All Night Long (Olympus Drive Chronicles)

Time: 21:30

Red

Still no word. Seriously dad? I mean, it's not like he's overly worried about me. He thinks I'm mostly grown. He doesn't bother so much if I stay out a bit or don't tell him where I'm going. But this isn't like him. And why'd he call and tell us to go home? It doesn't make sense. More than that, Phoenix always texts me. like, always. He's very conscientious about being a good dad and he doesn't ever not respond. It doesn't make sense. I want to call Ev's mom. But she's coming from South America, I think. She's already on the plane at that rate. She'd know what to do though. Am I really waiting to meet her at Heathrow and tell her I have her kid, but lost my dads? I don't want to wait that long. But. They're grown adults; it's not like anything bad has actually happened.

"Can we watch the Italian Job now?" Ev asks, hopefully fussing with the TV remote.

"Yeah um---you're not gonna repeat any of the words you hear in the films right?" I ask. We let them watch grown up stuff, but I'm having anxiety about making parenting decisions right now.

"No. It's my favorite movie I've seen it before," Ev says, hopefully, "At least till your dads get back?"

"Right. It's your favorite movie," should a seven year old have the Italian Job as their favorite movie? I feel like that's a no. They should not. And that's something somebody should be worried about. But I don't have the mental capacity to worry about it right now. "Yeah sure, we can watch it."

"Yay! Can we have more soda?"

"Sure," gonna have a fucked up hyperactive kid who has a whole fucking new vocabulary. Everyone should not have left this kid with me. Damn, I sound like my dad. This is horrible. I sound like my dad. Next thing you know I'll be standing in the middle of a department store asking someone to page my husband because I should not be the only parent of this screaming crying traumatized child.

I don't even remember why were in the store. We hadn't been in London long. And I had these melt downs that they were going to send me away if I was bad. And he was cross with me because he'd lost me because apparently he'd expected me to follow him through said store and I wandered off and got upset thinking he'd left me. And he found me and then told me not to wander off like that and I started to cry because I hated it when he was cross with me (even though he really wasn't cross; he was just being stern and exasperated). So he picked me up and of course I started hitting him and crying more and he just carried me to customer service to ask them to page his husband who could make us both stop crying. And of course Phoenix came and hugged us both and got us out of the store. Again, I don't know why we went in to begin with.

That wasn't an isolated incident. It happened a lot back then. I was convinced I was going to wind up back in a children's home when they gave up on me, and my dad was fresh off dying or whatever and didn't know till he met me that I even existed and neither of us are patient people so that went about as you'd expect it to.

At some point, Phoenix just figured out if we were both sufficiently worn out we were much easier to handle. And long story short that's how we're part owners of the gym down the street. My grandad (my dad's dad) bought it out so that we could enter at any time to work off frustrations and beat the shit out of each other with boxing gloves on because apparently someone clever did the math and it was cheaper to buy a gym than keep replacing broken windows and fixing broken walls in the flat.

"Are you okay?" Ev asks, kneeling by the TV to watch a violent robbery with glowing eyes. Again, I feel like we should be worried about that. But I don't have the mental capacity for it right now so we are going to let that shit go.

"Just thinking. Worried about my dad," I admit, "I still—he still hasn't answered.  I don't know where he is."

"I never know where my dad is. He just shows up," Ev says, shrugging, "But your dad is different. He likes being around you."