Finding Jemima

Evidence

MATTY

I crashed around the kitchen banging draws and cupboards frustratedly, I was so mad at myself for loosing it with her. Max was right, I sounded just like my waste of a space dad.  I just need to get through to her somehow, every time we seem to be doing well something else sets us back. 

"Matty?" Ed cautiously approached me

"I'm not sure I can do this Ed, I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing!" I was trying to hold it together as I leant with my arms stretched out on the counter but my voice was breaking.

"Who do you think could do it better then?" Tom asked

"What?"

"Well if your giving up, who do you think can do it better?" Tom asked blankly. "You give up on her now, then that's its mate, I don't think she would recover from that."

"Tom I....."

"No you listen to me, you asked us before she came here to help you take her on, and we said yes, without even thinking about it, without any discussion we said yes.  You are NOT going to let her down now do you hear me." Tom's voice was uncharacteristically angry.

"I just feel like I'm fucking everything up, what if I'm just making things worse, what if I'm not what she needs"

"What she needs! Matty are you fucking serious! She fucking idolises you, you have to know that. All she needs is for you to love her, unconditionally, no matter how many times she screws things up"

"I do!"

"THEN TELL HER! SHOW HER! Giving up and walking away, you think that's showing her you love her, or do you think that's just confirming what she already thinks, that's she too broken to be loved!"

"Tom calm down" Ed stepped in between us trying to deescalate the argument.

"I'm not walking away!"

"Well you walked away from her before" Tom yelled shoving Ed out of the way

"I was a kid, I didn't know what she was going through"

"Yeah right you didn't know, or was it you just didn't want to know"

"YOU WHAT"

"YOU HEARD ME" we were now chest to chest both red faced and ready to fight.

"Boys do you think this is going to help anyone huh? Your acting like a pair of hot heads." Milo put a hand on each of our chests and pushed us apart. "Now sit down, everyone, NOW!"  We all took a seat scrapping our stools angrily as we did.

"What's got into you Tom, your not usually this hot headed"  Ed tried to get through to Tom who was still wound up tighter than a spring.

"Look, Tom's right, we said yes to taking on Em, all of us together.  But that was before we knew what we know now, we didn't know what we were taking on, we didn't know how much baggage she was bringing with her." milo calmly tried to reason out his thoughts.

"What are you trying to say, what you want out too?" Tom snapped

"No, but I think we need to talk about this, we never talk about anything. I love Em to bits and I'm in this for the long haul, but we need to all be in this, if we're going to do this we need to do it together as a band, as a family. I'm going to get max and we're going to CALMLY talk everything out, OK!"

Milo stood up and went to get max from upstairs.  Tom and I sat glaring at each other across the counter. Milo returned swiftly, max followed him in looking confused at us.