His nose was red, his eyes were bloodshot and watering.
“I don’t cry.” Joey released a shaky breath and retrieved a wad of tissue from his pocket. “I’m just…” He completely spaced out for several long beats before adding, “coming down with something.”
“Oh my god, Joe, you’re bleeding,” I strangled out, when the white tissue he used to dab his nose came back a crimson red. “Your nose is bleeding.”
“I am?” He stared down at the blood-stained tissue in an almost trancelike motion. Blood continued to trickle down his face, but he made no move to intervene. “Ah shit.”
“Joey,” I snapped, grabbing the tissue from his hand and pressing it to his nose. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” With one hand cupping the back of his head, I used the other to hold the tissue to his face. “Bullshit. What did he give you?”
“Nothing,” he whispered, hands falling limply to his sides, as he watched me watch him. “It’s all good, Molloy.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I warned. “You’re completely strung out.”
“I’m not lying.” My heart plummeted out of my ass and on to the floor, where he then kicked it by saying, “I swear.”
“You’re such a liar.”
Furious, I quickly pulled him to his feet, and reeled off some spiel to the teacher before ushering him out of the classroom, ignoring the stares and whispers as we went.
“Is Joey alright there, Aoife?” our teacher, Mr. Brolly, called out the classroom door after us.
“Yeah, yeah, sir, he’s grand. It’s just a nosebleed. Will you ask Casey to pack up our bags for us,” I called back, keeping him welded to my side, as I walked him out of school and over to where I had parked my car.
“Don’t hate me, Molloy,” Joey mumbled, falling into the passenger seat the minute I let him go to open the car door. “You’re all I have to wake up for in the morning.”
BACK TO THE DOG HOUSE
SEPTEMBER 1ST 2004
JOEY
I was back in the doghouse.
Strewn out on her bedroom floor, bollocks-naked, with a fluffy white pillow under my head, and a pink blanket thrown over me, was how I found myself when I came to.
“So he lives,” a familiar voice drawled sarcastically.
Shivering violently, I slowly pulled myself up to find a furious pair of green eyes glaring at me.
Sitting with her back to her door, she glowered at me when she asked, “What did he give you?”
I opened my mouth to lie, but she got there first.
“Don’t even think about lying to me,” she warned, tossing the tea towel that had been resting on her shoulder at my head. “If you saw what came out of your body, what I had to clean off you, then you’d know that lying is pointless.”
Disgusted with myself, I looked around her disheveled room, her now stripped bed, and bit back a groan. “Did I…”
“Destroy my room in the process of destroying your brain?” she was quick to hiss. “Yep.”
“Sorry.” I blew out a breath. “I’ll clean everything—“
“It’s already done,” she snapped. “And before you think about running out on me without an explanation, just know that every stitch of clothing you had on is currently in the dryer downstairs. So, no, Joe, I don’t want your help to clean. All I want from you is answers.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Start with what you took this morning, and we’ll go from there.”
“Fuck.” Reaching up, I cupped the back of my head and sighed before reluctantly admitting, “I had a slip.”
“A slip.”
There was no point in lying to her, even if lying was my first language, something I’d inherited from my family.
I couldn’t do it now, though.
The look in her eyes told me that I had one chance to fix this and only one.
“I’m not going to make excuses,” I said. “There’s no excusing it.”
“No.” Her voice was thick with emotion. “There’s not.”
“Contrary to today, I really have been trying,” I added, running a hand through my hair. “More than you know.”
“Then why?“ Her voice cracked, and I watched as a tear trickled down her cheek. “Why do this? You’ve been doing so well. I know you have. I know you’re not perfect, okay. I know you smoke weed. I know you have your demons and your secrets, but you were trying. You weren’t getting all fucked up like this!”
“He broke Tadhg’s nose last night,” I heard myself admit. “And I wasn’t there to stop him.”
“Your father?” Her breath hitched in her throat. “Your father broke Tadhg’s nose?”
“Yeah. He did.” I replied flatly, hating myself with every fiber of my being for telling her things that she had no business knowing.
For dragging her deeper into my fucked-up world.
“But he’s only a child,” she cried, covering her mouth with her hand. “He’s just a little kid.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I deadpanned. “Abusive alcoholics see no age or gender. All they see is a punching bag to take aim at when the notion strikes them.”
“Joey.”
“Don’t pity me,” I warned shakily, holding a hand up. “That’s not what I want from you. Not ever.”
“I’m not,” she whispered. “I won’t.”
“Anyway, I couldn’t handle what happened last night,” I admitted. Still can’t. “So, I did what I usually do when shit gets too heavy at home.” I shrugged. “I called Shane.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she watched me watch her. “And?”
“And.” I exhaled a heavy sigh before admitting, “I got what I needed to help me handle it.”
“Which was?”
“Something I haven’t tried before.”
“Something bad?”
Bitter with regret, I nodded my response, which caused Molloy to choke out a huge, gut-wrenching sob.
“You can’t do that again.” Scrambling onto her hands and knees, she crawled over to where I was sitting and threw her arms around me. “You can’t, Joe. You just can’t.” Crying hard, Molloy clung to me like a baby monkey, holding onto my body like it was something of great importance to her. “I need you. I need you, Joe. You can’t do this to yourself.”
“It’s okay.” Rattled by just how deeply her pain affected me, I wrapped my arms around her. “Shh. It’s okay.”
“We could get out of here,” she sobbed against my neck. “You and me. We could just load up the car and leave this shithole town behind us. I would go with you, Joe. I would. I love you,” she continued to sob, peppering kisses down my neck. “I love you. I love you. I love you so fucking much, it makes me want to die.”
I believed her, and that scared me worse than the prospect of staying.
Because I knew that she was willing to do anything to help me, and, in the end, it wouldn’t be enough, because I was too fucking gone in the mind.
She was too good for me, too fucking good for the world. I knew deep down inside that I needed to let her go in order to give her some chance of a future.
But I just couldn’t.
“I can’t leave them, Molloy,” I whispered, tightening my arms around her, when her body racked with sobs. I’m not my brother. “I have to stay.”
RESIGNED TO HEARTACHE
SEPTEMBER 1ST 2004
AOIFE
I never wanted to experience a day like today ever again.
There were no words to describe the level of helplessness I had felt when I watched Joey soar and then roughly crash and burn.
I wasn’t stupid.
I could see the red flags shooting up in every direction.
Problem was, I was too in love to take heed.
Because I knew that beneath all of the pain and bullshit, there was someone worth saving in there.
He was a good person who made terrible decisions.
He wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.
He was trying to survive in the only way he’d ever known how, by self-medicating.
Even as I watched him sleep it off on my bed, I could see the heartache he represented to me written all over every inch of his skin.
He was going to break my heart, I knew it. I could see it coming from a mile away, and I still couldn’t seem to get my self-perseveration instincts to kick in and protect me from the inevitable.