The sun forced its way through the blinds and found Jason sleeping long past sunrise, his typical waking hour.  Slowly, he felt the light warm his body, cold from the events of last night.  He wanted to never wake and further deceive himself that Shelley had never said those words. 

Over two years, shot all to hell.  It wasn't the time he showered on her that was wasted.  It was his love.  There, he said it.  As if anyone could read his thought.  He did love her.  But not anymore.   Well, not as much anyway.  Though logic told him to hate her for what she did, his heart refused to shatter entirely.  Loving somebody that hard hurts all the more, when one day, like now, you wake up and realize that you can't or shouldn't love any longer.  Why did Adam have to spoil everything and warn him that Shelley might have been not exactly in love with him as he had thought?  No, that wasn't fair to Adam.  It was much better to know than not to know, of course.  Love is blind.  And brutally unkind. Is that a song?

Jason reviewed the scene from last night.  When he confronted Shelley and asked her if there was someone else, her hesitation before the answer was enough to tell him the lie on her lips.  He barely heard the words she spun out.  All lies and they had hurt him to his very core.  How could she think that he had believed any of it?  He was very adept in detecting evasion.  She knew that.

Looking at the clock and deciding that 9am on a Sunday was quite enough, he stumbled out of bed and headed for the can.  Right before he reached the door, the phone rang.  Dont be Shelley, please dont be Shelley.  Picking up the receiver, "Hello," he said, realizing that he sounded rough.  "Hey Jason, its Adam.  Do you need to talk or even want to talk to me?"  Adam sounded as if he was ready for judgment day.  They had been friends since high school and were more like brothers than friends.  "Sure Adam, I just need to get cleaned up and we're still friends, you idiot!"  Adam responded, "Ok, not that I thought we wouldnt be!"  Not at all that convincing.   

Adam knew that Jason could have just as easily gone either way.  White hot anger or cool reasoning.  Hoping that Jason's head ruled more at that point than his heart, Adam had chanced their friendship on that alone.  He was no fool.  Affairs of the heart can put quite a strain on any bond, brothers or not.

"I'll meet you at that family restaurant on Oak, if you haven't already had anything," said Adam.  "You weren't at the gym at 7, so I just assumed you slept in."

"Ok Adam, Ill be there in 45 minutes, ok?  Later."

 

Exactly 45 minutes later he showed up at the greasy spoon.  Adam, of course, was nowhere in sight.  I bet I'll wait at least 20 minutes like a moron before he shows up.  As the waitress was pouring his coffee, Adam slid in to the booth.

 

"Hey, you're early Adam," noted Jason.  Adam, always the clown, dumped half of the sugar bowl into Jason's cup and responded, "You're just not sweet enough, big guy."

 

And that's how it went.  Good-natured banter mixed with sarcasm.  You know, the usual.  Shelley never came up.  They both didn't really want to talk about it.  Yet.  As good of friends as they were, that topic would come up naturally but not this time.  The waitress came over to take their order and then bounced away.  I'm a lech.  Barely 12 hours since the bomb and I'm ogling the waitress.  "So it's a date then?" asked Adam.  "I'm sorry, am I distracting you Jason?  She's got a boyfriend.  Are you coming with me and Janet to the movies tonight or not?"  He regretted the boyfriend comment the moment it left his mouth.  Jason was not amused.

 

"Uhh, no, I'd rather not," Jason replied.  "I really don't want to become the 'third wheel' my first day as a single man."  I refuse to be the moron.  I am a moron.  Why should my plans change just because of her?  I can still enjoy myself.  I can get over this.  It happens all of the time.  Other guys get over it.  The other guys just don't pass on that valuable information on HOW they got over it.  "On second thought Adam, I really don't have any plans.  Tell Janet I'll be there."

 

With that, Adam picked up the bill and actually paid it.  "I got a raise," he said, noting Jason's rueful grin.  "See you at eight."

 

Jason hopped into his pickup, waved to Adam in his car and started for home.  It was then that he spotted her.  Shelley.  She was looking right at him.  She knew that this place was his favourite Sunday morning retreat.  Was it coincidence that she showed up today?  Not likely.  As Shelley started for his truck, he pulled out of the parking lot anyway.  He looked through his rear view mirror and saw her just standing there, a bit dumb-founded.  Let her hurt.  That was bitter.  Honest, but bitter.

 

 

 

 

Parents shape you.  Good or bad, their influence is apparent.  Looking back, I see how I became the person that I am.  The one that just exists, rather than lives.  The one that searches for deeper meaning or maybe, just a way out.

 

Enter my father.  Wife beater, child beater.  Your typical slug of a human being.  Not white trash, but if he didn’t have the money that he did, he would have been.  And filthy.  The first time I realized that he was not normal, other than the beatings that I thought were normal in 98% of the households [not the Brady household or the Cleaver’s] was when I noticed his personality changed significantly when we had visitors to the house.  If we didn't go along with it, god help us.  If we did we would be in his good books for perhaps a whole hour.  I guess that was a fair trade-off. 

 

My parents divorced when I was 10.   They sat us down and told us to choose who to live with.  My sister immediately piped up and chose my mother.  Shit… I hate my father, but somehow I felt strangely compelled to now choose him.  How could I leave him alone and feeling like the kid who never got picked for the team in gym class?  So I shoved down my true 10 year old feelings and chose dad.  How could parents make a kid do that?  Choose?  Well, maybe the beatings would stop.  There would be two less irritants sharing his house.  And I would be good.

 

Things pretty much stayed the same.

 

Now enter my mother.  One of the most well-meaning people that ever lived.  Early memory of her.  Her dark eyes, silently wishing the beatings from my father would stop short of killing me.  Or maybe hoping that he could see what a monster he was and everything would suddenly become delightful.  If wishes were wings.  She almost never made the right choices.  I wonder how her parents shaped her?  My grandparents seemed to be picture perfect.  My grandfather died when I was 10.  Yep, a harsh year in my life.  Marrying my dad was probably her biggest mistake.  Do I blame her at all for what my father did?  Do I blame her for standing on the side lines?  I used to.  A child looks to a parent for protection.  One was whaling on your ass and the other did not interfere.  I was betrayed by both.  But no, I do not blame her.  She was a product of the ‘old school’ when it was difficult to leave an abusive husband.  And impeding my father’s will was not good for your health.  If anyone understood her, it was me.

 

My sister.  She is one year, four months, two days and five hours older than I am.  When we were younger, I remember hearing that she would turn out better than I would.  Boys were inherently bad.  Of course the girl would turn out better.  I didn’t care what they said.  We were close.  I followed her like a puppy.  In the beginning, it was ok.  As we got older, she told me to stop hanging around her.  She betrayed me too.  Of course, later I learned that it was a good thing.  She has two children now, both boys.  I love them like they were my own.  She’s a good provider, much like my father was.  In fact, there are probably as many similarities between them as there are between me and my mother.  She inherited the common sense while I inherited the ability to love.

 

As is usual for parents that are divorced, both of them soon felt the need to be remarried.  My father married a woman who worked at the same place as he did.  My mother married a guy from her past.  While my mother’s second marriage is still going, my father’s second marriage lasted a full year, maybe a bit more.  So of course he married a third time.  That lasted until he died at the ripe old age of fifty-three.  He had four heart attacks but it was an aneurysm that killed him.  I was there at his bedside.  I learned later that he was already dead, basically DOA, the machines were artificially making the corpse breathe.  When they pulled the plug, I went over to my father and kissed his cold, dead forehead and told him that I loved him for the first time.