Burn

Many moons ago, Steve’s dad got this bee in his bonnet about moving. This was long after Steve and I had stopped being a couple, after coming out to his folks, after the end of his second (only other) long-term relationship — but before he’d slid too far down the path into the dark.

Anyway, J (Steve’s dad) was forever on about moving. Different city, different state, didn’t seem to much matter to him, as long as it was different and far away from his current life. Steve’s mom, B, was still working the first few times the subject came up — and she was NOwhere near ready to “retire” to a place she’d never been, with no job and no friends, just to spend 24/7 with J, the retired law enforcement sergeant and recovering alcoholic who, once he stopped drinking, didn’t really have any other hobbies…except maybe having become the next-best thing to a born-again Christian during his recovery. That was…fun.

I mean, they loved each other, J and B did, but Steve and I could watch them, did watch them more times than I could count, go from amity to acrimony in less than ten minutes because neither of them seemed able to stop pushing the other’s buttons. Hell, I’m not sure they ever figured out they even HAD buttons, let alone knew what they were doing to set each other off, which pretty much made them clueless about how to stop.

What, you think Steve should have said something? He may have, to his mom, anyway. But his dad was an angry, nasty drunk with a hair-trigger temper, and that’s something that didn’t change after J kicked alcohol.