Free The Sorrow King by Andersen Prunty Page A

Had no idea how Steven would react to the things he was going to tell him.
    Once they had finished eating the huge burritos, Connor went to the kitchen and got them a couple more beers before putting the DVD into the player.
    Steven moved up onto the couch, sprawling back and slowly sipping his beer.
    Connor moved up into his easy chair.
    For now, he was just going to think about the movie. It was one of his favorites and it had probably been ten years since he had actually sat down and watched it from start to finish. But he couldn’t really concentrate. The movie flashed against his eyes and bleated against his ears but his mind was elsewhere. Thinking about what Ken had told him. Thinking about what he was going to tell Steven. Thinking about how everything was going to turn out. Thinking about things he probably should have been thinking about all along.
    The movie was over far too quickly.
    “ Another beer?” he asked Steven.
    “ Sure.”
    Connor went back into the kitchen and returned with more beer.
    He handed one to Steven and sat down in the chair. Steven sat up on the couch and Connor could tell he wanted to leave the room. He was probably eager to get back into his bedroom where he felt comfortable.
    “ Is anything bothering you?” Connor asked. There, he at least asked a question, taking a step toward the conversation.
    Steven picked at a burgeoning hole in his jeans. “No, nothing’s bothering me.”
    There was a longer than comfortable silence and Connor could tell Steven was desperately searching for something to look at, something to take his eyesight away from Connor.
    “ Come on, something has to bother you. You’ve been through a lot of shit. I don’t ever want you to get the impression I don’t care. I mean, I know I’m busy at work a lot of the time and when I come home I just kind of sit around and read but I want you to tell me if something’s bothering you.”
    “ Really, I’m okay.”
    “ Stevie . . . can’t you just make something up.” Connor chuckled. It sounded desperate in his ears. “I’m really trying here.”
    Steven took in a deep breath. “Sometimes . . .” he trailed off.
    “ Sometimes what?”
    “ I don’t know how to say certain things. Sometimes I think if I start talking about what bothers me, I’ll never stop talking about what bothers me and if something is always bothering me then I won’t be the slightest bit happy. Like acknowledging things just busts them wide open.”
    “ But you have to let these things out every now and then. You have to unbottle. If you don’t then you’re just going to explode. When I was married to your mother I did the same thing. I went through every day with a smile on my face but I was burning up on the inside because I thought . . . I thought that the less I said the better. I thought that carrying on a facade of happiness was good enough but all it did was hurt everyone involved. If I would have let her know what was bothering me earlier on . . . or if I had let someone know what bothered me then maybe I could have figured out how to work through it or, hell, maybe just get out of it altogether . . . If I had done that, I think I’d be a happier person.”
    “ Okay. You want to know what bothers me? Just the tip of the iceberg?”
    “ I want to know everything.”
    “ Why did Mom have to die? I mean, why her? Don’t get me wrong. I like living here with you. If there was a way I could have gone to one house one day and one house the next, I would have done that. But why does she have to be gone completely? And why did it have to be so painful? Why did it have to drag on? I guess it was quick as far as cancer goes but I had to watch her die for over a year. How do you stay happy when something like that is happening? I would come home from school and she would act like everything was normal and I was expected to act like everything was normal, but it wasn’t. She was dying. That bothers me. Her dying