Thirty-one

 

Conner

 

I’m gonna deal with this the way I deal with everything else. I’m going to drink myself blind and fuck myself stupid. If that doesn’t work, I’ll pick a fight.

Or five.

Friday night at Gilroy’s, there’s any number of drunk assholes, begging to have the shit knocked out of them. Of course, it only works if I get my bell rung a few times before I clean house, so a bar brawl is more of a last resort than Plan A.

Sunday dinners with my folks always go better when I don’t roll through the door looking like Quasimodo.

I know how that sounds. Dangerous. Destructive, bordering on self-abuse. It’s all of those things, but outside of lobotomizing myself with one of Mrs. McGintey’s crochet hooks, it’s all I’ve got.

Fishing my watch out of the toolbox, I strap it on and set the alarm for seven. Tess got it for me a while ago, after coming in on a Monday and realizing I’d spent my entire weekend under the hood of a car. Not really a big deal until you factor in that I didn’t eat, sleep or even use the bathroom for nearly 48 hours.

After that, she slapped this piece of shit on my arm and told me it was either that or she tells my mom about my episodes—like I’ve got dementia or some shit.

It was the only real fight we’ve ever had.

And I lost.

I hate wearing it. Makes me feel defective. Like I can’t manage my behavior without help.

Which, if I’m looking at myself objectively, is true.

I can’t.

Not without tools.

I need this piece of shit watch to squawk at me in a few hours because that’s the only way I’ll be able to pull myself out of my own head and function like a real, live human. So, I can remember to move on to the next task and the next and next until, so I don’t end up starved and dehydrated in front of my computer or under the hood of a car.

At night it’s worse. I don’t sleep. Every time I start to drift, my goddamned brain starts banging around my skull like a fucking marching band. Last night was the first real sleep I’ve gotten in months—maybe even years—and by real, I mean not a Jameson induced coma.

I lift the hood on the Windstar and get to work. My brain starts to slow. Within minutes I feel solid again. Grounded. Some people meditate. Run.

I re-build engines.

I was seventeen and had been hanging out at the garage every day for a few months when Tess’s dad finally emerged from the under the hood of a car and said, you know how to rebuild a carburetor? When I shook my head no he said, Wanna learn?

I didn’t but I said yes anyway because I was afraid if I didn’t at least try to make myself useful, Tess’s dad would stop letting me hang out with her, and I needed her. I needed Tess. After Henley left, I didn’t fall apart. I disintegrated. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. I needed Tess.

I still do.

So, I said yes, and Mr. Castinetti put a wrench in my hand. Like everything else, it came easy. It clicked. Within a day or two, I was tearing engines apart and putting them back together in a few hours. Soon, I was spending all my free time here, even when Tess was gone.

Another tool in my arsenal of self-management.

Booze.

Blood.

Women.

The goddamned watch strapped to my wrist.

The car I’m working on.

Tools I use to keep myself together. To keep myself numb. Solid. Some of them more destructive than others.

Drowning myself in whiskey and pussy is plan A. So much of both that Cap’n will have to form a goddamned search party to find my ass.

Even as I think it, my dick—usually a willing, if not enthusiastic, participant actually tries to crawl in on itself. Just the thought of fucking anyone but Henley makes me nauseous. Makes me look back on the way I’ve been functioning for the past eight years. What I see makes me want to put my head through a goddamned wall.

I’ve known she’s back in Boston for a less than six hours and I couldn’t get hard for someone else if I had a dump truck full of Viagra and an army of lingerie models engaged in a bi-curious pillow fight right here in front of me.

Jesus Christ.

I’m fucked.

Completely and totally fucked.