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“Honestly?” he asks.
Entering the kitchen, I walk over to the pantry and start searching for garbage bags. “You look in the fridge and cabinets. Start loading up any bottle with alcohol on the counter.”
“Why?” he asks.
Damn, this kid likes monosyllabic responses.
“We’ve got shit to do. You called Helen a bitch, what was the punishment?” I ask as I locate the bags and start pulling out multiple ones.
I’ll have to use one of those delivery places to restock this kitchen.
“Oh… I lost my PlayStation for a week,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders.
“And you were shipped off to me because of that?” I ask with doubt in my voice.
“I… I don’t want to talk about it,” he mumbles quietly.
“Fair enough. Well, we’re going to clean this house up. This is part of your punishment for calling her that.”
“Fair enough,” he says right back.
“Good, since this is your new home for the foreseeable, I want us to keep it like a home. Not the gutter I’ve been treating it.”
“Okay,” he says and gives me another shrug of the shoulders.
“Back to my question, though. What would you want to be when you grow up? Don’t worry if you can’t pick something, but think about it. We’re going to get you there. I’ve never wanted anything more than to be a fighter, but that’s not what I am right now.”
Fuck, I feel like I’ve got diarrhea of the mouth and brain. Maybe I’m preaching more to myself than the choir though.
“What are you now?” he asks.
“A broken, lush,
waste of space,” I say immediately, and I feel like I’m being a little too damn honest.
“Wow,” he says. “Grandma doesn’t like it when I say bad things about myself like that.”
“You should never say bad things about yourself, only honest things. Right now, I am those things, but I’m not going to let myself be that anymore,” I say and start pouring out the bottles of alcohol into the sink.
My brain feels like it wants to go down with all the sweet, blissful numbing chemicals.
“So why are you forcing me to work out with you?” he asks.
“Because I saw the fire in your eyes when you were at the gym. You’ve got the bug in you.”
The same exact one I used to have in me.
* * *
Training montage, training montage, training montage. Those are the two words that keep running through my mind as the ringing in my ears grows louder and louder.
I wish I was in some fucking movie right now. Something where I could do a superfast time-lapse of the pure fucking hell I’m in.
Five-thirty in the morning came way too early for me, and getting Casey up at six wasn’t a pleasure either. Little guy has a mouth on him at that time of the morning. So do I, though, so we made it through our pre-run warmups without threatening too much violence.
It was when I dropped him off at the mile-and-a-half mark around the house that I knew I was in for hell today. I haven’t run five miles in months, and it fucking showed. I’m pretty sure when I barfed in some poor sap’s bushes at the three-mile mark that I left part of my spleen. I didn’t eat much the night before, but damn, I sure did throw up everything I had in me.
The forced breakfast of eggs, bacon, and plain baked chicken… sucked. Protein, protein, protein.
