Page 66 of Saints & Sailors

In the beginning, I wouldn’t have given a shit about his anguish, but now, I was tired too.

I walked around the room, all the while noting that Scott’s eyes lingered on me. At one of his vinyl bookcases, my eyes fell upon a small tin box on top.

“Saylor,” Scott began to speak up from behind me.

I ignored his remark as I took it upon myself to curiously open the tin box.

To my surprise, inside was a good supply of what smelled like some killer weed.

No way.

I faced my father. “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

His cheeks tinted a little pink as he awkwardly scratched at the nape of his neck.

He was such a hypocrite.

Of course, I should’ve known better. He was a musician, and most artists had a vice.

As ticked off as I was, I let it go, feeling vulnerable in my true mission.

“I come in peace,” I clarified.

Scott arched a brow. “What does that mean?”

I shrugged, finding my way over to the piano and running my finger along the keys. “I want to talk. I have questions.”

Scott released a sigh, sitting up and setting his guitar aside. “I assume you’ve had some for a while.”

I bobbed my head, refusing to look at him. It was hard to articulate the jumbled mess that was my mind. All that I could think to ask was, “Why?”

Scott’s silence drew my attention to him. He had his head down, collecting his thoughts, thinking over each of his words carefully. I admired this, as he wasn’t one to just speak without meaning.

“You’re going to want the beginning,” he told me. “Because in a nutshell: I fucked up. I was just a kid, and I let someone tell me I wasn’t good enough, and I bailed on a situation that’s haunted me for a long time.”

I sat at the piano, fully facing him. “Tell me.”

“I left home at twenty, destined to make it, to be…” He gestured toward his wall of photos. “…among the greats, but as I told you, that didn’t work out too well.”

“Before LA, what was home like?” I wanted to know. On my mother’s side, my mom wasn’t too close with her parents. We used to see them on special occasions where my grandfather would turn his nose up at me.

I always thought he saw me as some sort of bastard.

Even at a young age you know what it’s like to be looked at differently.

My grandmother had been nice, loving even, but my grandfather had always come off detached and cold.

My mother swore for a time it was all in my head and that they both loved me.

She just wanted to protect me. It wasn’t long before we stopped seeing them altogether.

Scott ran a hand through his hair and leaned over a bit to get more comfortable. “Home was pretty ordinary. I grew up here, and at times it was great, and at others, it was dragging me down. I couldn’t sit still here. My leg was always bouncing to go. Pop, he was always against my dream to make it big out there, but my mom, she was supportive as best as she could be. You see, my sister, Irene, she was the good one, straight As in school, captain of the debate team—the whole works. My mom tried her best to understand me, while Pop often threatened to ship me off to military school.”

It was hard to believe at a time my father had been…like me. “You were trouble.”

Scott didn’t disagree. “I was a punk. All I cared about was music and getting high with my friends. I think my mom thought me going to LA would change me, so to speak, since it was the ‘real world.’ ” His gaze drew to the floor. “I guess in a way it did.”

“And then you left,” I said, urging him to keep going.