Page 118 of The Bartender Special

Together with Callum, Jack dragged Derrick outside without further fanfare.

Dave Right, a retired Army vet who absolutely hated mean drunks, was the voluntary designated driver on call for the night. He arrived in less than five minutes and manhandled a complaining Derrick into the backseat of his Ford in record time.

It was only when the taillights disappeared from view that Callum strung together a series of words so bad that Jack instinctively looked around for his mother and a bar of soap with his mouth’s name on it.

“This is going to wreck him,” Callum said after coming up for air. He lowered his voice. The anger in it was gone.

“Benny told me that story after I found him crying in his room later that night. He had just gotten over food poisoning and had said he hadn’t really wanted to, but that dumbass was dressing up the whole first-time thing so much that he felt he needed to. Then the jackass wasn’t—he… He didn’t care about Benny at all during. So there Benny was trying his best to do his best—to make this really vulnerable, memorable thing right—and then this guy just made it all about him. Derrick even told Benny—Jack, this is where it gets cruel—that somehow Benny had been so bad he’d made Derrick question if he even liked guys after that. He didn’t put that in the blog, Jack. Benny was devastated. The best I could do to make him feel better was agree with him that Derrick would probably only brag that he’d had sex, not share anything else.”

Callum was so mad again that he was spitting.

“Benny may be pretending that all of his embarrassing stories he has out in the world don't bother him that much, that this blog thing going viral is fine, but all he's done is just gotten really good at hiding that some of these things really hurt.”

Callum’s anger bounced back into severity.

“Do you know about our parents? Did he ever tell you about how they died out of nowhere?” Callum swayed a little. He was also drunk, but Jack knew that what he was saying were the words of an older brother who deeply cared.

“Our parents—Our parents just went out to the store one day and never came back,” he continued. “Benny was fifteen and just starting to fall in love and get really close to people, you know? Crushes and passing notes and being comfortable with who he liked. But after they died? He—He disconnected. It was all Ethan and I could do to keep him talking to us. After some time passed, he eventually got better, but it was never the same. He'd start these relationships—start being him again—but then pull back. I-I think that's why he really started that blog. It was all of the stuff he’d wanted to do—to say—but couldn’t because he’d cut the connection.”

He took a step to the side. Jack put a hand up to steady him.

“Yeah,” he kept on. “I admit I was a little ticked he kept the blog a secret from me too, and kept the secret of you—Guy, or whatever he called you—for that matter, but I'm so, so proud of him for taking the leap to make that blog public. To connect himself back to the world again. To be—to be the teenager he was before Mom and Dad…”

Callum’s words trailed off.

Then he flipped on a dime again.

He was back to mad.

“And then, then people like Carol and Derrick Fucking Kennerly try to ruin that for him. They try to ruin him. His name and reputation. They even try to ruin you. We—We can’t let him disconnect again, Jack. We can’t let him be alone again.”

Jack wasn’t drunk.

He wasn’t under the influence of painful memories or the memory of family tragedy.

There wasn’t a camera pointed at his face and there was no Robertson in sight.

He hadn’t even known Benny the month before.

And yet, he made a promise right then and there to his brother.

“He won’t be.”

It was short and sweet.

What he said next, after pushing back into the bar and walking right back up to the microphone, still on from before, was not.

The movement echoed throughout the bar. Every patron turned his way.

“My first time was with a girl named Gina. I was sixteen and thought I was going to rock her world. Turns out all I did was poke her in the ass so many times that she ended up slapping me. Once I got it right, I lasted a cool thirty seconds. If that. That’s why she called me the ass king in school my senior year. I told everyone it was because I had a good ass.”

For a second, no one said a word.

Then good ole Dixon hollered out, laughing.

“You know, I thought it was weird you said that’s why she called you that! If anything my ass is the best of the Knox family.”

Laughter broke out at that.