Page 84 of Structure of Love
“Why are you here?”
“I’m Gage’s boyfriend. When you called, he was with me, so I drove him here.”
“Oh. Thanks for that.” Cooper slumped, toying with the hem of his blanket. “I’m still surprised he picked up.”
“Honestly? So am I. Good thing he did, though.”
In a threadbare voice, Cooper whispered, “I don’t know what to do.”
Oh yeah, I knew that feeling. Knew it all too well. “First thing you have to do is stop.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
“You have to stop. How’s that saying go? The man who turns around and stops going down the wrong road makes more progress than the man who keeps walking down it. Something like that, anyway. You’re on the wrong road, kid. So your first step in turning your life around is to stop.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, I was just like you at your age.” I grinned, which startled an almost smile from him. “And I do meanjustlike you. I had three misdemeanors under my belt by the time I hit seventeen. Mostly for fights, although one was because I’d snuck into the school to swim at night. I was violent, short tempered, and mouthy. Never touched drugs, but I could steal alcohol without blinking. I didn’t go down the alcoholic path, fortunately. I mostly drank with friends to fit in with them, and once I left those friends behind, I stopped drinking for the most part. Thankfully. If I had continued, I would’ve been where you’re at. My parents were mostly to blame, as they never gave two shits about their sons, but I own up to the fact that after eighteen, I only had myself to blame for my bad behavior.”
He seemed to hang on to my every word, as if sensing a kindred spirit. “But you turned your life around.”
“Damn right I did. Know what did it for me? Spite.”
“Spite?”
“Yup. Pure spite. See, growing up, I idolized my grandfather. I would have walked through hell if he’d asked me to. He’dalways had a bar from the time my father was young, and I was determined to take it over when he retired. But when I hit twenty-one, he wouldn’t give it to me. He said he couldn’t trust me with it. Now, in hindsight, he was absolutely correct. I was not in any state to be responsible for his bar. But at the time? It destroyed me. One of the very few people I idolized and trusted didn’t trust me. And it made memad. So I stopped. I stopped drinking, I stopped fighting, I stopped hanging out with my friends who were bad influences. I got a job as a bartender in a different city, started driving Uber in the early hours, and literally worked both jobs for years. Saved every penny I could. When I hit twenty-five, I had enough money to open my own bar, which I did. Blackbird has been my pride and joy ever since then. I got myself into therapy, took some anger management classes, and I’m proud to say I’m a much better person. I actually like the man in the mirror.”
Cooper sat there and absorbed my story. “You saying this for a reason?”
“For Gage. Because he wants better for you.”
My words almost broke the kid, I think, as he looked away, eyes far too bright. “You sure? I don’t think he loves me. I don’t even love myself.”
Welp, there was the root of the problem for sure. “Coop, you want to love yourself?”
“Yeah?” He responded likeIsn’t that obvious?
“Then you do. If you’re trying to love yourself, then you must already. Where do you think the trying comes from?”
He stared at me, struck by that thought.
“I gotta correct you on Gage, too. Gage loves you dearly. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be so frustrated with you.”
Cooper didn’t know about loving himself, but hearing his brother loved him? I think that healed something in the kid. Atear spilled over and he sucked up snot, but there was this curve to his mouth, as if the knowledge filled him with joy.
These two brothers reminded me of my own. I’d been in a bad state with most of them for years, and it was only recently our relationships with each other were being repaired. I didn’t want Cooper’s relationship with Gage to break down that badly. It would hurt Gage deeply, for one.
Cooper sat on those revelations for a moment before focusing on me once more. “Then I wanna try. You think I can do that?”
“Only if you’re willing to put in the work. And make no mistake, it’s work.” I leaned against the foot of his hospital bed, studying this boy for a long moment. Did he have the mettle? I had no idea, but he asked the right questions, and that was a good start. “The reason you keep falling back into these destructive patterns is because it’s easy. It’s familiar, it’s fun, there’s no work involved. Trust me, I know—I almost got sucked back into that cycle myself a time or three. It takes both determination and work to make something of yourself. And spite, in my case. I was determined to prove everyone in my family wrong. I did, too.”
“I don’t…know how to start? How to…” He frowned down at his hands.
“Is that what’s stopping you? That you don’t know how to turn your life around?”
“Yeah. I guess. I get overwhelmed thinking about it. I don’t know what to do first, or how to manage it all.”
I remembered being overwhelmed. God, I remembered that feeling, of just looking around my shitty hellhole of an apartment and not knowing where to start. “I would say, be smarter than me. Let’s start with therapy, yeah? You got some shit to unpack, kid.”