Work Text:
Hayden doesn’t know who came up with the idea of having these weekly dinners at a restaurant, but it was a bad one. His parents seem completely incapable of speaking to one another civilly, even in public. Probably they just wanted to meet here because it’s neutral territory – neither one parent has the home field advantage.
The home field is what they’re discussing at the moment – where Hayden should live. He’s been passing the time switching between parents every week, one week with his father and the next with his mother, but they’re here to “discuss” (read: fight over) a more permanent arrangement – which parent he should live with the majority of the time.
They’re not having much luck so far. All they’ve managed to establish is that creative insults must run in the Upchurch family. Hayden hopes that if he inherits anything from his parents, it’s that eloquence. At this point he can’t think of anything else he’d like to get from them.
Right now they’re in the middle of a particularly nasty fight. The other customers are determinedly not looking in their direction, and the waiter has not come to their table since delivering the wine. Hayden is getting hungry, and for a moment he focuses only on his empty stomach, wondering when they’re going to stop fighting so he can eat – but then, the commotion distracts him.
“What kind of father would I be if I let him live with a woman like you?” growls his father, glaring across the table. “What kinds of things would you teach him – how to go out every night with your “friends,” how to treat life like it’s just a big joke to throw away, how to grow up with no ambition at all?”
“Oh yeah? And what kind of an influence do you think you’d be?” sneers his mother. “Someone who’s let ambition eat up his entire life, and has no standards at all about right and wrong?”
BAM! His father’s fist comes down hard on the table, shaking the whole thing and knocking over Hayden’s mother’s glass of wine. No one pays it any attention, too focused on his angry face. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he says, his voice growing louder with every word, “I’d rather see him unwound than see him living the rest of his days with you!”
By the end of this, Mr. Upchurch’s voice is a shout. When he finishes speaking, the restaurant is dead silent. The glass lies on its side on the table, wine still spilling out of it, spreading across the white tablecloth. It looks like a bloodstain – but no one comments. The silence is louder than his shout.
Hayden’s father looks somewhat ashamed – as though he said what he did in the heat of passion, and regrets it now. But he’s too stubborn to go back on his word, especially not in front of his ex-wife. Perhaps he hopes she will contradict him.
But as the silence spreads longer and longer, Hayden realizes that they’ve reached a tipping point – a point of no return. His heart sinks, and when his mother speaks, her voice is a whisper.
“Yeah?” she says softly. “Well, maybe that’s the only solution.”
“Fine,” his father says, and to Hayden’s growing horror he sees regret hardening into resolve. “We can get the order easily enough. It’s probably the best thing, anyway.”
“Wait.” Hayden speaks up for the first time, practically paralyzed with horror. “Wait – you’re actually going to unwind me? Just because you can’t agree on where I should stay?” The sheer ridiculousness of this idea takes his breath away – and the fact that it could be true.
Neither of his parents says anything, and he looks from one to the other in rising panic, seeing sympathy but determination in both sets of eyes. For once his parents are agreeing on something – and it’s the worst thing that could have possibly happened.
“But – but – I haven’t done anything!” Hayden continues to try to protest; voice rises in pitch at a rate proportional to his desperation. “I never – you didn’t – you can’t” –
But the decision, it seems, is made. The other people in the restaurant, noticing that the voices are quieter, begin to resume their conversations, and the waiter finally approaches their table to mop up the spilled wine and offer them menus. He refills Hayden’s water glass, and Hayden reaches for it right away, his throat drier than it’s ever been.
“Hayden,” says his mother reproachfully, taking the menu from the waiter, “there are other people here. Please be quiet.” Before he can point out the hypocrisy of this statement, she takes a deep breath, and a sip from her refilled wineglass, and completely regains her composure. “Now, what would you like to eat?”
And just like that, the conversation is over, the subject closed. Hayden tries to bring it up again and again, but his parents have made up their minds, and no amount of pleading or reasoning can change anything. In a weak act of passive-aggression he orders the steak, the most expensive thing on the menu, but the one bite he takes turns to dust in his mouth, and he doesn’t touch it again. The rest of the meal is spent in stony silence. Before they leave, Hayden’s mom promises to get the unwind order the next day, so they can meet again and turn it in.
That night, at his dad’s place in Akron, Hayden does not go to sleep. Instead, he dresses all in black and fills a backpack with clothes and as much money as he has in his room. He looks at a three-year-old picture of himself with his parents, and has already reached for his backpack when he changes his mind. Instead, he leaves the picture on his desk, right in the middle. Maybe his dad will feel guilty in the morning, when he sees it.
Then, he tiptoes out of his room, creeps down the stairs, and slips out the back door.