Chapter 27
Logan
Gage stood at the end of the hallway, on the phone with his mom, trying to talk her down from the ledge. I didn’t envy him the job. She sounded on the verge of hysterics.
I didn’t think it was a good idea to leave Cooper alone for too long, so I entered his room. I was mostly here for moral support and to drive Gage home again. With him so rattled by tonight’s events, I didn’t want him driving.
Cooper glanced up from the hospital bed as I walked in. This kid looked a wreck. I realized I had maybe nine years on him, but he felt so much younger than me. Then again, I had more life experience than he did. Maybe that was why I felt this gap.
That, and he looked very lost and young.
“You’re…Logan. From Blackbird bar?”
“That’s me.” I was vaguely surprised he recognized me, considering he was usually six sheets to the wind when he was at my bar.
“Why are you here?”
“I’m Gage’s boyfriend. When you called, he was with me, so I drove him here.”
“Oh. Thanks for that.” Cooper slumped, toying with the hem of his blanket. “I’m still surprised he picked up.”
“Honestly? So am I. Good thing he did, though.”
In a threadbare voice, Cooper whispered, “I don’t know what to do.”
Oh yeah, I knew that feeling. Knew it all too well. “First thing you have to do is stop.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
“You have to stop. How’s that saying go? The man who turns around and stops going down the wrong road makes more progress than the man who keeps walking down it. Something like that, anyway. You’re on the wrong road, kid. So your first step in turning your life around is to stop.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, I was just like you at your age.” I grinned, which startled an almost smile from him.
“And I do mean just like you. I had three misdemeanors under my belt by the time I hit seventeen. Mostly for fights, although one was because I’d snuck into the school to swim at night.
I was violent, short tempered, and mouthy.
Never touched drugs, but I could steal alcohol without blinking.
I didn’t go down the alcoholic path, fortunately.
I mostly drank with friends to fit in with them, and once I left those friends behind, I stopped drinking for the most part.
Thankfully. If I had continued, I would’ve been where you’re at.
My parents were mostly to blame, as they never gave two shits about their sons, but I own up to the fact that after eighteen, I only had myself to blame for my bad behavior. ”
He seemed to hang on to my every word, as if sensing a kindred spirit. “But you turned your life around.”
“Damn right I did. Know what did it for me? Spite.”
“Spite?”
“Yup. Pure spite. See, growing up, I idolized my grandfather. I would have walked through hell if he’d asked me to.
He’d always had a bar from the time my father was young, and I was determined to take it over when he retired.
But when I hit twenty-one, he wouldn’t give it to me.
He said he couldn’t trust me with it. Now, in hindsight, he was absolutely correct.
I was not in any state to be responsible for his bar.
But at the time? It destroyed me. One of the very few people I idolized and trusted didn’t trust me.
And it made me mad. So I stopped. I stopped drinking, I stopped fighting, I stopped hanging out with my friends who were bad influences.
I got a job as a bartender in a different city, started driving Uber in the early hours, and literally worked both jobs for years.
Saved every penny I could. When I hit twenty-five, I had enough money to open my own bar, which I did.
Blackbird has been my pride and joy ever since then.
I got myself into therapy, took some anger management classes, and I’m proud to say I’m a much better person. I actually like the man in the mirror.”
Cooper sat there and absorbed my story. “You saying this for a reason?”
“For Gage. Because he wants better for you.”
My words almost broke the kid, I think, as he looked away, eyes far too bright. “You sure? I don’t think he loves me. I don’t even love myself.”
Welp, there was the root of the problem for sure. “Coop, you want to love yourself?”
“Yeah?” He responded like Isn’t that obvious?
“Then you do. If you’re trying to love yourself, then you must already. Where do you think the trying comes from?”
He stared at me, struck by that thought.
“I gotta correct you on Gage, too. Gage loves you dearly. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be so frustrated with you.”
Cooper didn’t know about loving himself, but hearing his brother loved him? I think that healed something in the kid. A tear spilled over and he sucked up snot, but there was this curve to his mouth, as if the knowledge filled him with joy.
These two brothers reminded me of my own. I’d been in a bad state with most of them for years, and it was only recently our relationships with each other were being repaired. I didn’t want Cooper’s relationship with Gage to break down that badly. It would hurt Gage deeply, for one.
Cooper sat on those revelations for a moment before focusing on me once more. “Then I wanna try. You think I can do that?”
“Only if you’re willing to put in the work.
And make no mistake, it’s work.” I leaned against the foot of his hospital bed, studying this boy for a long moment.
Did he have the mettle? I had no idea, but he asked the right questions, and that was a good start.
“The reason you keep falling back into these destructive patterns is because it’s easy.
It’s familiar, it’s fun, there’s no work involved.
Trust me, I know—I almost got sucked back into that cycle myself a time or three.
It takes both determination and work to make something of yourself.
And spite, in my case. I was determined to prove everyone in my family wrong. I did, too.”
“I don’t…know how to start? How to…” He frowned down at his hands.
“Is that what’s stopping you? That you don’t know how to turn your life around?”
“Yeah. I guess. I get overwhelmed thinking about it. I don’t know what to do first, or how to manage it all.”
I remembered being overwhelmed. God, I remembered that feeling, of just looking around my shitty hellhole of an apartment and not knowing where to start. “I would say, be smarter than me. Let’s start with therapy, yeah? You got some shit to unpack, kid.”
“You pulled your life together before you got a therapist, though?”
“In hindsight, I should have reversed it. Please learn from my mistake.”
My confession startled a smile out of him. “Okay. So, therapist.”
“Yeah. You’ve got court-ordered rehab, which is a great second step. And how about a life coach?”
He stared, not understanding. “There’s life coaches?”
“Sure. Their job is literally to help you figure out how to approach life. They’ll sit you down, form goals with you, and an action plan of how to achieve the goal. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, isn’t a life coach exactly what you need?”
Some of his worry and stress fell away, replaced with the kindling of hope. “Yeah, sounds like it. Um, I don’t have the money to pay for any of that, though.”
“I guarantee if you tell Gage you want a life coach and therapist, he’d be happy to pay. Hell, he’ll throw a damn party. He wants you to succeed, Cooper. He’d love nothing more than for you to pull your life together.”
Look at Cooper’s smile when he finally realized how loved he was. Funny how a kid like Cooper, who had a good family, could still screw up this badly. If I’d been in his shoes, I doubt I would have been such an absolute hellion. Ah, well, such is life.
Proving he had something of the Banachek genes in him, Cooper asked me, “Would you hire me?”
“I’ll give you a chance, kid, on certain conditions. You gotta pass rehab and sobriety marks, otherwise a bar’s a stupid call for you. But get some therapy and let your arm heal first. Then I’ll put you to work.”
“Fair enough. Thanks, Logan.”
“You’re very welcome.”
Gage came back into the room, his expression some mixture of frustration, relief, and exhaustion. Or maybe he was just fed up. Hard to tell. “Mom’s on her way. She’s pretty upset, as expected.”
He seemed ready to leave at that point, but he didn’t know the winds of change were blowing, and this was one thing he’d want to hear. I caught Cooper’s eye and jerked my chin toward his brother. Okay, your turn. Showtime.
Cooper wet cracked lips before he called out, “Gage?”
Gage’s expression was the epitome of patience, but his fatigue was evident. “Yeah?”
“Can I have a therapist?”
Ha, if I lightly poked my boyfriend with a finger, he’d have toppled right over.
“A life coach, too,” Cooper tacked on. “Oh, and rehab’s gotta start. I think…I think I don’t want to live like this anymore.”
Gage moved around the side of the bed in a flash, sitting hip to hip with his brother, and I could tell he was studying every twitch of Cooper’s face. As if he needed to verify his brother’s sincerity.
For his part, Cooper looked nervous as hell but gamely kept his eyes on Gage’s.
“I would love nothing better.” Gage’s voice was choked with emotion, but he sounded utterly relieved. “You mean that, right?”
“I do. I don’t…I don’t want to live like this.
” Cooper’s eyes filled with tears, and he dashed them away with a palm.
“I knew months ago this wasn’t right, what I was doing; I just didn’t know how to do better.
And I was scared that I’d try, and fail, and just prove people right for not believing in me. ”
“No, Cooper.” Gage scrubbed a hand over his face. “Trying and failing is so much better than not trying at all. And this isn’t a damn test. You don’t fail completely if you don’t get it right on the first try. Not succeeding the first time you try something is just life.”