They say life in the south moves slower than molasses—they’re wrong.

I own a bar in a tiny town, Beauclaire, where I was born and raised, Lord save my soul. It’s supposed to be a quiet life, the kind no one gives a rat’s ass about, but for the last few months me and my business have been more attractive to people than a fresh pile is to flies.

Deciding to allow a super famous country singer to marry my little brother in the bar—classy, I know, but that’s how we roll down here—probably didn’t help me keep things on the hush-hush, but it wasn’t like I could say no. Jason was my little brother, after all, even if he was also the biggest little shit in Beauclaire.

Everyone else reckoned I was jealous of him, and maybe they were right.

At nearly fifty with an ex-wife and a teenaged boy two states away who both liked to cause more trouble than a cockroach in the kitchen, it wasn’t like I had a whole hell of a lot keeping me happy. So if I threw a few elbows at Jason's reception to catch the bouquet, just for luck, would anyone blame me?

So yeah, big surprise I volunteered to drive across those two states to pick up Parker, my son. Well, it was less that I wanted to and more that I had no choice. Charlaine, said ex-wife, called me a few days prior and demanded I come and take Parker off her hands. It was hard to make a lot of sense out of what she was saying through her shouting on the other end of the line, but it more or less amounted to a teenaged boy being a teenaged dick.

I couldn’t say I wondered where he got it from—and that was at least part of the reason I’d agreed to take the kid home with me.

I was never one to buy into the whole “without a dad in a kid’s life they’re doomed” notion, but maybe that’s what was happening with Parker. Who the hell knew? Me and Charlaine’s divorce couldn’t have been easy on the poor kid, much less her carting him off to Atlanta in the aftermath. Yeah, it wasn’t exactly an amicable split, but really, how many divorces are?

Still, sitting in the parking lot of Charlaine’s apartment complex waiting for Parker to finish packing up his shit wasn’t exactly the most calming thing in the world. I didn’t even want to knock on the door, much less have to see Charlaine face-to-face again. When we’d gotten hitched, I did love her, but I thought she was too good for me and that she’d made an enormous mistake—hell, I still did.

Sighing, I rolled down the driver’s side window and lit up a cigarette, which was another reason I didn’t want to see Charlaine again. She’d no doubt give me hell about it, tell me I needed to knock it off if I wanted to be around to see my son graduate high school, but given Parker’s current track, I didn’t have a whole lot of hope for that anyway.

The warmth spread down through my lungs, calming me. As nervous as I was about the possibility of running into Charlaine again, it was nothing compared to the anxiousness sitting in my stomach like a bad beer about seeing Parker, of having him back in my space, back in my life. I didn’t know the kid at all, had only seen pictures Charlaine had sent me of him at all his life's milestones, and probably wouldn’t have recognized him if he’d walked past me on the street.

Yeah, I ain’t exactly winning any awards for father of the year—believe me, I’m well aware. But that was just another reason for me to take the kid back to Beauclaire.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be in Parker’s life, it was more that I hadn’t known how to do it. He was always so damn different from me. When I offered to take him fishing as a boy, he’d whine about how dirty he’d get, about the way he hated the mud and grime that got under his fingernails and all over his clothes. The few times I managed to convince him to do something with me, even something as simple as taking a drive through the countryside of good ol’ Carolina, he’d sulk and do nothing but tell me how boring it was. It was almost like the kid took some sick pleasure out of getting under my skin.

Charlaine and I divorced when Parker was five—a whopping eleven years ago—and that was pretty much the last time I’d seen him. I’d never really gotten my shit together, and eventually, Charlaine couldn’t take it anymore, not that I blamed her. So off she went Parker in tow, to Atlanta to move back in with her folks. Given our history, she thought I’d be a bad influence on him and that her dad would be the male role model she thought Parker needed.

I guess that didn’t work out so well for her either.

My heart lurched when Charlaine stepped out of the apartment, her hair as long, dark, and curly as it’d ever been. She’d put on some weight since the last time I’d seen her, but hell so had I. She frowned at me from the porch—no doubt because of the cigarette. I raised it up to her with a smile and a nod, and she rolled her eyes before she screamed something through the front door at Parker.

If I’d believed in praying, I would’ve started right then and there.

Because Charlaine stepped aside a second later and out stumbled something no man in his right mind would’ve mistaken for a kid. It was a full-blown man standing there, his shoulders broader than the hood of the pickup I sat in, a thick patch of hair growing on his face—and on pretty much every other piece of skin that poked out from the faded black metal band t-shirt and torn pair of cargo shorts he wore. He was pasty as hell and had it not been for the several loud ass tattoos screaming at me from his skin; I would’ve sworn he was incapable of showing color.

Parker—or the beast posing as him—waved to me, a half-smirk on his face, and I swear to God I almost fainted. Who the hell was this young man and what had he done with my boy? Had he eaten him? It sure would’ve made sense, given his size. Parker pecked a kiss on Charlaine’s cheek, hoisted the giant and overstuffed suitcase he’d carried outside with him up like it was full of nothing but air, and stepped down the porch, lumbering toward me like some hitchhiking sasquatch.

I took a deep, hard drag of the cigarette and flicked it across the parking lot before climbing out of the pickup to meet him. He dropped the suitcase and flung his arms around me, squeezing me so hard I couldn’t breathe—it wasn’t just bulk on the boy, he’d gotten some muscle underneath it all too.

“Hey Dad,” he said, smiling at me when he finally released me.

“How’s it going?” I asked, still unable to believe my eyes. Parker had at least a hundred pounds on me—not that I was ever a particularly big guy—and he seemed to have taken after Charlaine much more than he had me, even down to his dark, curly hair.

“Can you believe it?” Charlaine asked, standing with her hands on her hips behind Parker. I hadn’t even noticed her approaching. How could I have?

“Hell no. There ain’t no way this tank came from me,” I said, and Parker laughed.

“Well, lemme tell you, he’s got a temper to match it,” Charlaine said, frowning at Parker.

“I do not. If you weren’t always in my business, maybe I wouldn’t be so crabby with you all the time,” Parker said.

“See what I’ve been dealing with?” Charlaine asked.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get him straightened out,” I said, and Charlaine scoffed.

“We’ll see about that,” she said.

“Hey, I’ll gladly turn around and haul my happy ass back to North Carolina alone,” I said, and Charlaine rolled her eyes.

“The hell you will. You aren’t leaving here without me. If I have to spend another day under her roof, I swear, I’ll eat a handful of Tide Pods,” Parker said.

“What on God’s green earth is a Tide Pod?” I asked, and Parker burst out laughing.

“Are you serious? You don’t know what that is?” he asked through his laughter.

“Maybe this is a terrible idea,” Charlaine groaned. She probably wasn’t wrong. I’d done a lot of dumb shit in my life, totally unprepared for most of it, but I’d never felt more unprepared for anything in my life than I did staring at Parker. How the hell was I supposed to take care of a 16-year-old with an attitude bigger than my house when I could barely take care of myself?

“No, it’s the best idea in the world. Now hurry up and help me load my stuff before Mom gets all weepy and changes her mind,” Parker said, lifting up his suitcase again. He hurled it into the bed of the truck and climbed into the passenger seat. It wasn’t too late to call it off, to call it quits before things got entirely out of hand.

But I couldn’t do it.

The kid seemed happy—like, genuinely happy—a look I hadn’t seen on his face in any of the dozens of pictures Charlaine had sent over the years. In all those photos, he looked like he was suffocating—like she was sucking the life right out of him. Still, I didn’t understand how a boy who was more concerned with keeping his clothes clean than going fishing with his dad had turned into the tattooed, sarcastic bear sitting upright in the passenger seat of my truck.

“Please, take care of him, as much as you can anyway,” Charlaine said, sighing. I couldn’t promise that, as much as I wished I could. “Get him enrolled in school and make sure he gets off his ass and goes.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

“I know, and that’s what scares me,” Charlaine said.

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean? Look, if you don’t think I’m cut out for this, just say so. I don’t want to haul him back to Beauclaire only to have you call me crying about you making a mistake or missing him or what the hell ever,” I said.

“No, no. He needs to go. I don’t know what else to do with him. I think he’s doing drugs, but I’m not sure. I don’t know how it happened. Maybe he needs someone like you in his life, someone that’ll relax and let him breathe a little. He’s right, I’m too much for him,” Charlaine said, pushing the air out of my lungs. She’d never once admitted she might’ve screwed up with Parker—it was always my fault, even from hundreds of miles away.

“Drugs?” I asked. It wasn’t that big of a surprise—he was my kid, after all—but still, at his age?

“Well, pot at least,” Charlaine said.

“Jesus Christ on a duck-taped crutch, you made it sound like he was running around with some Fisher-Price brand of My First Meth Addiction or something,” I sighed, running a hand through my hair.

“Watch your mouth,” Charlaine snapped, her lips pursed. No wonder Parker was rebelling.

“Any other little shocking details I need to be aware of?” I asked, not ready for the answer.

“No. He’s taken to music lately. He’s been talking about starting wanting to learn drums and start a band, but I don’t know how serious he is and I can’t afford to buy him an instrument only to have him to flake out on it a month later,” Charlaine said. Drums and rock bands, huh? Now that I could handle. Maybe I could get him enrolled in band class or drum lessons or something.

“Well, he was always a little artsy like that, wasn’t he?” I asked.

“Yeah, not that you’d know,” Charlaine said. Ouch. It stung like hell, but I guess I deserved it.

“Alright, then. Nice seeing you, as always,” I said and turned toward the truck. Charlaine’s hand clapped my shoulder, freezing me in my tracks.

“What?” I asked.

“Something’s not right with him. I don’t know what it is, but there’s… something different, something I don’t think he can tell me. Something you might be able to help him work out,” Charlaine said, her eyes unable to meet mine.

“What’s that mean?”

“Well, I just thought… you know, the reason things didn’t work out between us, I think he might be that way too,” Charlaine said.

“‘That way too’? Christ, Charlaine,” I said, shrugging her hand off my shoulder. I stormed to the truck, climbed inside, and slammed the door.

“I didn’t mean anything by it, I just thought you might be a good role model for once, that’s all!” Charlaine called, but I’d already put the truck in reverse and stepped on the gas. Whatever she thought of me, whatever she thought I might be, Parker didn’t need to hear any of it, especially not now that he was coming to live with me. If anyone could serve as a role model in that regard, it would be Jason, not me.

I slammed the truck into drive and burned rubber peeling out of the parking lot, Parker’s approving howls in my ear as we left Charlaine behind. He turned on the radio, tuned it to a station I didn’t recognize and cranked the volume. The squeal of guitars filled the cabin, coupled with the squeal of Parker’s attempt to sing along with the song, his fingers, and hands flailing as he played the air drums.

I had no idea what I was running from—and even less of an idea what I was running toward—but I couldn’t wait to get back to Beauclaire.