I'm Scott Malkinson (Scyde)

35- Abandon Ship

The ride home from jail comes with an uncomfortable silence—the last thing Clyde wants to do is pick fights with his son, so he says practically nothing at all. Some late-night comedy show crackles across the speakers, though halfway down the road Clyde turns it off. He isn't in a humorous mood at the moment, besides, comedy nowadays sucks ass. Everyone is far too scared of being offensive to actually say anything funny.

Griffin is similarly quiet, and Clyde catches him nervously chewing his bottom lip as he glances into the rear-view mirror.

Just how many more times are they going to do this shit?

"I'm sorry," Griffin finally mumbles from the back seat. "I didn't mean to ruin your night."

Ruin your night, as if Clyde had been having all that enjoyable of a night in the first place. Now that's a laugh. Griffin didn't fucking ruin anything.

Clyde just shrugs in response. Unlike his wife, he has no desire to use their eldest child as a therapist—he doesn't deserve that shit—so he opts to keep his mouth shut instead.

"Are you mad?" Griffin tries again.

The words 'I'm not angry, just disappointed,' damn near leave his mouth before Clyde realizes just how cliche they'd be. How many times had he heard that one at Griffin's age? It had always made him roll his eyes.

"No," he finally breathes out, shaking his head. "I'm not angry. I'm just kind of at a loss Griff. I mean, I get that you're being a kid and all and I want you to have that, I just... I can't keep picking you up from the station. At some point you've gotta start making changes and work with me to prevent that."

"I know." His son's voice comes out at barely a whisper. "I'm sorry."

When they get home, Griffin makes a beeline straight for his room and Clyde lets him. Frankly, if he didn't share one with his wife he might have been doing the same himself.

"Did you know where he was going tonight?" she asks.

It's a real catch 22, that question. If he says no, she'll berate him for knowing nothing about his children, for not bothering to keep track of them, but if he says yes then he blatantly allowed him to go to a place that they'd agreed he shouldn't be hanging out at. Clyde loses either way. So much for not fighting.

"He mentioned it on his way out."

"And you didn't stop him?"

"No."

Clyde watches her face as she works out this information in her head, hardly able to force himself to breathe as he waits for her to explode on him. He knows it's coming, knows it's been far too long since their last fight, that she's been collecting ammunition over the past week to fling at him all at once in some large scale assault. The skin between her eyebrows crinkles together and her mouth fixes itself into that all too familiar frown.

"I thought we agreed that he shouldn't be hanging out over there. I mean, last month Randy smoked himself so stupid that he mistook Griffin for a stranger and pulled a gun on him. What if he'd done that tonight?"

Everything she's said thus far is totally reasonable. Clyde absolutely should have at least made an attempt to stop Griffin from going over there. God he hates when she's right, she'll hold it over his head forever.

"I just didn't want to fight with him," he replies, letting out a long breath.

Jade presses her lips tightly together as she processes.

"You never do," she says finally. "You're always too easy on them. You don't set boundaries and when you do you just let them walk all over them anyway. You're not their friend Clyde, you're their father." She shakes her head. "I swear sometimes it feels like I'm raising three kids here."