Emotional Baggage

Chapter Two

I have to stop listening to Skid Row, Carlo thought to himself as he nursed his second beer. It made him want to get drunk, smoke a joint, be a crazy teenager again. But he'd just gotten off the phone with Vince's mother, and she'd made him promise to visit her tomorrow. Hence, the beer. And Skid Row.

He took a long pull on his beer, the neck of the glass bottle cool between his thumb and forefinger. He's been home six months. Fixing the house, getting a dog, helping Daniel with the business. Basically, six months of being a wuss. Shit.

Make amends, remember? Find peace. Stick to the game plan.

Sebastian was singing about love letters in the sand now, making Carlo smile in the darkness.

Vince, you were obsessed with this band. Owned your hair metal love and just infected me with it. God, I wish I still smoked. He could just imagine the sweet relief: the long drag, the steady exhale.

Sitting on his couch in the dark on a Friday night: this was what his social life had come to. Normally, he didn't mind-it was what he wanted, needed, really. But on other nights it made him restless. Itchy. That was the shitty thing about all this: the swing back and forth. That fricking pendulum.

But he owned it to himself. To his ex-wife, Therese. To Chloe, their daughter.

And to Vince. What would you have become, had you lived?

He tried to imagine it, to replace that free-spirited, soccer-playing, music-obsessed, Pacino-adoring, plaid-wearing 19-year-old Vince with a Vince over 40. Would he have kids? Still play ball? Or would his knees be giving him hell, too?

Maybe Vince would be sitting next to him on this couch, drinking beers and shooting the shit while trying not to ask him about his failed marriage.

Dancing barefoot in the grass, a plastic cup of beer in one hand, the fabric of her hippie-chick skirt gathered in the other: he'd been so enamored of her the first time he saw his now ex-wife. Therese was the kind of girl he would've run with when he was younger, effusive and daring and charming, a bright light.

Carlo should've known how difficult it would be to hang on to a wild child. Hadn't he been one himself? But he'd thought, stupidly, that a ring and a walk down the aisle would be enough to make her come down from the clouds and build a life with him. Deep down, he knew Therese had believed that, too-until the day came when she couldn't live with the lie anymore.

How different would it have turned out, he wondered, if they'd met just a few years earlier, when he'd been just as wild, as free? Would they have traveled the world on adventures together, instead of trying to save their love with a child?

Instead of him trying to catch a butterfly.

Sebastian had come back round to the chorus, and Carlo found himself singing along, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing them at the ankles. He tipped his head back and half-sang, half-croaked.

A howling sound cut through the air. Carlo slanted his head to see Hunter sitting up, nose to the ceiling. He grinned. "Is that dog-speak for 'keep going' or 'shut the hell up', huh?" He patted his thigh twice and Hunter scrambled out of his dog bed and nudged his knee with his warm snout.

"Sit," Carlo murmured, patting the dog's head. "I'll shut up now. Down." Relieved, Hunter slid to the floor to curl up by his master's feet.

Hunter's body was warm against Carlo's leg. He felt the relief in it: the comfort another heartbeat could give. Carlo looked down at the golden retriever fondly.