fourth beer before he asked the question that had been plaguing him all night.
“Am I weak?”
J looked at him with pity. “You’re just not used to standing up for yourself.”
His drinking buddy’s eyes were glazed tonight. Dave felt a little more relaxed just being here. J exuded a calm steadiness that Dave was craving when he left the house a few hours before. Since he’d been at the bar, it felt as if most of his troubles melted away.
“I can’t believe I snapped—at them.” His voice held a note of wonder in it.
“I can,” J disagreed, with a small smile. “You had enough, like you said. There is only so much battering a person can take before they finally say no. That’s what you did, Dave. You said no.”
“I did.”
“That was brave of you,” J went on, “Sometimes we have to face conflict, as opposed to avoiding it. It’s difficult, ugly even, but the alternative is much worse.” He sent Dave a grim look.
“What alternative?” Dave sat up a little straighter, focusing all his attention on J’s next words.
“We let it eat away at us. We ignore our truth, the knowledge of who we are. We let others pile their own stories on top of us until we are buried beneath layers of others opinions and thoughts, their wants and needs. We don’t attend to our own wishes and fears. The longer these concepts elude us, the more we will decay on the inside, until either there is nothing left, or we go mad.”
“I can’t help but feel guilty, though,” Dave explained as he thought of his behavior over the last few days.
“That is a choice, my friend,” J laughed, lighting a cigarette. Since Shawn and Mara were still out of town, Ruth seemed to have relaxed the smoking rules.
“How so?”
“You choose to feel guilty by rerunning events that have already occurred over and over in your mind. They are the past, you cannot change them, you have to let go of them and just keep moving forward. Don’t you dare feel guilty about speaking your mind—even if it offends, you must always speak your truth, Dave. Without it, you are nothing.”
Dave nodded along, absorbing this information.
“You can’t tell me you don’t feel better—getting your thoughts out instead of keeping everything bottled up?”
“Yes and no,” Dave admitted. “I suppose I’ll have to work on it.”
J nodded in agreement. As he watched Dave above the rim of his glass, his eyes twinkled with uncertainty. “Do that.”