[Trigger Warning: Discussion of alcoholism, brief scene of self-harm, and brief discussion of childhood abuse]

"When was the first time you drank?"

It's the following morning. The rest yesterday had gone smoothly, and I had fallen asleep with relative ease again. When that question was lobbed my way, I had a sinking feeling it was going to be another hard day.

Scott is sitting across from me once again. When I look at him, he gives me an encouraging smile. So I take a deep breath and answer the question.

"Fourteen."

"Can you tell us about it?" the therapist asks gently.

Immediately I begin to gnaw on my bottom lip--hard. "W-well...My dad drank. He wasn't an alcoholic, but he usually liked to wind down a couple evenings a week with a beer or two. He always mentioned it helped him relax."

I stopped biting on my lip and brought my thumb to my mouth, gnawing on my cuticle. "It was around thirteen that I felt like my life was really starting to fall apart."

"How so?" the therapist interjects before I can continue my story.

I swallow thickly, bouncing my knee up and down now. "W-well, my dad had suffered a heart attack. He almost didn't make it. "

"That must've been hard."

"Yeah," I say with a bitter laugh. "Ya wanna know the really fucked up part? My dad had started to get physical with me at that point--pushing me around, sometimes hitting me. But as he laid there on the ground, having a heart attack, and my mom was frantically calling 9-1-1, I felt sorry for the bastard."

I steal a glance at Scott, and he's looking at me with sympathy. I tear off some skin between my teeth, wincing ever so slightly at the sting. "I mean, how fucked is that? I was crying over my abuser possibly dying--I should've been dancing a fucking jig."

"Responses like that are perfectly normal," the therapist tells me softly. She then pauses, and says with a strict edge, "Orion, please remove your thumb from your mouth."

So I do, scolding myself quietly. All the therapists here are in contact with each other. Everyone swaps files. As such, I knew this therapist knew about my self-harm issues, even though she wasn't the one I saw for that.

"Anyway," I say, dropping my eyes off to the side. I cross my arms and ball my hands into fists. "S-so, after my dad's heart attack, things were okay for a while. We were told he had to reduce stress, so for a few months I was on my best behavior, and things were quiet. But then two things happened.

"First was the fact my mom became ever apathetic to my existence. Before his heart attack, she would never intervene when my dad would beat me, but she would take care of me afterwards. You know, ask if I was okay, if I wanted to talk, get me an ice pack."

I pause a moment to look at Scott. The look on his face...Well, honestly it killed me because I can see he's near tears for me. So I stretch out and hold my head as I tilt it back, looking at the ceiling. My bottom lip slips into my mouth again, and I run it along the bumpy edges of my top teeth.

"Orion," the therapist says strictly. So I stop again.

"After my dad's heart attack, she just...stopped caring."

I said the last two words at nearly a whisper. I'm happy my head is tilted back, because my eyes sting. "Her and I were never really close, but after he almost died...She always sided with him. She always would scold me, tell me things like, 'well if you just didn't behave like this, it wouldn't happen.'"

I hear a few people gasp, but I refuse to look at anyone. For a few heavy moments there's silence.

"You said there were two things," the therapist says softly.

"Oh, right. The other was that my dad's temper got worse. Every little thing became my fault. I had to walk on eggshells because I didn't know what would set him off. There was no rhyme or reason to it."

"So you started drinking," she prompts.

"Yeah," I admit, and I pray no one notices the tears that are slipping down my temples into my hair. "My dad always said how it relaxed him, so I stole a beer one night, sneaked it off to my room. I liked how it felt--being drunk--so the next day I did the same thing. The day after, that too. Finally my dad confronted me about the missing beer. By that point I knew lying only made everything ten times worse, so I told him. He beat my ass with his belt."

I hear a few murmurs, and a couple gasps, but still I don't look at anyone. An unsweetened laugh bubbles out of my mouth and floats to the ceiling. "Didn't stop me from drinking, though. And every time he noticed missing beer, he would beat me. But I still didn't stop, so after a while they both just stopped caring and let me be; after a point he stopped beating me over it."

I'm done crying, so I finally tip my head forward. Immediately I wish I hadn't, because I catch Scott wiping away tears quickly. So I look back at the ceiling, swallowing the lump in my throat away.

"I'm done sharing now," I whisper as more tears form.

"Thank you for sharing, Orion. Brad, how about you? When did you start drinking?"

~

"Orion, buddy, wait up."

The session was over, and I was speed walking away from the room. I hated thinking about all that, so I just wanted to drop it. Sadly I knew I couldn't run away from anything here. I knew I would be confronted with it time and time again. So when I heard Scott calling after me, and I heard his feet thudding against the carpet to catch up with me, I can't stop the grimace that sweeps over my face.

He falls in step with my quick pace, and I hate it. When I don't do anything besides glare at the floor and shove my hands into my pockets, Scott speaks.

"What was with your lip and thumb?"

I'm a little surprised at the question, only because I expected him to want to talk about what I had said in therapy. I'm so relieved I decided to be honest. I grab his arm and yank him into a recessed doorway. Glancing around to make sure there isn't anyone around, I hold up my arm and wrench down my sleeve.

Scott gasps. "Bloody hell, Orion."

I glare and roll my sleeve back down. "Do not tell anyone."

"I wouldn't dream of it," he replies, holding up both hands. I can tell he's serious so I continue walking.

"Seems like we have a lot in common," he says beside me again.

"Don't wanna talk about it anymore," I tell him curtly.

I'm shocked when he stops my walking by grabbing my shoulder gently. I'm floored when he pulls me into a hug. It was so unexpected that all I can do is stand there stupidly, my arms limp at my sides. I like how he smells, a strong deodorant that smells like pine.

I know Scott is younger than me. Yet he seems very protective of me. It's all so confusing, and I start to weep.

"Why are you like this?" I ask him, and I'm happy when my voice doesn't shake so I hope he doesn't realize I've started crying again.

"Because I wish someone hugged me whenever I thought about my dad."

Hesitantly, I wrap my arms around him and hug him, patting his back. I can feel him smile into my shoulder, so I rub his back a bit. Not going to lie--I feel pretty stupid standing in the middle of the hallway, hugging it out with some guy.

At the same time though, how many people say they got to hug it out with Scott Davis?

Maybe I didn't care so much, after all. Plus he seemed like he needed it as much as I did, anyway.