Not what I originally planned at all, but Eddie insisted, so…

Eddie feels like he might throw up. Every mile marker they pass seems to create another knot in his stomach, and he can’t decide if he’s glad that Buck is driving because his head would still be a mess regardless or if it would have given him a welcome distraction.

Christopher is asleep in the backseat, having nodded off somewhere along the state line after the excitement of a road trip that helped him power through their early start and the first few hours of the drive finally wore down. Eddie’s fingers are tapping on his thigh as he stares out the window. His shoulder aches from sitting still for so many hours, and the tension stiffening his muscles doesn’t help.

This trip was a bad idea. What’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result despite having no reason to expect one? That’s how Eddie feels about his parents.

But. Here they are, in a car on the way to El Paso. Because he’s in therapy and he’s happy and he’s in love and yeah, he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to forgive his parents for the things they’ve done but he’s also not ready to cut them off entirely. He’s not prepared to be responsible for creating a massive rift in which his sisters and everyone else have to take sides and everything is clipped and silent and awful. So. That means trying. At least one more time.

Keep reading