Chapter 12 #2
“Okay.” He wanted desperately to ask what had possessed Jet to even get involved with that particular group of kids, but he didn’t dare rock the boat too much. Not while Jet was being this open with him.
“I knew they were a bad influence. I did.”
“Then…?” It was as close as he would go to prompting him. Jet was as skittish as any hurt wild thing, and Myles wasn’t taking any chances of scaring him off.
This time when he moved, Jet sat up completely, feet on the floor, elbows on his knees, hair falling forward so once again, Myles couldn’t see his face. “It was stupid. Because of a girl.”
“Someone you like?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter. Can’t save her.”
“Save her?”
He shrugged again. “Every time she says she won’t go back, won’t do what Brady tells her, she ends up doing it.
” He glanced over at Myles. “I heard you and Mom, you know. Her saying you could stay as long as you never drank. That the minute you did, if she ever caught you, you had to go. She couldn’t help you if you wouldn’t help yourself. ”
As off topic as that seemed, Myles only nodded, hoping Jet was going somewhere with it. “Your mom was an amazing person.”
“I remember when Grandpa used to stay in the kitchen after supper drinking beer. I was little then, but I knew he wasn’t nice to her.
He wasn’t nice about you, and I’d never even met you then.
I think he’s why she was so strict about it.
She knew what it was like to have someone around like that.
And as much as she loved you, she wasn’t putting us through it. ”
“And this has what to do with this girl?”
“She doesn’t want to help herself, and it sucks, but Mom was right. It isn’t worth tearing apart the rest of my life for someone who won’t even try.”
“You sure you’re only sixteen?”
Jet snorted.
For a minute, they were quiet before Jet finally lifted his head to look at Myles. “I wanted to go back so bad at first,” he said, voice gone quiet and husky again. “To help her, you know? But it wouldn’t have lasted anyway, and maybe not going back for now will be… I don’t know. Better.”
“I’ll tell you what I know.”
“Shocker,” Jet said with a damp smile.
Myles chuckled. “I know that there is no way I could ever have been any good to you and Shelly if I hadn’t been good for myself, first. Getting sober, as big as it was, was only a tiny first step, believe it or not.
All of the weight of everything that got me into that pit in the first place? It doesn’t go away.”
“So what do you do with it?”
“I came here. I asked for help. I focus on what I can do, and try to go easy on myself when I mess up. I don’t expect to be perfect, and I try not to expect other people to be perfect, either.
” He took a risk and cupped a hand over the back of Jet’s drooping neck.
“And I let myself feel what I feel, Jet. Most of all, that. The good, sure. Like being with Steven.” He smiled.
“Like our cooking lessons. And Shelly’s drawings getting less weird. ”
“Right?” Jet leaned a little towards him, and Myles took the tiny, unspoken win.
“But the bad stuff, too. I grieve when I have to.”
“Doesn’t it make you mad? That she died when we still needed her?”
“Yes.”
“How are you not just… like… raging… All the fucking time?”
“Well, I’ll be honest. First, I’m not a hormonal teenager, so that’s a point in my favour.”
“This is more than that.”
“I know. I spent a lot of time where you are. I ran away from my family when my mom died. I left Nat alone with your miserable grandfather, and I can never make that up to her, but you aren’t doing that. You’re so present for your sister I sometimes think you use that as a shield.”
Jet shrugged, not agreeing, but not denying it, either.
“If you do, maybe it helps you both. So long as you know you’re doing it, you can maybe be careful not to overdo it.”
“She needs attention,” Jet said. “So much attention.”
“And she adores you, so there’s that.”
“What’s the second thing? About the being mad all the time thing?”
Myles let Jet go, leaning on his knees as well, and clasping his hands in front of him. “Maybe I got a lot of that rage out in the army. Maybe it spilled over into how I dealt with threats on the street. Maybe I drowned it in drink. I don’t have healthy answers for you in how I dealt with it.”
“So basically, don’t do any of the things you did.”
Myles sighed. “It’s a place to start.”
To his surprise, Jet toppled into him, his sharp shoulder digging into Myles’s arm. “Did we run here for help, or did we run away from Calgary?”
Myles put an arm around him. “Yes.”
They both chuckled.
After a bit, Jet sighed. “This hasn’t been as helpful as you probably think.”
He didn’t know if Jet was referring to the trip or the conversation. He conceded, either way. “Probably not.”
“I don’t hate it here, though.”
“Me either.”
“Did you know Mom was trying to talk me into therapy?”
“I did not. How do you feel about that?”
Jet just shrugged.
“Lucky is opening a shelter for troubled teens.”
“I’m pissed off my mother died on me. Not troubled.”
“Oh. right. Because those are different things.”
“I just mean that I’m not, like, homeless or on drugs or whatever.”
“Okay. Fair. My point is that he knows people.”
“I don’t want to talk to a stranger.”
“Okay.”
Myles let him go when Jet straightened. “Did you know Ozzy was an army chaplain?” Jet asked.
Myles grunted. Why Jet was bringing up his ex, he had no idea. He wasn’t even really sure if Jet knew the extent of Myles’s and Ozzy’s previous entanglement. However, they were talking about things that mattered, so he kept his dubious feelings to himself and left room for Jet to get to his point.
“What am I saying. Of course you know.”
Myles waited. When it seemed like Jet wasn’t going to say anything else, he finally prompted him. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, he’s not a stranger, right?”
“No. He’s not.”
“And he’s sort of trained. Like a shrink, I mean.”
“Not sort of. He is trained. And he’s very good at it. So good he used to tick me off with it on the regular.”
“Well, he doesn’t tick me off,” Jet blurted. “He helps.”
“Helps how?” The lightning bolt of dread that ripped through him caught Myles off guard, and he rubbed at his chest.
Jet jerked his head around to glare at Myles, defiant suddenly, and Myles had a sinking suspicion he knew what was coming. “You’ve been talking to him.”
“So what if I have?”
“And he helps.”
Jet set his jaw, the same stubborn line his mother often got when she was about to lay down the law to Myles.
He might have been the older sibling, but he had never been the one in charge of that dynamic.
Natalie had a spine of steel under her gentle ways.
“He just lets me say what I need to say. No judgement.”
Myles nodded. “Okay.”
For a long minute, Jet studied him. “Okay?” he said at last.
Myles nodded again, with more conviction this time. “Okay.”
“You’re not mad about it?”
“Honestly, I don’t know how I feel.” Because they were being honest, right?
And he didn’t know how he felt. Grateful he wasn’t the only one looking out for Jet, because he had no idea what the kid really needed.
But hurt because it was Ozzy. And angry with himself, because why be hurt if the situation was helping Jet?
Wasn’t that what he should want above all else?
He sighed. None of that mess was Jet’s problem. “If it helps, talking to him, then it doesn’t matter.”
Jet narrowed his eyes. “You’d let me talk to your ex? About all of this?”
“Ozzy is an excellent listener. Just because he and I have issues doesn’t change that.”
“Even if some of it is about you?”
Myles shrugged, because whether he liked it or not, nothing he said would stop Jet doing what he was going to do.
In this case, at least what he was doing might actually be good for him.
Ozzy might not have been objective enough to be helpful for Myles, and that was…
well, it was whatever it was. If he was helping Jet, Myles didn’t think he had the right to an opinion.
“You need to talk about me to someone, you should. If Ozzy has a problem with it, he’ll tell you. We can deal with that if it happens.”
Jet almost smiled. “What if I decide I like him more than you?”
Another sigh he couldn’t hold back, because yeah. That was Ozzy all over. “Most people do, in the end,” he conceded.
Jet snorted. “You’re not that bad, you know.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Jet patted his knee. “You’d best get going if you want some quality time with what’s-his-name. We’re learning to cook pasta today, and I expect that’ll take you some time.”
“Funny.”
“Someday we will look back on your cooking and laugh.” He levelled a serious look at Myles. “But today is not that day.”
“Okay Lord of the Rings nerd.”
“What can I say? Viggo’s my man crush.”
“File that under things I didn’t need to know.” He practically ran for the door as Jet snickered.
On some level, he knew that talk would require some processing, but for now, he had a date.
Another one. And Steven’s was a nice, neutral place to relax and just, for a moment, not think of all the adulting things going on in the background.
Escapism? Maybe. But didn’t everyone need that once in a while?
He did stop in the front room of the B and B to collect Shelly, but at the moment, she was sitting in the front window petting Emma and chatting with Tiffany, another regular guest, who looked up when he approached and smiled.
“Do you need my writing partner, then?” Tiffany asked.
“You’re the writer,” Myles said, remembering someone had warned him about her and her penchant for using everyone and, quite literally, their dogs, in her books. The reminder made him ever-so-slightly queasy.
“I am. And Shelly is telling me stories of her mother.”
Myles’s heart stuttered. “She is?”
Tiffany reached over and took his hand. “She’s a very bright little girl.”
Myles nodded, unable to get words past the sudden lump in his throat.