Officially Us

24 - I didn't sign up for this when I accepted my Best Man role.

Four months later.

"Come on, Ruben. You're my Best Man. You're supposed to be helping me."

"Tanner, Best Man duties relate to wedding shit, not 'I need you to do me a favour and take this feral kid from school on as your apprentice' shit," I said. He had been begging me for a full hour to give one of his students at school some work experience, with a full sob story about how awful his life is and how he just needs someone to give him a break.

"He's a good kid, Ruben. His parents and older brothers care more about crack than they do him. He comes to school dirty and without food every day, and the other kids give him a hard time so he fights back. There was a really bad one last week and I had to pull in every favour I have in that school to keep him from being expelled. His life sucks. I've had to let him into the change rooms every morning before school this week just so he can shower because their gas was shut off and there's no hot water at home. And I had to give him spare clothes from lost property, and take his dirty clothes home to wash every other day, and bring extra food for his lunches."

"Alright, mate. I get it. You're a fucking saint and this kid's got it tough. Aren't there people you need to call about this kind of neglect? Can't they help?"

"He just turned fifteen, Ruben. They don't care. I called and they said he was apparently old enough to look after himself." What a load of bullshit. There's only been one person I've known who could look after themselves properly at fifteen, and she was practically born into being an adult by having no other choice.

"I can't have drugs on my sites, Tanner."

"He won't. I promise. He knows I'll kick his ass if he fucks this up, and he's trying to quit the dope. I'm making him see the counsellor at school to help with that, and he hasn't missed a session yet."

Tanner was sounding a lot like my old teacher, Nate, right now, which was making it hard to refuse him. Truth be told, he already had me convinced when he first told me the kid's story. I was just messing with him because I was enjoying watching him beg.

"One day a week to start. If it's working out, I'll reconsider increasing it at the end of the year. But he needs to keep his grades up, and that's going to be your responsibility, teacher boy," I said, watching him slouch down into his chair and sigh in relief. "And you have to convince his junkie parents to give permission for him do it because he's underage and it has to be on the books."

Foster Constructions has been doing really well over the past few months since I took it over, and I wasn't willing to put that in jeopardy by taking on an uninsured, wayward kid with no experience. We'd secured a few really big contracts, so had work lined up pretty much until the end of the year so I could actually use the extra hands. I had also enrolled in a Business Management course at TAFE to help with the management side of things that I had no experience in, and was taking night classes, meaning I had even less time to myself than usual.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," he said, holding his hands together in front of him in gratitude. "You'll love him, Rubes. Trust me. He's already like a mini version of you."

"Poor bastard. That's not something you want to be."

"Don't sell yourself short, mate. You're killing it at life—your own house, your own business, stable work, great family, amazing friends." he smirked. "But seriously, you'll love him. Sometimes I talk to him and I feel like I've stepped back in time and am just talking to a stoned version of young Ruben. It's actually kind of creepy."

"And how does this kid resemble me exactly?"

"He's sarcastic as hell, but in a really clever way like you are. He's brutally honest to the point of being an unintentional asshole, just like you can be. He's so fucking funny. Seriously, he cracks me up so much. And he's so smart, but because he hasn't had anyone telling him he is and that he can actually do shit, he has very little faith in himself, which is so sad because he has so much potential. He's so considerate to people who give him the time of day. He gave Morgs and I this handmade card the other day thanking us for all the food and washing, and closed it saying if there was ever anything we needed, he had our backs and all we needed to do was ask, quote unquote. It made me cry, man," he said, smiling proudly. "Oh, and he's a real smooth talker with the girls. Knowing his luck, he'd probably end up with a kid or two by eighteen. But he'd be a great wing man for you, because I'm clearly no good at that."