39. Unfuck it, Masked Avenger
UNFUCK IT, MASKED AVENGER
JESSE
Wilt by Holding Absence
The piano sits open and waiting and I can’t play a single note.
I’ve been in the studio since before dawn, sitting on the bench with my fingers resting on the keys. The house is quiet. Mom left early for a meeting with her publisher, and the silence she left behind has a weight to it, pressing against the walls of this room like something living.
I press a single key. The note hangs in the air, thin and unresolved, and fades to nothing.
The studio door opens. Dad stands in the doorway with two mugs of coffee, his hair still damp from the shower. He doesn’t ask if I want company. He crosses the room, sets one mug on the piano beside me, and drops onto the worn leather couch with a quiet exhale.
We sit in silence for a while. Dad sips his coffee. I stare at the keys.
“You sleep?” he asks.
“A little bit.”
He nods, unsurprised. His gaze moves across the room, over the guitars lining the wall, the recording equipment, the framed gold records.
“You shouldn’t have let it get this bad, Jesse.” His voice is gentle, but there’s an edge beneath it. “You know to come to me. What happened?”
“Everything happened at once.” I press a chord with no intention behind it, letting the dissonance fill the silence. “The Fonda was incredible, Dad. The crowd was there for the music, not a name. And the whole thing detonated.” I pull my hands off the keys. “It hit so fast I didn’t see it coming.”
Dad scrubs his palm over his jaw. “And you didn’t call me.”
“I didn’t call anyone.”
“That’s the part that scares me.” He holds my gaze. “Not the episode. Those happen. But you sitting in the dark alone when you have people who want to help you, that’s what keeps me up at night.”
The gentleness beneath the reprimand makes my throat ache.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about performing,” I say, the words spilling out. “About the mask. All of it.”
Dad sets his coffee on the mixing board. “You don’t owe me an apology for that, Jesse. You needed something that was yours. I understand that better than most people.”
“I was afraid you’d think I was hiding because I was ashamed of you. Of the name.”
“Were you?”
“No.” The answer is immediate and true. “I was afraid of disappearing behind it. Of never knowing if the music was good enough on its own, or if people were clapping because Jack O’Donnell’s kid was on stage.”
Dad is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks again, his voice is rougher.
“I spent the first ten years of my solo career trying to outrun Mogo. Every review, every interview, every goddamn album cycle, it was always Jack O’Donnell, former frontman of…
I couldn’t write a song without someone measuring it against the old catalogue.
” He pauses. “You found a way around that. I’m not mad, Jesse. I’m proud of you.”
The pressure behind my eyes sharpens. I grip the edge of the piano bench.
“And the identity being out there, that’s not the end of the world. It changes the game, but it doesn’t end it. Whatever you’re afraid of, about the public, about people digging into your medical history, into our family, your mother and I will handle that. That’s our job.”
I nod, but the reassurance slides past me because it’s not the leak that’s eating me alive. It’s not the mask or the music or the public finding out I’m Jack O’Donnell’s son.
It’s the girl who told me to figure out what I want, and the answer I’m too terrified to say out loud.
I leave the piano bench and sink onto the opposite end of the couch.
“Dad.” My voice comes out scraped raw. “Joey’s pregnant.”
His hand stills on his coffee mug. He sets it on the floor slowly, thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Jesus fuck, Jesse.” He drags a breath through his teeth. “Did we not have the talk about wrapping your shit up?”
Heat crawls up my neck. “We did.”
“And?”
“And I don’t have an excuse.”
He exhales slowly through his nose, the scratch of his thumb against his wedding ring the only sound in the quiet studio. When he meets my eyes again, the frustration is already softening into something more complicated.
“Okay.” He draws another breath. “Okay. We’ll figure it out. These things happen, and…”
“I can’t do this to a kid, Dad.” I stare at my hands. “What happens when I can’t get out of bed for a week? What happens when the episodes get worse, and there’s a child watching their father fall apart?”
“Jesse.” His voice comes out rough. “You’re not a burden. You’ve never been a burden.”
“I’ve been a problem ever since I was diagnosed, Dad. You and Mom rearranged your entire lives around my episodes, my medication, my…”
“You’re our son. That’s called being a parent.” He leans forward. “Where is this coming from? Why would you think…”
“Because I heard you say it.”
I shove myself off the couch and pace the length of the studio, dragging both hands through my hair.
“I heard you tell Mom you wished you’d never had kids. That you gave me this broken part of yourself.” I spin to face him. “I was standing in the hallway. I heard every goddamn word, Dad.”
“I did.” Dad lets out a long breath and drags a hand down his face. He pauses, studying me with red-rimmed eyes. “Is that what this is about? You’re afraid you’re gonna pass this down to your kid?”
I stop pacing, my chest heaving.
“That’s not how this works,” he says. “You can’t control something like that, as much as you think you can.”
“You weren’t wrong, Dad. You gave me exactly what you were afraid of.”
“I was completely wrong.” Dad shifts forward, his knee brushing the edge of the couch. “I was a disaster when Hayley was growing up. I thought having another kid meant repeating those mistakes.”
This isn’t new information, but hearing him say it aloud, the regret heavy in every syllable, hits different than it did at fifteen.
“I was terrified,” he continues. “Terrified I’d fuck it up again.
Terrified I’d given you something you’d have to fight your whole life.
” He pauses. “But Jesse, having you was the greatest gift I ever received. Even with the diagnosis. Especially with the diagnosis, because I always suspected something was off in my own wiring. The drinking, the highs and the crashes, I never had a name for it the way you do. When you got diagnosed, I understood where it came from. And I decided I was going to be the father who helped you carry it instead of the one who pretended it wasn’t there. ”
I swallow against the burn climbing up my throat and blink hard against the pressure building behind my eyes.
“I didn’t have anyone growing up.” Dad’s voice steadies, the way it does when he needs me to hear him.
“No one showed me how to do this. I figured it out alone, and I got it wrong more times than I got it right. But you have me, Jesse. You’ve always had me.
And your kid?” He holds my gaze. “Your kid is going to have you.”
I press my palms against my knees to stop them from shaking.
“I created this space.” Dad gestures at the studio around us. “Gave you music as therapy because that’s what music always was for me. I stayed sober. I showed up. Every single day, I showed up, because you deserved a father who wouldn’t crumble under his own guilt.”
“Dad…”
“I’m not finished.” His voice gentles but doesn’t waver.
He waits until I sit back down on the couch before he continues.
“I almost pushed away the one woman who truly loved me. Your mother saw every broken piece of me, every ugly truth I tried to hide, and she chose to stay. I made so many mistakes with her. Hurt her in ways that still shame me.” He holds my gaze.
“But she didn’t give up on me. She saw the man underneath and decided I was worth fighting for. ”
“I broke her heart, Dad.” The admission scrapes out of me.
“She told me about the baby and I said things I can’t take back.
Horrible things.” I drag a hand down my face.
“And she still came to the house when I was in the middle of an episode. She saw me at my worst and she stayed until she knew I was okay. I didn’t deserve any of that. ”
Dad is quiet for a moment, letting the weight of it settle.
“Joey loves you, Jesse.” His hand closes over my shoulder, grounding and steady. “She loves you, the mask, the music, the darkness—everything. Don’t make my mistake. Don’t push her away because you’ve convinced yourself you don’t deserve her.”
I can’t stop the tears. Not because I don’t believe him, but because I’m terrified it’s already too late. That the damage is done and no amount of showing up now will undo what I said on that beach.
“You’re both so fucking young, and I’m not condoning having a baby at this age.
” He rubs the back of his neck. “But I didn’t have anyone, Jesse.
You’ve got me and your mother. Joey’s got her parents.
And whatever you decide to do, that’s something you need to discuss with Joey.
” He levels me with a steady gaze. “Do you even know how she feels about this?”
“We haven’t really had a chance to talk.”
Dad nods slowly.
“Pushing her away because you’re scared, that would be the biggest mistake of your life.” His voice drops, fierce and certain. “Trust me on this. I’ve made enough mistakes to recognize the ones that haunt you forever. This would be one of them.”
Something inside me gives way.
“I don’t know what to do, Dad.” My voice cracks.
I’m twenty years old, and I’ve been white-knuckling every secret, every fear, every mistake, and I can’t hold it together anymore.
Dad pulls me into his arms and I let him. His hand cups the nape of my neck the way it did when I was a kid, steady and sure, and I breathe in the familiar scent of him: coffee and sandalwood and something that’s always meant safe.
“For the record,” he says against my hair, “the mask scared the shit out of me. I thought you were in a fucking cult.”