and forced myself to pretend that I was fine.
That none of this hurt.
