Mess Us Up – Jaxson Kidman Page 0,20
ask Peg Leg Mikey about it. Not sure where he is right now.”
“That’s not why we’re here, is it?” Les asks.
“No,” I say. “I wanted you guys alone to talk about something.”
Taz nods. “Can we guess?”
“It’s not a fucking game, bro,” I say.
“I know it’s not,” Taz says. “I almost died.”
“So did I,” I say.
“I almost fucked up,” Les says.
“I know, bro. I’m sorry for how that went down. How I reacted to it all. I’m still putting this together in my head. I have to tell you something.”
“Go for it,” Les says.
“Jolie brought it up earlier. Shit she saw happening.”
“With Mama?” Taz asks.
I nod. “Yeah. Little things. She forgot to turn the burner on when cooking. Then the night Jolie helped us, she found Mama on the floor in the house. Just sitting on the kitchen floor.”
“Holy shit,” Taz says. “Was she okay?”
“Yeah. I guess. I don’t know. I mean, she wasn’t hurt. I got pissed at Jolie for even bringing it up. I got really pissed at her actually. But she was right. You know this is really fucked up to deal with.”
Les rubs his jaw. “This isn’t good, bro.”
“How do we even handle this?” Taz asks. “Mama isn’t the type to listen.”
“We can’t say anything to her,” I say.
Les looks at me. “You sure about that?”
“Look at what we’re in the middle of, bro,” I say. “We have to finish this thing with Jolie’s old man. We have to figure out who he really is. We can’t have anything else go wrong.”
“How’s that possible if Mama isn’t right in the head?” Taz asks.
“Fuck, don’t say it like that,” I snap.
“Then what is it, Mac?” Les yells at me. “Huh? What is it?”
I turn and look to the ocean.
“I don’t know what I want to call it yet,” I say. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Taz says. He leans against the railing next to me and looks at the ocean too.
Les is on the other side of me.
I look at him.
He’s not happy.
Why would he be?
This is messed up.
It’s sad too.
But it’s also scary.
Anymore slip ups… or even just any slip up… it can hurt everyone.
It can hurt Jolie.
That’s my main worry.
Hurting Jolie.
There’s a piece of my heart and mind that wonder if the right thing is to find the truth about her father and then tell her to get out of this life.
And I mean it.
Every inch and aspect of this life… get the fuck out, sweetie.
“What’s the plan, Mac?” Les asks.
“The plan is…” I swallow hard. “I’ll be involved more. No more taking messages from Mama. When she says something, we nod or whatever, but then we have to find out for ourselves what’s happening. We just have to keep going here. There’s no choice. But we have to keep an eye on her. See if anything else happens.”
“That sounds risky,” Taz says.
“What’s the other side of it?” I ask. “We tell her we know something’s wrong? Then what?”
“Fuck,” Les says. He pushes from the railing. “Fuck this.”
He grabs the railing and jumps it.
He takes a handful of steps and stops.
Taz starts to move over the railing and I punch his shoulder.
“I’ll talk to him,” I say.
I jump the railing and walk up to Les.
“What the fuck is going on here, bro?” Les asks.
“I don’t know, Les,” I say. “This might be the biggest thing we’ve ever had to deal with. And it just keeps piling up right now.”
“No shit, Mac.”
“We can’t lose our edge here, Les. We just have to be careful. She’s only forgetting little things.”
“For now,” Les say.
I sigh. “I know that, bro. That’s why I said we’ll get the info ourselves. This thing with Jolie’s old man is going to end quick. We just have to know who he really is in all of this shit. Then it’s done. Then we can talk to Mama. Try to find a way to do it quietly. Calmly. Fuck, man, maybe it’s just age. Time and age, right? Maybe she needs some vitamins or a pill…”
Les looks at me. “Vitamins or a pill?”
I shrug my shoulders. “What do you want me to say? That she’s sick? Like sick-sick? That she’s losing her mind? That she’s going to keep slipping and get worse? That one day she won’t remember who we are? That she’s going to have to live somewhere else and die alone? Is that what you want?”
“I didn’t say that, Mac. Fuck, bro, why do you-”
I hear a