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MARCH 4TH 2004
JOEY
I endedup being almost a half an hour late for work on Thursday evening, the fourth time I’d been late in the past five weeks, because I was too weak to resist stealing an extra twenty-minutes under the sheets with Molloy.
Obviously, I couldn’t tell her father that, so when he asked about what kept me, I reeled off some bullshit about hurling.
Tony didn’t bat an eyelid when I fed him the line that I’d rehearsed all the way from his daughter’s bed to his garage.
It was similar to the line I fed him last time, and the time before that – and the time before that.
Tony never questioned me because hetrustedme.
And I was the lying piece of shit going behind his back, and against his wishes, by messing around with his daughter.
For the past five fucking weeks.
Jesus, I was a piece of shit.
For the rest of the evening, we worked alongside each other in mostly companiable silence.
I didn’t have the stomach to pretend with him.
No, because lying to this particular man was something that could never sit well with me.
“Are you alright there, Joey, son?” Tony finally breached the silence when he found me out back having a smoke after I had finished up work.
“Yeah, Tony,” I muttered, kicking gravel with my boot, as I stood in the rain.
His eyes flicked to the butt in my hand and a look of resigned disappointment washed over his features. “I hope that’s a rollie you’re smoking, boyo, and nothing stronger.”
“Isn’t it always,” I lied, exhaling deeply.
“How are you supposed to hurl when you’re poisoning yourself with those things?”
The question wasn’t how I was supposed to play hurling; it was how was I supposed to survive if I didn’t.
“Ah, you know me, Tony.” Stubbing it out, I quickly slid the joint back into the pocket of my work trousers before my boss lost his shit on me. “You can’t kill a bad thing.”
He looked at me for a long moment and then shook his head. “Well, it’s almost nine. You better get on home, lad, before your mother sends out a search party for you. You’ve school in the morning.”
It didn’t matter what time I stayed out until.
Nobody was coming to search for me.
“Tony?”
“Yes, Joey, lad?”
“I just…” I blew out a breath, as I wrestled with my conscience, with the tsunami of guilt inside of me. Because I knew exactly where I would go when I left him, and it wasn’t home. No, I was heading straight for his daughter. “I just wanted to say thanks.”
He smiled. “For what?”
For everything.I shrugged. “Just thanks.”
“Anytime, boyo,” he replied, waving me off.
Sliding my phone out of my pocket, I smirked as I re-read the text Molloy had sent me earlier.
