Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
The man’s green eyes darted fast to Lucas before he added lower, “You’re not going to see him tonight, either. He’s moved to Halifax with his boyfriend. Another hard line for Mom and Dad.”
Jesus.
Lucas was so tired.
“He told me to get a therapist before he left last month,” Griffin added. “I’m starting to think everybody should have one. Like a mandatory thing we can pull up when needed and say, hey, these things are fucked and they’re fucking with me.”
A laugh passed between the two.
“You started therapy?” Lucas asked after, honestly surprised.
“Yep—why, you thinking about it?”
“I hadn’t,” he admitted.
Therapy probably wasn’t the miracle key to fix his life, but it made sense why Griffin would put the suggestion on the table. Some things needed help to get worked out. He wanted happiness, and that kept being sucked away from him by a toxic family dynamic he had yet to manage. Avoiding and people-pleasing didn’t put Lucas in a place that served himself first. He just happened to be in a shitty position where he couldn’t talk to just anyone about these things. He’d not been raised that way, for one.
“You should try it,” Griffin said, slapping Lucas on the shoulder as he passed by his friend to take the stairs down again. “I gotta get back to watching out for these damn kids. Can’t have somebody burning themselves and threatening to sue.”
Lucas didn’t reply, but Griffin did something important for him at that moment. A silent friend to friend understanding that it was okay not to be okay sometimes.
He might try therapy. Like boxing and church, even though he’d not found what he really wanted or needed in those things. Then, nobody could say Lucas didn’t try.
He simply needed to make it through the winter with his father before the man headed back out west to their second brewery and bottling plant, and dispatch in the country. The spot where he’d moved his new office and worked, when he felt like it, Ronald only came back home for an extended stay in Saint John for Christmas and the winter since his divorce.
The distance between Alberta and New Brunswick—basically a whole country—made things easier in the strained family. In some ways.
“Oh, and mind the den downstairs,” Griffin called up to Lucas. “Everybody’s smoking cigars with Dad down there, and playing pool. Pretending to like drinking his shitty scotch.”
“Scotch isn’t shitty, you just have no decent tast—”
“Your father is also down there,” Griffin interjected, dead staring Lucas from below.
“Avoid the shitty scotch, don’t see my father. Got it,” Lucas said.
That’s what mattered to him.
Might as well make this night bearable—for himself—even it was just pushing back the inevitable to a later date. Some things couldn’t be helped.
*
Avoid the den.
Famous last words.
Lucas didn’t get to avoid the downstairs den, the shitty scotch, or his father, after all. The second he entered the Alcott home, Tanner—the middle son and closest to Lucas’ age, though the two weren’t particularly close or friends—spotted him from across the room.
So much for a quick warm up of his fingers with the hopes of slipping back outside unnoticed. Lucas couldn’t be so lucky.
“Teams!” Tanner shouted at him from the other side of the dining room like Lucas should immediately know what he meant. “You’re here—I told your father we were doing teams for billiards at least once tonight, man. Right now, let’s go … I just got Dad up and playing again, so he’s in the right mood.”
By the time Tanner finished his explanation, he had crossed the room to throw an arm around Lucas’ shoulder with a hug that pulled him toward the rear hallway connecting to the room that led to the private den downstairs. He didn’t know how to shove off the man’s arm, or intentions, without seeming like a total asshole, so he sucked it up and let Tanner pull him along.
“Work kept you busy this year?” Tanner asked, making polite small talk on the way.
Lucas wished he wouldn’t bother. “Something like that—I heard you were running for city council coming up, eh?”
Turning the topic back to Tanner worked to Lucas’ favor. The guy was more than happy to talk about himself—always at the ready to sell the image of a proper Alcott—like their father, Mattos, Matty, to his friends, undoubtedly expected.
Tanner Alcott was a younger, more obnoxious version of his father. A man, personable enough with salesman’s tongue, and a booming laugh that Lucas could already hear when he and Tanner rounded the top of the wood paneled staircase leading to the basement den. The cigar smoke hadn’t quite carried all the way up the stairwell yet, but he found it halfway down like a wall the two had to walk through to get to the bottom.
Before they did, Lucas heard something else he didn’t want to.