“That’s a scary thought.”
“That’s why we’re here and not out there.”
She smiled at his words, surprisingly at ease as they meandered down the beach. Neither of them felt the need to speak. Colin focused on the sensation of his feet sinking into the sand and the warm breeze on his face. Watching Maria’s hair ripple in the wind, he realized that he was enjoying the walk more than he’d anticipated. He reminded himself that they were strangers, but for some reason, it didn’t quite feel that way.
“I have a question, but I don’t know if it’s too personal,” she finally said.
“Go ahead,” he replied, already knowing what was coming.
“You said you were a problem adult and that you got in a lot of bar fights. And that you had some great lawyers.”
“Yes.”
“Was that because you were arrested?”
He adjusted his cap. “Yes.”
“More than once?”
“A number of times,” he admitted. “For a while there, I was pretty much on a first-name basis with any number of cops in Raleigh and Wilmington.”
“Were you ever convicted?”
“A few times,” he said.
“And you went to prison?”
“No. I probably spent a total of a year in county lockup. Not all at once, more like a month here, two months there. I never made it as far as prison. I would have – the last fight was pretty bad – but I caught a serious break and here I am.”
She lowered her chin slightly, no doubt questioning her decision to walk with him.
“When you say you caught a serious break…”
He took a few steps before answering. “I’ve been on probation for the last three years, with two more to go. It’s part of the five-year deal I received. Basically, if I don’t get into any more trouble for the next two years, they’ll clear my record entirely. Which means I’ll be able to teach in the classroom, and that’s important to me. People don’t want felons teaching their children. On the other hand, if I mess up, the deal goes out the window and I go straight to prison.”
“How is that possible? To completely clear your record?”
“I was diagnosed with an anger disorder and PTSD, which affected my mens rea. You know what that is, right?”
“In other words, you’re saying you couldn’t help it,” she said.
He shrugged. “Not me. That’s what my psychiatrists said, and fortunately, I had the records to prove it. I’d been in therapy for almost fifteen years, I’ve been on medication periodically, and as part of my deal, I had to spend a few months at a psychiatric hospital in Arizona that specialized in anger disorders.”
“And… when you got back to Raleigh, your parents kicked you out of the house?”
“Yes,” he said. “But all that together – the fight and potential prison sentence, the deal, my time at the hospital, and suddenly being forced to be on my own – led me to do some serious soul searching, and I realized that I was tired of the life I’d been living. I was tired of being me. I didn’t want to be the guy who was known for stomping on someone’s head after they were already on the ground, I wanted to be known as… a friend, a guy you could count on. Or at the very least, a guy with some kind of future ahead of him. So I stopped partying and I channeled all my energy into training and going to school and working instead.”
“Just like that?”
“It wasn’t quite as easy as it sounds, but yeah… just like that.”
“People don’t usually change.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Still…”
“Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not trying to make excuses for what I did. Regardless of what the doctors said about whether or not I could actually control my behavior, I knew I was messed up, and I didn’t give a damn about getting better. Instead, I smoked pot and drank and trashed my parents’ house and wrecked cars and I got arrested over and over for fighting. For a long time, I just didn’t care about anything other than partying the way I wanted to.”