Page 66 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

He shrugged again. “Every time she says she won’t go back, won’t do what Brady tells her, she ends up doing it.” He glanced over at Myles. “I heard you and Mom, you know. Her saying you could stay as long as you never drank. That the minute you did, if she ever caught you, you had to go. She couldn’t help you if you wouldn’t help yourself.”

As off topic as that seemed, Myles only nodded, hoping Jet was going somewhere with it. “Your mom was an amazing person.”

“I remember when Grandpa used to stay in the kitchen after supper drinking beer. I was little then, but I knew he wasn’t nice to her. He wasn’t nice about you, and I’d never even met you then. I think he’s why she was so strict about it. She knew what it was like to have someone around like that. And as much as she loved you, she wasn’t putting us through it.”

“And this has what to do with this girl?”

“She doesn’t want to help herself, and it sucks, but Mom was right. It isn’t worth tearing apart the rest of my life for someone who won’t even try.”

“You sure you’re only sixteen?”

Jet snorted.

For a minute, they were quiet before Jet finally lifted his head to look at Myles. “I wanted to go back so bad at first,” he said, voice gone quiet and husky again. “To help her, you know? But it wouldn’t have lasted anyway, and maybe not going back for now will be… I don’t know. Better.”

“I’ll tell you what I know.”

“Shocker,” Jet said with a damp smile.

Myles chuckled. “I know that there is no way I could ever have been any good to you and Shelly if I hadn’t been good for myself, first. Getting sober, as big as it was, was only a tiny first step, believe it or not. All of the weight of everything that got me into that pit in the first place? It doesn’t go away.”

“So what do you do with it?”

“I came here. I asked for help. I focus on what I can do, and try to go easy on myself when I mess up. I don’t expect to be perfect, and I try not to expect other people to be perfect, either.” He took a risk and cupped a hand over the back of Jet’s drooping neck. “And I let myself feel what I feel, Jet. Most of all, that. The good, sure. Like being with Steven.” He smiled. “Like our cooking lessons. And Shelly’s drawings getting less weird.”

“Right?” Jet leaned a little towards him, and Myles took the tiny, unspoken win.

“But the bad stuff, too. I grieve when I have to.”

“Doesn’t it make you mad? That she died when we still needed her?”

“Yes.”

“How are you not just… like… raging… All the fucking time?”

“Well, I’ll be honest. First, I’m not a hormonal teenager, so that’s a point in my favour.”

“This is more than that.”

“I know. I spent a lot of time where you are. I ran away from my family when my mom died. I left Nat alone with your miserable grandfather, and I can never make that up to her, but you aren’t doing that. You’re so present for your sister I sometimes think you use that as a shield.”

Jet shrugged, not agreeing, but not denying it, either.

“If you do, maybe it helps you both. So long as you know you’re doing it, you can maybe be careful not to overdo it.”

“She needs attention,” Jet said. “So much attention.”

“And she adores you, so there’s that.”

“What’s the second thing? About the being mad all the time thing?”

Myles let Jet go, leaning on his knees as well, and clasping his hands in front of him. “Maybe I got a lot of that rage out in the army. Maybe it spilled over into how I dealt with threats on the street. Maybe I drowned it in drink. I don’t have healthy answers for you in how I dealt with it.”

“So basically, don’t do any of the things you did.”

Myles sighed. “It’s a place to start.”

To his surprise, Jet toppled into him, his sharp shoulder digging into Myles’s arm. “Did we run here for help, or did we run away from Calgary?”