Our Bruised Bodies | Bradley Bradshaw

ACT ONE - PART FOUR

Cheers to this mess!

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The silence was suffocating. For five days now, there was no word exchanged between father and daughter. Grace didn't even say something as they came home from school, after watching from a distance as Killian cleared out his locker. His father, who was also in the Navy got send away to some lone island in the Pacific, only for the entire family to move with him on short notice. While Andy's mum got a job offer in the Atlantic fleet, having them move away to Maryland. It wasn't uncommon for Navy kids to leave school and move around the country like that, but Grace and Bradley both knew it was Ice doing and neither of them addressed it.

It all had Bradley feeling as if he was walking on eggshells in his own home. The unnerving thing about the whole situation was the waiting, the waiting for another fight, for it all to finally blow over, but that moment never came.

He wished he never went to that stupid party. He wished he never would have agreed to help Gracie get there either. Her first senior party, surely also her last. They could have just stayed in that night and watched tv with Mav and Ice. With Gracie sitting astride in the love seat and Bradley next to Ice on the couch, legs pulled up, while she would throw popcorn at him every time, he would ask a question about the film that was on, despite neither of them having seen it before.

Grace could have gone up halfway through the film, as she did so often only to move into the kitchen and make a spontaneous batch of cookies, because after all the popcorn she would be craving something sweet. Maverick would only roll his eyes at her decision to abandon the film halfway through but would take one of the offered cookies later on, nevertheless.

Bradley would have taken the opportunity to sneak into the kitchen, a commercial break, only to go and steal a cookie, which would have Gracie, warn him with a stern glace, but allow him to take that one ugly cookie every batch had after all, before telling him that it wouldn't be her fault if he would feel bad after eating warm cookies.

Grace would come back with the cookies before the credits of the film would start rolling, only to climb onto the couch with the rest of her family, sitting on the arm rest next to Maverick and chatting about God knows what, while Ice would turn the volume of the tv up, shaking his head in fake annoyance due to his lover and daughter happily chatting away while Bradley and him tried to follow the plot of the movie. More often than not, Ice would shoo them out of the living room, so they could watch the movie in peace, only for the younger adult and the younger teenager to move outside and sit on the patio on a warm night or move to sit in Ice's office on a cooler day.

Ice had made sure to install a little readying corner there, which was frequently used over the years. At first every time Gracie refused to settle down as a baby, they took her there, the atmosphere, the many books and the high shelfs calming her for a reason. Years later, Bradley liked to go there when he wanted to be alone, missing his mother, but not wanting to remove himself from his family fully. Ice sitting by his office desk. Giving him space but also letting him know that he wasn't alone.

It was a place in the house to pull away from the others for a while, which the teenager often used to do, but still not remove themselves totally, like they would be if they went to their rooms. Bradley had often found Gracie sitting there in the love seat, reading quietly, with her feet pulled up on the seat as well and Ice not too far away over by his office desk, working silently when Maverick sent him to go and tell his father that dinner was ready.

But he went to this party. He got Grace to go too. And it might have damaged his family forever.

Dinner in total silence was freaking him out, he couldn't take it anymore. Gracie might have been right, saying that they never talked about anything important, but that didn't mean that they never talked at all.