Once And Always

Chapter 1

English is not my first language, so apologies in advance for any grammatical mistakes. 
Not proofread.

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Chiang Mai, Thailand

Mud squished beneath his booted feet as Thanapon Jarujitranon or Tee as he usually refer himself turned, off the lane and pushed open the white wooden gate that opened into a front yard of a modest little house where he's living. His cheeks were rosy and his eyes bright as he stopped to glance at the starlit sky, studying them with the unspoiled delight of an innocent fifteen-year-old at Christmas. Smiling, he hummed the last few bars of one of the Christmas carols he'd been singing all evening with the rest of his friends, then turned and went up the walk toward the darkened house.

Hoping not to awaken his parents or his younger brother, he opened the front door softly and slipped inside. He took off his jacket and hang it on a peg beside the door, then turned around and stopped in surprise. Moonlight poured through the window at the top of the stairway, illuminating his parents, who were standing just outside of his mother's bedroom. "No, Khun Naphat!" His mother was struggling in his father's tight embrace, "I can't! I just can't!"

"Don't deny me, Ice," Thanaphat Jarujitranon said, his voice raw with pleading. "For God's sake, don't – "

"You promised!" Ice burst out, trying frantically to pull free from his arms. He bent his head and kissed her, but she twisted her face away, her words jerking out like a sob.

"You promised me on the day that Bas was born that you wouldn't ask me to again. You gave me your word!"

Tee, standing in stunned, bewildered horror, dimly realized that he had never seen his parents touched one another before – not in teasing, nor kindness – but he has no idea what his father was pleading with his mother not to deny him.

Naphat let go of his wife, his hands falling to his sides. "I'm sorry", he said stonily. She fled into her room and closed the door, but instead of going to his own room, Tee's father turned around and headed down the narrow stairs, passing within inches of Tee when he reached the bottom.

Tee flattened himself against the wall, feeling as if the security and peace of his world had been somehow threatened by what he had seen. Afraid that his father will notice him if he tried to move towards the stairs, and his dad would know that he had witnessed the humiliatingly intimate scene, he watched as his father sat down on the sofa and stared into the window. A bottle of liquor that had been on the kitchen shelf for years now stood on the table in front of him, beside a half-filled glass. When his father leaned forward and reached for the glass, Tee turned and cautiously placed his foot on the first step.

"I know you're there Tee," his father said tonelessly, without looking behind him. "There's little point in our pretending you didn't witness what just took place between your mother and me. Why don't you come here and seat with me? I'm not a brute you must think me."

Sympathy tightened Tee's throat and he quickly went to sit beside him. "I don't think you are a brute, father. I could never think that."

The older man took a long swallow of the liquor in his glass. "Don't blame your mother either," he warned, his words slightly slurred as if he had been drinking since long before he arrived.

With the liquor impairing his judgement, he glanced at Tee's stricken face and assumed he had surmised more from the scene he'd witnessed that he actually had. Putting a comforting arm around his shoulders, he tried to ease his son's distress, but what he told the younger increased it a hundredfold: "It isn't your mother's fault and it isn't mine. She can't love me, and I can't stop loving her. It's as simple as that."