After All This Time by Beca Lewis

Author:Beca Lewis [Beca Lewis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Perception Publishing
Published: 2022-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

Ron poured himself a drink. It wasn’t something he normally allowed himself to do. He always thought it was incredibly stupid that in TV shows, people came home from work and headed straight to their stash of liquor.

Since he and April had always commented on how no one did things like that, she would have wondered why he was drinking now. Not that she was a prude about drinking. It was that she had made a decision about not drinking for herself and expected Ron to be her partner in that decision.

Although April’s parents hadn’t been drinkers, Ron knew that Marsha and Bree had mothers who drank too much and made their daughter’s life miserable. Eventually, both of them died because of it. And that had sealed the deal for April. She would not be that kind of mother.

But now she didn’t live there anymore, and he was alone. So on the way home, he stopped at a liquor store and bought himself a bottle of bourbon, the best they had. As he swirled the amber liquid in his glass, he thought about his father.

That piece of work, he said to himself.

Drunk and abusive would not even begin to describe his father. It was too mild of a description. Besides, his father had no class. He would never drink bourbon. Just beer, the cheapest he could find.

Red and gold cans of Schmidt’s beer were everywhere, crunching under his feet as he stomped through the house, looking for someone to abuse. Not someone. His son.

For some reason, his father hated him. Ron had often wondered if he was really that man’s son, and that’s why he hated him. Or perhaps he wanted that to be true because he didn’t want to be the son of a man like that.

He had built his entire life around not being like that man. And now, here he was, drinking.But not like his father. He was not a drunk. Or abusive. Or loud. Or low class.

Ron had learned early how the sounds of the beer cans crunching would change when his father was serious about finding him. By the time he was six, Ron had how learned to escape ahead of the tyrant looking for him and hide in the woods behind the house.

He wouldn’t have been hard to find if his father had bothered to come to look for him. But first his father would have to negotiate the piles of junk that lay in the yard. But he rarely did. It would have been too much work.

Instead, his father would grab more drink and pass out. Never in the same place. Just where the last beer would finally take him down for the night.

His mother would stand silently by letting it all happen. Sometimes sitting in a chair, sometimes in the kitchen drinking her own can of beer, sometimes watching, most often turned away—not looking, obviously not caring.

Ron didn’t understand why his father had never touched his mother. Just him. Maybe his father was afraid of his mother.

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