That asshole.
IT WASN’T easy. Nothing good ever is. Once an addict, always an addict, or so they say. His recovery was slow and arduous, and there were days when I thought he’d slip right back to where he’d been before, days when I couldn’t believe we’d missed this, that I’d missed this. Looking back, it was so blatant what had been going on, and the fact that I hadn’t figured it out on my own continued to gnaw at me. I watched him like a hawk.
He accused me of not trusting him.
I told him I couldn’t. Not yet.
I didn’t miss the hurt on his face.
So, no. He didn’t get better right away. Real life didn’t work like that. There wasn’t going to be a revelation of addiction and then everything was going to be all right. The Kid had been through the ringer and was only now finding his footing.
Everyone told us it’d take time.
“You just gotta be there for him, you know,” Creed said to me one night when Otter and Ty were out at one of Ty’s appointments. “Same as you’ve always been.”
“Yeah, because that helped so well before,” I muttered.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, yourself,” I said back.
“Don’t be a dick.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Don’t be a—”
“I heard you the first time.”
“Oh. Then why’d you say—”
“I’m not being a dick.”
“A little bit. You can’t control everything, Papa Bear. No matter how much you want to. There’s always going to be something that’s out of your con—JJ, what the—Jesus Christ, did you bathe in chunky peanut butter?”
“I was trying to make a sandwich!” I heard JJ holler in the background. “I couldn’t find a knife, so I used my hands!”
“How is it in your hair?”
“My head itched, Dad. But look! Look. It’s chunky peanut butter, right? I guess now I’m nuts!”
There was a beat of silence, and then Creed burst out laughing. “Dude! Holy shit, I love you. Fuuuuck, you are the coolest kid in the world. And don’t tell your mom I said fuck or shit. And don’t tell her about the peanut butter.”
“What’ll you give me if I don’t?”
“A dollar.”
“Two dollars.”
“Deal. Now go into the bathroom. I’ll be there in a minute. And if you touch anything on your way there, I am going to tell that monster in your closet that it’s open season on little boys tonight, you hear me?”
JJ screamed.
“Kids are so stupid,” Creed said fondly. “He looks like he just crawled out of someone’s asshole. God, I love him so much.”
“I don’t know if you’re the best parent, or the worst.”
“Eh. As long as he doesn’t grow up to be evil, I’m cool. Don’t tell Anna I said that.”