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heartsofminds · 5 months ago

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and the songbirds are singing like they know the score - part i.

"If Bradley squints his eyes, he can still make out the little five-year-old that he once knew who thought that he put the stars in the sky and cried when she found out that Jake’s real name wasn’t Hangman." or Quincy Bradshaw is growing up and no one knows what to do about it; especially Bradley.

a/n: in light of father's day, enjoy part one to bradley's precocious daughter making a re-appearance and jake seresin being reasonable for once. part two will be posted soon! the angst will be resolved, don't you worry!

It happens in between the end credits and the black fade-out screen.

The piercing sound of the phone ringing snaps you and your husband out of your near comatose states on the couch, seemingly entranced by Molly Ringwald’s whining (which only she can get away with because she’s fucking Molly Ringwald, of course) for the entirety of Sixteen Candles.

“Holy shit,” Bradley swallows, leaning up to sit entirely straight. His movements jostle you, causing you to wince at your cheek unsticking from its glued spot on his right pec.

You smack your lips and sigh, trying to wake yourself up. The obnoxiously mechanical sound the phone makes causes your ears a subtle pain, and you silently curse your husband for refusing to remove the landline phone that sits glued to your kitchen wall.

“It serves a purpose,” he had reasoned. “Don’t kill my dream of having a rotary phone.”

And the conversation of uninstalling a 1970s landline phone from your new house was lost in the abyss of cardboard boxes and cheerios on the floor from your then beyond spunky and energetic three-year-old daughter.

So while it sticks out like an eyesore amongst your “lived-in” and perfectly curated home, you often forget it’s there... except on occasions like this when the sporadic ringing shakes your eardrums and tightens the ever-present rubberband around your temples in the worst way possible.

Bradley sits with his elbows on his knees, almost trying to muster up the strength to deal with the nuisance of the ringing phone. He sits for a second and sighs before hearing your body shift.

You smush your face into a pillow; the constant ringing making you want to tear your hair out by the second.

“Bradley!” you whine. He pats the part of your calf uncovered by your shared throw blanket with an unspoken tenderness.

“Sorry,” he timidly apologizes.

He stands up; his left knee making an impressive “crack” before swiping his phone off the coffee table on his way to the kitchen.

You turn the TV off and lie in the complete darkness of your living room. The illumination of the moonlight through the glass windowed door in your kitchen shines its way to the floor in front of your couch. You have half the mind to yell to your husband to close the blinds that line the backdoor before your voice catches in your throat.

No one ever calls the landline. Very few people even have the phone number for the landline outside of Maverick and a few close family friends. Besides, anyone who needed to reach you had your cell phone numbers anyway.

So who the actual fuck is calling your landline at 11 PM on a Thursday?

You hear Bradley yank the phone from its place on the wall and exhale with a huff. After sixteen years of being together, you know that huff is his tell of being annoyed.

“Hello?” he gruffly answers. His irritation makes the question sound more like a monotonous statement.

“Bradshaw –”

Jake Seresin is on the other end of the line. You can recognize his voice from the other room with his cadence even though you’re not on the phone with him. Having “mom ears” does that to a person, you suppose.

“Why the fuck are you calling my house at 11 PM?” Bradley snaps.

You’re wondering the same thing, but you’ll have to talk to him about being so rude and huffy. Jake may actually need something, after all.

“Well, you weren’t answering your fucking cell and neither was your wife so I had to do something.”

Bradley rolls his eyes and looks back into the darkened living room. He’s been more on edge about you lately.

“You can’t miss me that fucking much to be spamming my phone with calls,” he sighs and leans his back up against the wall. He notices the open blinds on the back door and walks to close them before he’s yanked back by the phone cord.

“Don’t cream your pants. I don’t like you that much.”

Bradley lets out a soft snort in amusement before he remembers that he’s supposed to be annoyed. He opens his mouth to ask Jake what exactly it is that’s so damn important and can’t wait until tomorrow morning when he’s beaten to it.

“I have Quincy here in the passenger seat and she’s beyond unwell.”

The statement sends Bradley into panic mode instantly. His voice catches in his throat and he can’t recall a moment he’s had where he’s felt like he’s had to force the breath out of himself like this.

He lets out something between a huff, a cough, and a wheeze before remembering he can’t make a huge show of himself right now because it’ll also throw you into panic mode.

“What the fuck do you mean she’s not well? Jake, where the fuck are you?” he whispers into the phone, trying to cover his mouth as much as possible so you can’t even read his lips if you tried. “Is she okay? What’s –”

It doesn’t take a genius to know that Bradley is panicking. Even Bradley’s beyond intoxicated and passed out seventeen-year-old daughter sitting in the passenger seat of Jake’s truck could piece together that her father is nothing but a raging ball of anxiety at the moment, and Jake is positive that his friend is growing another patch of gray hair as the seconds pass.

“Oh. . .fuck, I guess I should’ve phrased that better,” Jake admits. His truck comes to a halt at a spotlight and he glances over at his goddaughter. “She’s fine. She’s drunk as shit right now, but I’m on the way to drop her at yours.”

Bradley can feel the obnoxious orange ball of anxiety inside of him shift to a tumultuous rage-induced scarlett. His hand tightens around the phone cord and he has to stop himself before he yanks it out of the wall. He’s gotten angry like this before, but it never was angled toward his daughter.

Never toward his sweet, precious girl. Never toward his amazing Quincy.

But she knows the rules (and she chose to break them) and she knows what was told to her (and she snuck out anyway) and she knows that it’s dangerous to be that drunk (but yet she’s passed out in Jake’s truck).

And if that isn’t both nerve-wracking and frustrating, Bradley doesn’t know what is.

“Put her on the phone,” he speaks lowly.

Jake gulps, knowing that he’s in one of those moods. Bradley doesn’t express anger as often as he expresses annoyance, but an angry Bradley is never someone he wants to be around. And from the way that Quincy made it sound when she called him to come get her from some random party in the middle of nowhere thirty-five minutes away from her house at 11 PM on a school night, he knows her ass is being had tomorrow morning by both you and Bradley.

There’s absolutely no way his goddaughter is coming out of this unscathed.

“Dude, she’s obliterated right now and I think you talking to her is just gonna make it worse.”

“And I don’t give a fuck. I said, put her on the fucking phone now.”

Jake shakes his head and rolls his eyes as Quincy begins to stir next to him in her seat. He’s always been the person she’s called whenever she was in trouble. He always got the first hug whenever she was brought around. He’s always been her source of comfort outside of her parents and he’s never minded it because being around her is easy.

It was easy to carry her around whenever she asked when she was little. It was easy to give in and let her sit in the cockpit of his grounded aircraft with him and let her play with the buttons when her dad and Papa Mav refused. It was easy to pick her up from school at midday and take her to lunch. It was easy to bring her back gifts from wherever he was deployed and even easier picking them out because she’s a sucker for meaningless trinkets.

It was easy to be her godfather and she’s a smart and relatively easy kid, but Jake has never been prepared for this part.

Because doing what’s best for her is hard, and he realizes that when he can feel his friend wanting to put him through a wall over the phone.

“No,” he speaks and he can hear Bradley let out a small gasp at the denial of his request, “She fucked up bad, Bradley. I’m sure she knows and you can have it out with her tomorrow morning, but right now, she’s not in any place to be screamed at and made to feel worse. You’re her dad and m’not tryin’ to take that away from you –”

Bradley scoffs, “What exactly do you fuckin’ know about raising kids, Jake? Huh?”

Jake grimaces and decides to take the brute of Bradley’s anger. Better him than Quincy, he figures. Besides, he knows Bradley doesn’t mean any of it. . . At least he hopes he doesn’t.

“You obviously can’t be a dad because you just wanna have fun and dick around all the fucking time. Buying them fuckin’ candy and letting them off scott-free doesn’t do shit. You don’t have what it takes to raise a fucking person.”

Jake doesn’t know why, but part of him gets that prickly feeling in his chest. Usually, every insult rolls off his shoulders into oblivion and he gets off on making people angry and being able to put on the facade that he really couldn’t give a damn if he tried.

But this one hurts because he knows that Bradley is right in some regard.

He’s a runner and he lets people down. He’s nearing fifty (and God, he never thought he ever would) and has never even bothered to settle down. And he’s made peace with himself a long time ago that he doesn’t deserve a wife or a family or kids because he would never be able to love them more than he loves himself; more than he loves his career.

To hear one of your closest friends admit that to you openly, to know that someone outside of you sees it too, makes his heart stop momentarily and forces him to feel the ache of the words meant to stab him in the chest.

“I understand,” he swallows. He knows arguing with Bradley isn’t the right thing to do at the moment and never will be. “I’m still not putting her on the phone. We will be at your house shortly.”

The line goes dead and Bradley is overcome with a wave of anger that drowns him like a tsunami. He knows what he said was shitty and that he has no right to do that to someone who he considers a close friend, but he just can’t help himself.

He knows no allies when it comes to his daughter.

The sound of the plastic phone slamming into its rightful place on the wall alarms you and part of your heart hurts for Jake.

Jake has no concept of boundaries and has no limit to the absurdities that he often commits, but Jake also has the biggest heart that gets overshadowed by his equally big ego. You know the words uttered to him by your husband have knocked him down in ways Bradley isn’t the slightest bit aware of, and you start to silently cry for him because you know he won’t do it for himself.

You force yourself up from your deepened spot on the couch and waddle your way to Bradley in the kitchen. The tears streaming down your face only fuel your need to make it right and to stand up for Jake and his quietly hurt feelings.

You don’t know the full of what happened, but you heard enough to know that no one deserves to be spoken to that way. Bradley is upset (and he seemingly always has this cloud of gloom hanging over his head), but that gives him no right to be so cruel.

The mama bear feelings are only amplified by the thirty-nine-week bump on your frontside making you tilt forward more than you usually do. Jake is a big boy and you know he can handle himself and that this situation has nothing to do with you, per se, but the lack of kindness surrounding you currently is stuffy, and you’d do anything to break the barrier to actually breathe.

You try and stifle your cries and wipe your starry eyes before you approach your husband; silently cursing how cold your feet are and longing for the day when you can put your socks back on yourself independently.

He stands with his hands against the wall and his head drooped between them. It’s a look of defeat; a showcase of hopelessness and frustration mixed into a burly mess of indigo and violets from the moonlight and dark sky peeping into your kitchen windows. Despite the darkness surrounding him, you can see the pink flush on the back of Bradley’s ears that has traveled to the tops of his shoulder blades.

The anger is rampant and on the verge of explosion. Seeing your sweet Bradley like this is a sight rarer than a double rainbow. Part of you knows you shouldn’t poke the bear, but Bradley knows he shouldn’t speak to people like that. Compromising your morals is something you’ve never let yourself do and being bone tired and thirty-nine weeks pregnant is not going to change that.

Something’s gotta give, and you decide that it’s going to be you.

His head pops up the second he senses your presence. He knows that something is off with you after your lack of announcement. His home and heart had been preoccupied by two of the most chatty (and rather heavy-footed) women for the past sixteen and a half years. Silence is not welcomed in abundance in the Bradshaw household.

As if he didn’t have to suck in his sharp breath of frustration seconds prior, he turns to you and opens his arms. The darkness hides your tears and aggravation, but he knows that it stands next to you as an unwelcome visitor.

Part of you wants to indulge, but an overwhelming portion of you houses irritation that won’t let you bite.

This night was supposed to be one of peace and tranquility. You’re coming up on week three of rest allocated by your maternity leave and you finally feel like the walls in your house aren’t closing in on you. Bradley’s light load of scheduled hops and paperwork has helped with giving you company earlier in the afternoons before you have to make room for your second daughter. The way that she’s sitting on your bladder and constantly kicking your ribs in the middle of the night throws the hope that she’ll be calm and sweet out of the window and opens the door to the reality that she’ll be a carbon copy of her older sister.

“What’s wrong?” you grumble, sending Bradley a scowl. You ignore his open arms and head to the fridge. You slam the carton of orange juice down on the counter and swing open the cabinet door to grab yourself a glass.

Bradley furrows his eyebrows in confusion and lowers his arms in defeat. His feet drag him closer to you subconsciously. The thought that you moved away from him because you wanted space doesn’t cross his mind.

“Nothing,” he leans his hip against the countertop, eyes scanning the thin stream of juice being poured into the glass. His nose wrinkles as you flash your eyebrows at him. That was always his tell of hiding something.

He knows you can clock it. He just really doesn’t want to argue right now.

You take a gulp from your glass while rolling your eyes. “Don’t lie to me. I know it was Jake.”

“Doesn’t mean something is wrong.” His shoulders slump before he closes the refrigerator door. You had been extra forgetful in this stage of your pregnancy.

Your lips mouth a reflexive, “Thank you” before you huff. Being lied to was something you never appreciated; especially when you know how bad Bradley is at doing it. Besides, you know that he knows you have heard quite a bit. The pointlessness of his actions starts a kindling of rage in your belly.

“Well, that’s funny because you’re telling Jake he doesn’t know how to be a parent over the phone?”

“I didn’t say that.”

His spine straightens and his cheeks spill a baby pink hue that starts to spread to the tips of his ears. You think he looks just like your daughter even though you can’t see the fullness of his face. Your eyes start to twinkle before you remember that you’re pissed at him. The serious face holds a standstill.

“Don’t play dumb. Do I need to say the exact words for it to ring a bell? ‘You don’t have what it takes to raise a fuckin’ person.’ Seriously, Bradley? What the fuck is your problem?”

He winces at the agitation in your voice. Hearing it being said by someone other than him makes him realize how fucked up he was to say it; let alone even think about saying it to someone as dear to him and your family as Jake. Your hands heavily place the glass in the metal bottom of the kitchen sink and your heavy footsteps storm past him back to the living room.

Bradley reaches out to grab your wrist and spins you to look at him. His hands envelop yours and place them flat on his chest. He sighs before dropping his head as if he was a puppy that had just gotten scolded.

“You’re right,” his eyes scan your face but refuse to peer into your own, “I have no right to talk to people like that.”

You let him hold you as your annoyance shifts to a denotation of shocked nerves that leave your heart sprinting like crazy in your chest for air. You’ve always been somewhat easy to work up, but your nerves have been oversensitive as of late.

Penny and your mother call it your mother’s intuition maturing, but you like to call it a nuisance. Although the first baby you’ll be giving birth to will make her way earthside in a few short weeks, your first baby will always be the chunky eleven-month-old with blotchy pink cheeks and abundant sass you met on Halloween sixteen years ago.

Bradley’s steady hand rubbing soothing circles on your back does little to help you differentiate the present and the imaginary. You aren’t sure how much time has passed or if his soft caresses continue on your spine, but you’re damn sure of what your gut is telling you.

Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is wrong.

“Is she okay?” you ask him.

The words uttered make the world stop turning for the millisecond it took you to speak.

You know deep in your heart that she’s not okay; that she hasn’t been for a while. Your bright and bubbly baby turned angsty and moody Senior in high school had happened overnight, it seems. What was once excited chatter at the dinner table about school and friends and club soccer and yearbook committee soon became absent, and the sound of silence from a missing spot at the dining table with you and Bradley had become the norm.

It became extremely noticeable in the last few weeks of her Senior year; calls of truancy being made to your home phone and numerous talks about possible grounding if she didn’t get her act together becoming more and more frequent.

Her attendance sucks but her grades remain stellar, so the idea of punishing her falls flat on its face whenever it gets brought up. You both have always known how intelligent your daughter is. You just wish she didn’t know it so well to know that you and her father are bluffing.

And to be totally truthful, preparing for a new and unexpected baby hadn’t been part of the plan. You know that you’re not Quincy’s mother in any sense of the word, but you’re her mom and have been for as long as she can remember. Looking for your face in the school pick-up line and at soccer games and honor roll assemblies had always been her normal, and the fact that she had to share that with something embryonic (as she would call it) that hadn’t even graced real outside world oxygen (again, Quincy vernacular) was not something on her bingo card for her Senior year of high school.

Your absences from these things, the things that are important to her but she’s far too stubborn to admit how much they actually mean out loud, were felt this year. She was raised understanding and kind but has inherited the sensitivity of her father’s heart. You know how much this entire pregnancy has deeply hurt her, and the guilt swallows you whole.

The abyss of her unverbalized pain looms like a fog in every corner of your mind. Guilt has a funny way of turning all emotions into its twin.

“I mean, yes? But she’s in for it once she steps foot in this house,” he grumbles. The meteoric thumping of his heart in his chest soothes you, but you know that the adrenaline pumping through his veins to move the muscle at lightning speed is sourced in anger.

“So she called Jake?”

Bradley scoffs. Your face is buried in his chest, but you know his huff of annoyance was accompanied by an eye roll.

“Tried to use him as her ‘get out of jail free’ card. Knows that shit doesn’t work so I don’t even know why she did that.”

You stifle a laugh and pull back to look at him. “I’m sorry I was so mean earlier. Didn’t mean it,” you whisper and he grins. Apologies have never been your strong suit. He would argue that you’re more stubborn than your daughter and Maverick in that regard.

“I’m sorry I was such a dick. Know you don’t like when I get like that.”

There’s no need for acceptance. You have him wholeheartedly the same way he has you. Verbally accepting each other’s apologies has long been a thing of the past; especially when you feel like you share each other in ways that no one else on Earth would be able to understand; two halves of a whole – husband and wife.

Your hand lightly taps his chest before you scoot past him to return back to the living room. From the digital numbers of the oven light in the kitchen, you know that it’s nearing midnight. You and Bradley had never been “good sleepers” (and now that you’re thinking about it, neither is Quincy), but you figure that you should get as much sleep as you’re still allowed. God knows that the new baby will be all Bradshaw and will probably be the worst sleeper too.

Bradley hears your heavy footsteps trudge up to the bedroom and the soft suction of the door frame signifying that you’re about to lay down for the night. He wants nothing more than to join you and revel in the peace; remind himself to breathe and of simpler times when it was just you and him, but it had never just been you and him because it was always you and him and Quincy.

The ache in his stomach returns at the thought. He has to put himself back in the mindset to put his foot down and let his daughter know that what she had done was incredibly unacceptable.

It’s not like he’s mad at her for choosing to act her age for once.

He had always worried himself sick after parent-teacher conferences because all of her teachers would comment on how mature his daughter was, but how that maturity often caused her to isolate herself. She had always been bright but at the expense of never wanting to play imaginary games with her classmates because she didn’t see the point in “pretending.” He had always thought that it was his fault; that exposing your baby to the History Channel and retired veteran chatter at the bar during the day made her not like other kids.

And it’s not like he wanted her to be a certain way or that he was scared of her being “weird” or that she wasn’t living up the the expectation of what he thought having a kid would be like.

Bradley had just wanted her to be kind and to feel loved, and he knows from experience that it’s hard living life when you don’t feel like the former nor do you ever feel the support from the latter. He knows a life of isolation and a sharp tongue that spears a bleeding heart. The last thing he ever wanted was for his daughter to know the same.

Nevertheless, he’s still angry. Angry? Enraged? Pissed?

Disappointed.

Bradley had seen the signs as much as you have of your daughter’s downward spiral through the duration of the school year. He ignored the phone calls of truancy and let them go to voicemail and held his breath and his tongue when she answered a question he asked her a little too harshly. He ignored the attitude and the slamming of doors and the glow of her bedside lamp being on well past 2 AM most nights.

Bradley ignored all of it because confronting it and her made it real, and facing the reality that she’s growing up and will no longer need him is something that he will never be prepared to do.

He takes deep breaths and grabs his water bottle off the counter, unscrewing the top and taking colossal sips. His therapist had given him a printed list of techniques years ago to help him manage his anxiety. If he can’t control the speed of Jake’s truck driving down the interstate to his house, he can control the pace of the icy chugs sliding down his throat.

Bradley wipes his mouth with the back of his arm and places the metal water bottle down on the counter. He paces back and forth before he realizes that pacing always makes him more anxious. His feet carry him back to the living room where he sits on the edge of the couch and balances his elbows on the tops of his thighs.

All that can be heard is the subtle tick of the large wall clock hanging above the mantle and the soft buzz of cicadas in the backyard. The silence is cut in half by blinding headlights beaming their way through the curtains that line the front window and the roar of an engine.

He doesn’t jump up to unlock the door like he usually would. His thoughts are still maniacally bouncing around his skull like a ten-cent bouncy ball. Besides, he doesn’t even know if he dares to face Jake after he had spoken so horribly to him such a short time ago.

The old Bradley, the one who was still hurting and lonely with no wife or kids or family, wouldn’t have given a damn. Fuck Jake and fuck everyone else.

But this Bradley, the one who is a dad and a husband and a friend and a son, gives a damn and he gives such a big one that he feels nauseous.

The headlights flick off and the engine is killed. The silence that resumes is so instantaneous that he can almost fool himself into believing that everything is normal. That his daughter is upstairs fast asleep in her room and that her godfather is fifteen minutes away at his own house. He prays Jake won’t knock on the door and disturb it again. Jake never knocked on the door anyway, so he might luck out, he figures.

But Bradley underestimates how nervous Jake is about this whole thing and soon enough, the sound of his friend’s knuckles rapping on the dark green wood that is the entity of his front door.

He holds his breath as he opens it.

He sees Jake, twenty years older than when they finally put their past behind them and became friends, and then he sees his daughter, meek and saddened and slightly drunk.

If Bradley squints his eyes, he can still make out the little five-year-old that he once knew who thought that he put the stars in the sky and cried when she found out that Jake’s real name wasn’t Hangman.

The Leemoore sweatshirt she has on is three sizes too big and does little to make her look like a high school partygoer, so he knows she has a riskier top beneath it. There’s no doubt Jake probably made a pit stop at his house to give it to her before bringing her home.

Jake knows that Bradley hates secrets, so her sneaking out and also having a second secret wardrobe stashed beneath the floorboards under her bed would not make for a welcome guest upon her coming home after getting busted. The sweatshirt at least bought her a little time.

“Hey,” Jake speaks, finally slicing the tension with a greeting. His left arm is looped through his goddaughter’s and she leans on him heavily to prevent herself from falling.

“Hey,” Bradley says back. His face is stern. Jake knows he means business.

“I’m sure this isn’t how you wanted to see me next.” Even though Jake is kind of pissed and anxious, there still remains a glimmer of humor within him. The complaint of many ex-girlfriends had always been how he never took anything seriously (and his serious lack of commitment too, but that’s an issue for another time), and he knows that it’s a blessing and a curse.

“Yeah, no kidding.”

Bradley grabs his daughter’s free arm and helps Jake maneuver her inside over the steep ledge of the front door and to the asylum of the living room couch.

Quincy’s eyes are wide open and her brain is moving in slow motion; scanning her surroundings but not being able to focus on one thing before her eyes are caught by the presence of another. She had never been drunk before in her life and the copious amounts of vomit that had spewed out of her mouth tonight discouraged her from trying to speak. Any thought of opening her mouth made the muscle memory of puking prevail.

The rational part of her brain knows that her father wants to wring her neck, but she silently prides herself on calling Jake and kind of doing the right thing (even though she knows the right thing was not sneaking out and getting fucked up on a Thursday, to begin with). Her dad will forgive her and spending time with Jake was always fun. She just vows to make sure that she’ll never puke in front of him again because he turned green at the sight of her hunched over on the side of the road.

Quincy lands on the couch with an incredible lack of grace. She bounces and almost slips off again, but sticks her foot out to help support her. Her vision is blurred before she focuses on the sight of her dad with the deepest frown on his face and his hands on his hips. Her eyes follow a horizontal line next to him and see Jake worrying his lip in between his teeth. A hiccup falls out of her mouth and she rushes to close it before her body can register a solution to the nausea plaguing her currently.

The silence between the three of them is unforgiving and she can’t remember a time where she had felt so. . .embarassed.

Here she is, about to get the scolding of her life in front of one of the adults she admires the most. All she had ever wanted was to be seen as a grown-up and it’s clear to her now that the men in front of her think anything but that.

“You got anything to say?” Bradley huffs. His glare sharpens the more he takes in his daughter’s appearance.

The silence he’s met with kindles a fire in his belly that shifts the anxiety he feels to the beginning of an obnoxious anger.

Quincy can’t answer verbally because she knows she’ll throw up. She can’t shake her head to answer him either. The room is spinning and the spiraling shadow cast by her vision will undoubtedly make her throw up too. She can’t even feel her lips and anything she has to say will not be an answer worthy of her dad’s appreciation. She fucked up big time and now she has to reap what she’s sown.

Her dad scoffs. The room inflates with tension from all three of the living room’s occupants. Quincy closes her eyes. Jake holds his breath. Bradley bawls his hand into a fist.

Here it comes.

Bradley opens his mouth; words like venom sitting on the tip of his tongue. Quincy closes her eyes and braces herself for the yelling that she knows is coming.

“Hey, let’s table it for tomorrow. Yeah?”

If Jake wasn’t already her favorite, now he certainly is.

Bradley turns to him. His cheeks are tomato red and his wrath sitting in the base of his throat. He has half the mind to come unglued on him before he remembers the pit of guilt from earlier. The putrid watery feeling of guilt dampens his vocal chords. His sentences dig a grave in his voicebox.

Jake is right.

His daughter can barely sit up straight and you’re upstairs trying to sleep. There’s no point in waking the entire house and having a one-sided screaming match with someone who will only have the faintest memory of what happened the next morning.

Bradley lets out a hefty breath of air that he hadn’t even realized he was holding in. Jake claps him on the shoulder in silent praise for his decision to drop it. Never would he have ever thought that Jake Seresin of all people would be the one discouraging him from being a total hothead.

“Thanks for bringing her home, man. Sorry about – you know –” he attempts to apologize. Apologies to you rolled off his tongue like water rolled off waterfalls. They just didn’t have that effect when it came to other people who weren’t you.

“Don’t sweat it. Wouldn’t be stickin’ around if I took half the shit you say to heart.”

It’s not funny but Bradley laughs. He doesn’t know if it’s a feeble attempt at repairing the hurt he had done earlier or if it’s to absolve some of the fury that was sitting unleashed in the room, but he’s never been more thankful for Jake in that moment.

Bradley starts to walk Jake to the front door and back out to his truck. Despite being the flashiest and cockiest person he knows, Jake has had the same car for close to twenty years. The silver F-150 had seen many drunk Bradleys and many drunk yous. He just wished that his daughter wouldn’t have been a passenger on the faux “drunk bus” too.

He’ll never admit it, but part of him is jealous that Quincy called Jake instead of him. He wants to classify the feeling as betrayal, but he knows that it’s just envy. He knows that he would’ve called Maverick at this age instead of his mom. It’s a teenage rite of passage and nothing personal.

“Look, it’s late and I know you’re pissed but she did the right thing. The party got busted, you know. And she uh – her friends were drinking, like a lot, and wanted her to get in the car with them,” Jake pauses, making sure Bradley is hearing the case of positives he’s building for Quincy, “She said no and then she called me.”

Bradley nods his head and the tension in his shoulders starts to relax bit by bit. He’s oddly comforted by his daughter’s morality despite committing the precipice of what makes up an immoral teenager to get herself in this damn situation anyway.

“Most kids don’t do that and I know she isn’t most kids so uh – don’t go too hard on her tomorrow?”

The open door of the truck makes a high-pitched dinging noise as Jake’s legs sit half situated on the seat and halfway steady on the ground. The soft yellow light emitting from the streetlights tints the world in a sepia hue.

“Can’t promise that. She’s in some serious shit.”

Jake chuckles. “Serious shit or not, that’s still your baby. She needs you more than you think, you know.”

The car door is shut and the engine is cranked. Bradley pats the hollowed metal of the truck as a “goodnight and goodbye” send-off as Jake backs out of his driveway and into the street. He watches as he rounds the corner to the stop sign before the image of his friend’s truck draws smaller and smaller and smaller until the image is microscopic.

Bradley finds his way back inside and sees his daughter lying on her side with a throw blanket swallowing her figure.

He heads into the kitchen to grab her a glass of water and some Advil to set on the coffee table. Bradley doesn’t recall being hungover so much as just sick to his fucking stomach the first time he drank, but he leaves it for her just in case. His eyes catch the bottom cabinet that houses the popcorn buckets and mixing bowls and grabs the largest one to serve as her “catch-all” puke bucket for the night.

As he settles everything and makes his journey upstairs to your shared bedroom, he hears the wet wretch of what cannot be mistaken for vomiting. His heart harbors empathy for his little girl, but his brain garners no sympathy for her. Some sick part of him is glad that she’s throwing up because it’s a consequence that he doesn’t have to impose on her. She had done it to herself.

“That’s what I thought."

He turns off the bedside lamp as he lays down next to you. You don’t stir from your deep sleep. The house is finally quiet and everything as is it should be.

Bradley just doesn’t like the fact that this kind of peace is tainted with the fact that Quincy is growing up and that there is nothing he can do to stop it.

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