But the open road no longer held any appeal. I didn’t want an unfamiliar bed or a faceless fuck or lonely miles of highway stretching out endlessly in front of me.
I wanted to be in Claire’s bed, holding on to her. Feeling her hold on to me. Hear her tell me she loves me. Say the words back. Make her a promise and keep it.
But how?
* * *
The next day, Aaron and I worked a job that Zack at the stoneworks had thrown our way. I nursed my self-pity for a couple hours that morning, but when noon came around, I swallowed my pride and asked my brother to come to lunch with me. Because he was a good guy, and because he could see I was suffering, he got in the car without a word.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said once we were on the road. “I was an asshole.”
“Yeah, you were. But I get it.”
We drove in silence for a few minutes, then I asked him a question that had been troubling me. “How do you know? How do you know you’re not going anywhere? Or that she won’t?”
“Because I trust her,” he said simply. “And now I trust myself too.”
Exhaling, I shook my head. “I can’t. I don’t know why I can’t, but I can’t. Every single time, I panic. I feel like I’m tied to the tracks of an oncoming freight train.”
“You can’t trust her? Or yourself?”
“Either of us.”
“That’s because you’ve never been shown how. You don’t have any reason to trust anyone because all you’ve seen your entire life is people taking off, starting with Mom and Dad. You learned early on not to trust anyone who’s supposed to care.”
Something had started to twist in my gut, and I didn’t like it. “You think…” I had to work hard to swallow. “You think this goes that far back?”
“Yeah. I do.”
I stopped at a red light. In my mind I heard Claire telling me I’m not her. She knew. She’d seen right through me. “I love her.”
“I know you do.”
“I only left her because I was scared of being a disappointment to her. I was scared she’d leave me.” I took a deep breath. “And I didn’t think I could take it.”
“I know.”
I looked over at him. “I guess that makes me a coward.”
“Nope. It makes you human. You’re a coward if you don’t confront that fear, though. Work through it. Put it behind you so you can be with Claire and neither of you are worried that any moment, one of you is going to walk out.”
The light turned green, and I moved forward. “How?”
“I don’t know if I can tell you exactly. For me, my worst fear was becoming Dad. Failing as a father. I thought it was inevitable.”
“So how’d you get over it?”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it completely, but I stared it down. I finally talked about it at meetings and with Josie, even a little bit with you.”
I nodded, remembering our conversation on Christmas Eve.
“And I think by putting it out there, I took back some of its power over me. By admitting what I’d been scared of, I weakened its grip on my life. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah. It does.” I thought about how much better I’d felt after talking to Claire at the cabin. Maybe I just hadn’t gone deep enough to see what fears were buried there. Maybe I’d been afraid of seeming weak.
“I realized I’m my own man,” Aaron went on as I pulled into the deli parking lot. “I’m more than just the product of some shitty DNA. Yes, I’ve made mistakes, and I’ll probably continue to make them, because I’m human, but not because I’m him. I’m not my father. The past doesn’t have to repeat itself. I’m choosing not to let it—I have that power.”
I turned off the engine. “I wish I felt that way,” I said quietly.
“You can, Theo. All it takes is a hard look at yourself and some honest conversation. I’m here for you. And I bet Claire would be too, if you’d let her.”
I frowned. “I really fucked that up.”
“Hey, nobody understands fucking up better than I do. But guess what?” He was smiling when I looked over at him. “I’m sixty days sober today.”
“Are you really? That’s fucking awesome, Aaron. Congratulations.” For the first time in a week, I felt good about something.
“Thanks. Josie has to work tonight, but I’m cooking a celebration dinner for the girls after my meeting. Want to come? We can talk a little more, if you want.”
“Yeah. I’d like that.” I’d been holed up in my apartment and hadn’t seen the kids in a while. They always made me smile.
We ate lunch, although I wasn’t all that hungry and ended up throwing half my sandwich out uneaten, and went back to the job. I spent the entire afternoon thinking about what Aaron had said. I’d always blamed the family genes for all my shortcomings, but maybe it was time to take a closer look. Maybe I was doing this to myself.
Maybe I hadn’t been born to failure—maybe I was choosing it.
* * *
At Aaron’s house that night, I played with the kids, helped Aaron cook dinner (thanks to Claire, I was no longer totally clueless in the kitchen), and raised a cupcake to Aaron’s milestone. I was proud of him, and I told him so after I helped him get the kids to bed and we were cleaning up.
“Thanks,” he said, loading plates into the dishwasher.