It’s Saturday night and I’m checking my computer for listing of apartments for rent. As usual, nothing turns up, nothing affordable anyway. It’s the wrong time of year, summer break approaching, and all the college students are looking for places to live so they fill up quickly. If I had more money saved up, it’d be easier, but I don’t. I’m starting to debate whether I can look past my resentment toward my father and ask him if I can come live with him or at least stay at the beach house. But the idea of asking him for help, when I got so little of it growing up, makes me feel weak. I want him to have to work to be my father. I don’t know for sure how much he knows about what went on, but what I do know is that for years there wasn’t enough contact from him for me to even tell him. The only thing I can do is let the memories haunt my head, which they do pretty much every night when I close my eyes, unless I’m drunk. When I’m drunk, nothing is in my head.

I get a text as I’m shutting the computer. I pick my phone up off the desk and swipe my finger over the screen. It’s from Seth, Callie’s best friend. I sometimes hang out with him and his boyfriend Greyson, since they both like to party as much as I do.

Seth: R u going out tonight?

Me: Aren’t I always?

Seth: Where u headed?

Me: Probably to the Red Ink up on 6th street. Why? You got something planned?

Seth. Not yet. Red Ink, huh? You must be looking for a skank tonight.

Me: Tonight? Don’t you mean always?

Seth: You know, rumor has it you’ve been hanging out with the biggest skank on campus.

Luke: What? Who?

Seth: A bitchy roommate with a dragon tattoo on her neck. Goes by the name of Violet.

I scratch at my head, wondering where the hell he heard that from, but then it clicks.

Luke: Did Callie tell you that?

Seth: Well, she didn’t use those words per se since Callie would never use those words, but she said she saw you helping Violet around campus… what’s that about?

Luke: Nothing. I was just being a nice guy.

Seth: Since when r u a nice guy.

He has a point. I’m not usually a nice guy, but for some reason Violet momentarily brought it out of me. I’m not feeling like a nice guy right now though. I feel pissed off about my living situation and all I want to do is get trashed out of my mind and go find a girl to fuck so I can get rid of this feeling, like I’m falling into a bottomless pit.

Luke: I thought I’d try something different for a little bit.

Seth. How’s that going for you?

Luke: I think I’m deciding to quit it before it becomes a habit.

Seth: Good for u. U gonna do it cold turkey?

I shake my head. This could go on forever.

Luke: I’m headed out. R u and Greyson down or not?

Seth. Yeah, as long as we can get a cab. Neither one of us wants to be DD tonight and I’m doubting u do either, since u never offer.

Luke: Sounds good. Callie and Kayden coming?

Seth: They went out somewhere… I think up to that rock. They’re becoming obsessed with it and each other, lol.

Luke: Yeah… meet u out in front of my dorm in ten?

Seth: Sounds good :)

I check my insulin levels and grab my glucose tablets, just in case, then put my phone into my pocket and grab my key card and wallet. I toss my empty beer bottle into the trash and get another one out of the mini fridge, ready to get the hell out of here and start drinking even heavier. That’s what I love about spring and summer, when footballs not really going on and I’m free to get trashed as much as I like without having to worry about practice. It makes the noise and memories in my head just a little more bearable. It makes breathing bearable. Life bearable.

I started drinking when I was thirteen. I wasn’t with my friends or anything, just sitting at home after my mom had passed out on the sofa, not from heroin but from booze. She’d made me sit with her as she drank gulp after gulp, forcing me to hold her hand and coddle her like she was a sick person taking medication to numb the pain. As she started to doze off, she’d wrapped her arms around me and held me tightly against her, telling me that I would always be her little boy, and then sang a song to match her words. I hated when she did this, especially because I never felt like her little boy, even when I was seven. At that point in my life I knew our whole relationship was wrong, the things she made me do for her, like crush up her pills and the way she was always touching, but I was too ashamed to say anything and honestly I knew even then that nothing was ever going to change until I was old enough to get out of that damn house.

Finally, after holding me for way too long, she’d passed out into a deep sleep and I was able to slip out of her arms and be free for a moment. She’d left the bottle of whiskey out on the coffee table and I can remember sitting there, wondering what it tasted like, wondering why my mom needed to drink it all the time. So I picked it up and took a swig. The alcohol felt like it singed my throat and when it hit my belly it burned like fire. I was fascinated with the way it felt inside me, how the heat smothered out the wrong inside me, so I kept taking swigs until I passed out completely and for a moment, the wrong in me drifted asleep. After that, I’d always take a few drinks after she passed out and the more I did it, the more the rage and helpless feelings living in me became tolerable. And now I have a hard time functioning without it.

I’m about to head out when I get a call from my dad. I stare at my phone as it rings and rings, deciding whether I want to answer it or just silence his call. Finally, I hit talk and put it up to my ear, attempting to sound in a better mood than I am.

“Yeah,” I say, pressing the phone between my ear and my shoulder so I can unscrew the cap off the beer.

“Hey,” my father replies and there’s music in the background. “You answered.”

“Yeah, but I’m headed out so I can’t talk for long.” I tip my head back and guzzle a mouth full of beer, feeling the slightest bit better as it liquefies my throat.

“Oh, okay.” He sounds disappointed. “I was just calling to check in on you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my son and I worry about you.”

“Why? You didn’t when I was a kid. Why start now when I’m an adult?”

He pauses and the noise gradually gets quieter. Then I hear a door shut and silence fills the connection. “Luke, I know I haven’t been a very good father to you, but I’m trying to make that up to you now.”

I grit my teeth. “I’m twenty years old. It’s a little late to decide you want to be my father.”

“I’ve always wanted to be your father,” he says, nervousness creeping into his voice. “I just had a lot of stuff going on and I wasn’t in the right place to be a good father.”

“Well, I wasn’t in the right place to be without a father.” I head for the door, ready to bail out on the conversation because it’s getting a little too heart-to-heart for my taste.

“Luke, I’m sorry.” He sounds like he’s about to cry, which makes me feel a little bad for him but then I get pissed off at myself for feeling sorry for him. “If there’s anything I can do to make it up, I will.”

I pause with my hand on the doorknob, biting my tongue, arguing with myself over how much pride I really have. Then I think about going home to Star Grove with my mother, the house covered in plastic, her begging me to help her. It makes me want to puke. “There might be one thing that you could do.”

“Name it and it’s yours.”

I take a long breath. “You could let me stay at the beach house for the summer. I know you and Trevor are going to be there but I was hoping I could take one of the extra rooms or something.” Trevor is my father’s fiancé. I guess part of the reason why he left my mom was because he was struggling with the fact that he was gay. It took him years of drinking to finally accept that he was and come out to the world. It was about the time he reentered my life, but it was a little too late. Amy was already gone and I’d been around my mom enough that I only felt hatred for him for leaving me with her. I honestly don’t really know how I feel about our relationship now. Confused maybe. I mean, Trevor and him both seem like a nice guys but the fact that he left me to be responsible for shooting up my mother is what I’m most pissed off about.