Page 5 of Silent Damage

Beer.

I want beer.

Cold. Cheap. And lots of it.

Preferably from a funnel.

Just dump it down my throat, please.

Anything to numb this feeling.

My oversized body shifts on the twin bed Ma put me in when the asshole screaming in the living room moved in. I had a decent room in the basement, but shithead needed space for his workout equipment.

Workout equipment. Ha!

A lot of good it did him. All those hours of pumping iron didn’t do him a bit of good against a twenty-year-old who’d had enough of his shit. Honestly, he should be grateful I stopped when I did. I could have broken his nose.

Brad…

When Ma said she was dating a Brad, I knew it was over. Brads are the type of dudes who peak in high school, then crash hard once they have to live in the real world. But what’s a Brad to do when he’s got years of Bud Light and broken dreams pumping through his veins?

Pick on his girlfriend’s son—that’s what.

He didn’t expect a tall, wiry kid who barely weighs a buck seventy-five, soaking wet, to drop him like a sack of bricks.

Nobody ever does.

I chuckle to myself, thinking about the last fight I got into. Everyone thinks they’ll teach the loud-mouthed kid a lesson until they’re crumpled on the floor and five of their buddies are pulling me off.

There’s another scream in the living room. Ma’s doing everything she can to calm him down, but there’s no point. When a guy like Brad gets humiliated by a guy like me, there’s no use in trying to mend his shattered pride.

What a little bitch.

Brad—not Mom.

Though she’s been trying my patience lately, too.

My jaw throbs. He got a good one in before I headbutted the motherfucker.

It’s all about the element of surprise.

Headbutts, a jab to the neck, a knee to the nuts. Those are the moves that knock a guy off his game.

Oh, shit, I’m bleeding.

I notice the bloodstain on my bedsheet.

Whatever.

A knock on the door is followed by Ma’s annoyed face glaring at me. “Jason, what the hell is the matter with you? You could have seriously hurt him!”

I squint my eyes at her. This is what she does. It’s always my fault when one of her boyfriends gets what’s coming to them. “I should have,” I reply.

She pinches the bridge of her nose, then sits on the end of my bed. “He wants you out,” she informs me with a defeated tone. “I’ve been trying to talk him out of it for hours, but he won’t budge.”

“Then tell him to eat a dick and get lost.”

Her eyes land on me.