Greaser

39. Drinking

M A R Y

            His laugh echoed down the empty street, being that no one was around to interrupt it. I didn’t even know what he was laughing about, because no one had said anything relatively funny for the past two hours.

            “What’s so funny?” I mumbled, glancing in his direction as I licked the top of my ice cream cone. He shrugged, not bothering to answer my question. I frowned, keeping to myself again as we walked down the sidewalk. The past few days he hasn’t been the same. It started out of nowhere, really. Whenever we are home, he always has a beer or some kind of drink in his hand. Tony has been staying in his room more, because he doesn’t want to be around Niall when he drinks. No matter how many times Tony tells him, he just gets brushed off and Niall grabs another drink from the fridge. I sighed loudly, getting his attention.

“What?”

“You’re different.”

“What do you mean, I’m different?” instead of his voice being calm, like it usually is when I confront him about things, it almost sounded frustrated and irritated.

“You’re drinking more.”

He huffed, “So.”

“You know Tony doesn’t like that.” I said, “You know I hated when Dale did it all the time. He was mean. Your dad was mean. Do you really want to be that way?” I asked, stopping dead in my tracks when he did the same thing. His eyes suddenly turned a darker blue, and they weren’t the color of a calm ocean anymore.

“I’m nothing like those two.” He growled, his hands curled into fists. It frightened me to say the least. I shook my head, trying to brush off the subject and walk away. “Don’t walk away from me!” I heard his footsteps rapidly catch up to me, but I kept my head down. I knew he was mad now, and if he was sober he wouldn’t be this mad right now. He must have slipped a few drinks down before we left without me even noticing. “Mary, goddamn it! You fucking started this, now finish it!”

“Fine! Okay, you act just like them when you are drinking! You fucking scare me when you drink and that one night, the first night we were alone together, it wasn’t this bad! I thought you wouldn’t be the same rude, cocky drunk those two were but I guess you are!” he seemed taken aback, but it only lasted for a few seconds before he darkly chuckled, shaking his head.

“You’re kidding right? Do I hit you?” I shook my head, “Do I take advantage of you?” I shook my head again, knowing that he was trying to prove a point. “So how can you say I’m just like them, huh?” he stepped closer, my back hitting the brick wall of the store front.

“You yell.” I whispered, “You get angry at the simplest things.” I kept back tears, avoiding his eye contact. “It’s bound to happen.”

“How can you even say that!” his voice was much louder than before, now that he was only inches from my ear. His hand hit the wall by the side of my head, “I’ve never once laid a finger on you out of anger, or when you didn’t want me too. How can you say it’s bound to happen!?”

I shook my head, biting down on my bottom lip. Before I could try to hold it back, a tear fell down the side of my cheek. “Just stop.”

“Stop what? I’m not even doing anything, Mary!”

“Your drinking! You need to stop your drinking!” I retorted, wiping my nose with my long sleeve sweater, laughing at myself. I probably looked pathetic from his point of view. We’ve been through harder things at this point. Finding out who my dad was, being the worst. We got through that, and I believed we could get passed this too. If he would just listen to what I was saying. “It’s out of hand! It came out of nowhere! It’s not once and a while either, it’s almost every god damn night for the past week!”