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Olly finds himself getting angry, too, on behalf of his dad. He puts his mug down and
slips off his stool.
His dad paces the length of the room. His face is a storm.
“I don’t care about the goddamn money. Don’t do this, Phil. If you fire me everyone’s
going to think—”
He stops moving and holds the phone away from his ear. He doesn’t say anything for a
long minute.
Olly stops moving, too, hoping that whatever Phil says next will fix everything.
“Jesus. You guys can’t do this to me. No one’s going to touch me after this.”
Olly wants to go to his dad and tell him everything is going to be OK, but he can’t. He’s
too afraid. He slips out of the room, taking his hot chocolate with him.
The first time Olly’s dad gets afternoon drunk—violent drunk, yelling-at-the-top-of-hislungs
drunk, doesn’t-remember-what-happened-the-next-day drunk—doesn’t happen
until a few months later. He’d been home all day, arguing with financial news shows on
television. One of the anchors mentioned the name of his old company, and he raged. He
poured whiskey into a tall glass and then added vodka and gin. He mixed them together
with a long spoon until the mixture was no longer the pale amber color of the whiskey
and looked like water instead.
Olly watched the color fade in the glass and remembered the day his dad got fired and
how he’d been too afraid to comfort him. What if he had—would things be different now?
What if?
He remembered how his dad had said that one thing doesn’t always lead to another.
He remembered sitting at the breakfast bar and stirring the milk and chocolate
together. How the chocolate turned white, and the milk turned brown, and how
sometimes you can’t unmix things no matter how much you might want to.