“I told you I don’t drink.” I try a grin on her. Her face remains stony, but I think I see her eyes soften. “Can I have that coffee now?”
She picks it up and passes it to me. “Ready to dry out?”
“That’s probably a good idea,” I admit. “Look, you don’t have to stick around.”
Please do, though, I add silently.
“I have a little expertise in seeing someone through a hangover,” she says quietly.
“Me, too.”
“You should stop drinking. Please.” The pain in her voice hurts worse than my headache. We’ve danced around the topic of our fathers, but it’s clear to me that Adair knows an alcoholic when she sees one.
“I know. I’m back on the wagon.” I place a hand over my heart. “Promise.”
She shrugs.
“You’ve heard that before, haven’t you?” I ask.
“So many times I’ve lost track,” she says, “so, forgive me if I wait to believe it until I see it.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less. But I am done. You’ll see. I don’t want to be like my dad.” I wait, giving her a chance to decide how she wants to proceed. I’ve opened the book to my backstory. It’s up to her if she wants to read.
“Your dad promised you to stop drinking, too?”
Decision made. “No. He never bothered with us. Me and my sister,” I clarify. “He didn’t give a shit what two little kids thought. But my mom? Yeah, he promised her a lot. He’d get drunk, tear the place apart or worse, and then the next day, he’d promise to stop drinking. Sometimes, he went as far as to go to an AA meeting. But as soon as she forgave him, he started right back up.”
“Or worse?”
She wants the whole story. I can’t blame her. It’s just that I don’t particularly like to share it. I’ve had to a couple of times—for social workers and judges and lawyers. I take the mug of coffee and go back to the couch. “You sure you want to know?”
Adair bites her lip, tugging on my t-shirt nervously, before finally nodding. She moves closer, staring at the couch for a second before carefully sitting at the other end. Tucking a leg under her, she arranges my shirt to make sure she’s covered.
“The worst times were when he’d beat her.” I pause to take a sip of coffee. I swallow it along with my pride. “Once I got old enough, I’d jump in and pick fights with him, so he’d take it out on me.”
“He hit you?”
“His abuse came in all shapes and sizes. The more he drank, the more physical it was,” I admit to her. “My kid sister was the only one he never touched, I made sure of that.”
Her eyes close for a second. Is she pitying me? Imagining me as some poor kid being shoved around? That’s the last thing I want. But when she finally speaks, it’s to tell her own secrets. “My dad never gets physical. He just reminds us exactly how much or how little we’re worth to him, and of all the ways we disappoint. He was nicer to my mom. At least, when we were around. I guess it didn’t matter in the end.”
“I’m sorry about your mom,” I say, and every bone in my body means it.
“Why does the shitty parent always make it out alive?” she asks, then quickly covers her mouth like her own words horrify her.
“Because men like our fathers are rats. They run from danger. They’ll do anything to survive.”
“Sterling,” she says in a gentle voice, “why were you in foster care?”
She’s skipping ahead, but I can’t blame her for not wanting to hear about the years of abuse. It’s not easy reading. “I ran away,” I tell her. “At first I was able to crash with friends, but their parents’ patience ran out pretty quickly. One even tried to get me to go home.”
“Did they know why you left?”
“Yeah, but they all had problems of their own, and having a kid around eating more food and taking up more room wasn’t helping anyone. Pretty soon, I just moved to the streets.”
“You were homeless?” Her words are brittle, like she’s on the verge of tears.
“Hey, it wasn’t so bad,” I say, trying to play it off. “I learned to fight—that came in useful last night.” I wink at her, but she doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t even smile. “There’s a lot of places to go in New York when you’re on the streets. It’s not so bad.”
“Where did you go?” She scoots an inch closer to me on the couch.
“During the day, school or the library.”
“You still went to school?” she asks in surprise.
“Not the runaway fantasy of most kids, right? But there was always a hot breakfast and lunch there. Food’s food.” I shrug.
Her lip trembles and she bites down on it again.
“I went back and checked on my sister a couple times a week. I couldn’t help it,” I say. “Dad was usually out at whatever bar he hadn’t been banned from yet. One night he stayed home instead. I didn’t know he was there until I climbed in the window and heard him raging. My sister she was in her room, crouched between the bed and the wall.”
Suddenly, I’m back there.
Stale cigarette smoke lingers on the wallpaper. No one’s bothered to change Sutton’s sheets again, and her clothes are dirty. Usually, Mom is more on top of taking care of her, but judging from the shattering glass and cursing coming from the kitchen, she’s occupied with Dad. I kneel down next to Sutton and lift the chin she’s tucked against her knees. “Hey kid, you okay?”
“Mom didn’t feed me dinner tonight,” she whispers.
A cold chill races up my spine, but I force myself to smile at her. “I’ll get you dinner. Why don’t you find some clean pajamas?”
She shakes her
