None of the words I was typing made any sense. I was shaking too hard to hit the right keys. She didn’t need to know that. What had happened to us? I was sure it was my fault, but she still left me. She promised to love me forever and it took one mistake for her to throw it all away.

When she closed my door, I stopped typing and put my head in my hands. When was I going to learn? I was meant to be alone. It wasn’t her fault or Brody’s or even my dad’s. It was all on me. I wasn’t worth sticking around. I wasn’t enough for any of them.

I tried to be perfect for them all. The perfect student and athlete for my father. The perfect brother who took the heat off my idol and covered when he was late or high. The perfect man who she was proud to take home to her family. I played the part for all of them until they realized I was a fraud who was barely getting by. Then they left. They all left, but April’s hurt the most.

* * *

I walked in as I skimmed through the mail and kicked a box in the entryway. I lowered the mail and looked around. There were boxes everywhere. “April?”

I heard her from the other room. “Fuck.”

I followed the sound and saw her taping another box. “What’s going on?”

“What does it look like, Tim?”

I put the mail on the counter and turned her around. “What is going on?”

“I’m moving out. Congratulations.”

“What the fuck? Just like that? You’re not going to talk to me?”

“Oh, I think you said enough the other night.”

“What did I say?”

She stopped fighting the tape and looked at me. “You don’t even know what you said? That’s so much worse that you can just spew that shit and not even know it.” She scoffed and ripped the tape off that wouldn’t cooperate so she could start again. “I just have this last box to tape up and then I’ll be done.”

“You’re not done until you tell me what I said.”

“Fuck it.” She threw the tape gun across the room and folded the box’s flaps in.

“What did I say, April?”

“You figure it out.” She lifted the box and took it outside.

My heart grew colder with each box she took out. I didn’t lift a finger to help her. I took a shower, and by the time I came out, she was gone. The only things she left behind were her key on the table and her perfume in the air. It would take weeks before I stopped smelling her.

* * *

I rubbed my face when my cell phone rang and swallowed hard. It was time to stop living in the past. I picked up my phone and saw a number I didn’t recognize. Since we received a lot of referrals and most of them out of the blue, I had to answer it.

“Tim Michaels.”

“Timmy?” The only person who called me Timmy was Lila.

“No one calls me that.”

“You mean no one else.” She had a smile in her voice, but I wasn’t smiling.

“What did you need, Lila?”

“Busy man, are we?” Her smile was gone, replaced by annoyance. “We’re all busy, Timmy.”

“Yeah, we are. So busy Dad couldn’t meet with us that second day. Well, I’m home now and that’s where I’m staying. What do you want, Lila?”

“I want to be a part of my brother’s life. I was hoping he’d want to be a part of mine.”

“I’m sure Brody would be happy to hear from you.”

“He was. I wish my other brother would’ve been.” She hung up.

I bent my wrist and hung my hand, still holding the phone, and placed my forehead on the back of my hand before I closed my eyes. I should’ve called her back. I shouldn’t have been so rude. I set the phone down and turned back to my computer. I had work to do.

* * *

It had been a long day. I wanted to go home and go to bed. I walked through the back and heard a rustling noise. I stopped and looked around. The last thing I wanted to deal with was rodents.

I took my time looking and tried to not make a noise. I didn’t want to spook whatever it was back there. I took one step at a time and leaned forward to peek around the corner. I stood up straight and shook my head. “What are you doing?”

Briggs jumped and stood. He had been crouched down, leaning against the wall with his arms around his knees. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Clearly.” I looked to the place he had been sitting. There was nothing there. “What are you doing?”

“I was.” He looked behind him and hung his head when he turned around. “I was taking a break.”

I looked at my watch. “Aren’t you off the clock?”

“I meant from life. Sometimes I just need the quiet. I thought things would’ve been easier since I graduated high school, but they’ve gotten more complicated.”

I understood him completely. I needed the quiet, too, but I had a place to go to get it. He didn’t. I looked around to see if there was anything worth stealing. There wasn’t much. All electronics were locked in a cabinet in the office. All the staff had free access to were generic office supplies and paper, and April used most of that.

I motioned with my head for him to follow me. “Come on.”

He was hesitant, but he followed to the other side of the back room. It had been a docking area for the business that owned it before us, but we hadn’t gotten around to changing it. It was nothing but storage and junk. I walked to the corner that had some of the old lobby chairs and dug one out.

I turned and handed it to him. “I understand sitting over there where people can’t see you. I also understand not sitting on the dirty cement and getting yelled at by your mom. Put this chair over there so you have a place to sit.”

He took it and looked at it as if I had just handed him a lifeline. “You don’t mind?”

“No, but I want you to tell April you’re sitting there occasionally.” I pointed at him. “Not on work time, but on breaks or before and after your shift. I don’t want you to scare April. Make sure she knows you might be sitting there if she comes for supplies.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” I watched as he walked away. He was a good kid who made a poor decision. We’ve all done something we regretted. Some of us made bigger mistakes than most and changed our lives forever. It didn’t mean our lives were over. They were just different. “Briggs.”

He turned and looked to the side as if he was about to get yelled at.

“It won’t always be like this.” I took a couple of steps toward him. “Even though you’re not going where you thought you’d go to school, you’ll still learn and earn that degree you want. You’ll still have the opportunities you had before. It’s just that your mom is going to hover over you a little closer now. She loves you.

“Give it time. It may be a new normal where you have to be a little more conscious of things others aren’t, but it won’t always be in your face. Your mom won’t always be, either.”

He smirked at that.

“You’ve met my brother, right?”

“Yeah, once I think.”

“He’s an addict and an alcoholic.”

“Steroids?”

I laughed. “No, he wasn’t addicted to steroids. He’s always been a big guy, but the muscles came after he cleaned his life up.” Brody was open about his past with others who were recovering, so I knew he wouldn’t mind me telling him, but I was going to ask him to talk to Briggs the next time he came in.

“Brody was addicted to anything he could get his hands on. It didn’t really matter as long as he got that high he needed. He wanted to numb the world and the voices. Being big wasn’t always great for him. He looked awkward growing up and the other kids made fun of him. It spiraled from there and landed him in prison.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re nineteen and you’ve got your entire life ahead of you. Things seem like shit now and your mom is in your face so you can’t breathe, but you will have everything you ever wanted in life. This doesn’t have to hold you back.”

I took my phone out and opened up a photo Brody had sent me on their honeymoon. I turned it to him. “Does that look like a man held back by his addictions?”

“No, he looks happy.”

“It’s a big bump in the road, but it’s still a bump. It isn’t a mountain that you can’t pass over. The road before you hasn’t disintegrated. It’s just changed directions. You can still move forward. Remember that.”

“Yes, sir.”

I walked away to give him that quiet time he needed. I needed it, too. My words kept replaying over in my mind on the drive home. Why was I acting as if my road had disappeared before me? It felt like it had, but wasn’t there another one for me to take? The quiet got to be too much.

When I walked in the door, I turned the television on. I didn’t care who was playing or what sport they were covering. I needed to drown out the noise in my head.

I looked at my phone as it buzzed on the coffee table. I ignored it, but it kept ringing. Out of frustration, I picked it up to turn it off, but saw it was Brody. What if something had happened to Maggie?

“Hello?”

“What the fuck, man? I know you’re going through some shit, but our sister wants to be a part of our lives. She lived in the house we lived in. She was there with the fights. You want to shut the old man out like he’s shutting us out, that’s fine, but do not shut out Lila.”

“Congratulations on finally being the big brother she always wanted you to be.”

“You’re her big brother, too.”

“I’m no one.”

He sighed. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Look, it’s been a rough day.”

“I thought you wanted your family.”

I knew what I was going to say was going to set him off, but it had to be said. “Now why the fuck would I want a family who wanted nothing to do with me?” I hung up and turned the phone off.

That was why I didn’t have a road in front of me. It was eroded by the ones who were supposed to love me. They only loved themselves. They couldn’t fault me for being selfish. It was my turn to do what I wanted and when I wanted without any regards to them. Fuck them. I had a new road I needed to make.