"Hang on, give me a second," I grunt into my phone, double checking behind me that no stray animal or child is following me outside before I slip through the door and onto my parents front patio. "It's a fucking madhouse in there."

I sigh at Beau once I can finally hear myself think.

My parents, Cami and Jay Larson, live in a state of orderly chaos at all times. When my brothers and I were growing up, we were always on the go. It was basically the rule of the house. Every kid had a sport and an instrument to play, and when schools started offering clubs, too, you bet your ass we were all signed up. Chess for Peter, the Student Leaders club for Peyton, and peer tutoring for me - I was a whiz at math and science. High school brought jobs and internships and I did my part, filled my role, until it all just became too much and I stopped everything except drinking and getting high.

That's when rides to practices and games, work shifts and internships, changed to trips to the therapists office, support groups, treatment centers. We were suddenly on the go in a whole new, less fun, more urgent kind of way.

The tattered calendars Mom used to keep in the kitchen have morphed into a whiteboard version, our activities replaced by events they're to attend for their three grandsons, vet visits for their two chocolate labs and three angry cats, and their own classes and festivities at the community center, volunteering and playing Bingo and whatever else it is they do there.

As it is right now, the whole family is cooped up in the home I grew up in: between myself, my older brothers, Peyton, the middle child of us three, his wife Sienna, and their three boys, Danny, Mark, and Nick, and Peter with his girlfriend Lyla, the place is fucking crowded. And loud.

"What do you need?" I ask into my phone, feeling the breeze against my clammy skin as the sun sets in front of me. I'm glad Beau called - it was the perfect excuse to dip out of dinner right as the serious questions started coming out.

Things like, "So what're you doing now, Parker?" followed by stifling support and encouragement over the lamest job ever, and questions like "So are you seeing anyone?" and "When will you settle down?" My brothers think I miss the way they grab their partners hands as they ask, how they share concerned glances with their girls when I say I'm single.

I don't.

While I know it's all well intentioned, all I really want to say is that of course I'm not happy with where I am in life but I have no one to blame but myself and no amount of their coddling or hand-holding will change it, so can they all just stop? Just for a second? So I don't have to think about how disappointing everything turned out to be for just one moment of the day?

Because that's how I am, if I were to answer honestly when they ask: I am disappointed. And tired. The mistakes that I made are lasting, they follow me everywhere, and now I'm seeing what all my bullshit really got me. A shit job and no shot at a girl I want to get to know better.

Beau's private life was blasted all over the internet and social media, printed on the pages of magazines and talked about by people who didn't even know him. But he got the girl and he got back to work doing what he loves and he had a kid and he's happy now.

No one really bats an eye at the musician with a former alcohol problem when he wants to write music again.

And I'm happy for him. But me? Any employer I've met wants to know why I have a huge gap in my work history, why I can't provide them a decent reference. Every girl I've hooked up with eventually invites me out for drinks and I always say no because who wants that conversation?

So no, I don't really want to talk about any of it. Certainly not with the people who provided me with everything I needed to succeed, or to my brothers who took those opportunities and did exactly that.

It all feels so...

"Hey, man, you still there?" Beau's voice grabs my attention. I breathe in a huge gulp of air and find the word I was looking for.

Suffocating.

Beau again, snapping out of my self pity. "Emma asked if you could ask your mom for some of that homemade bread? She has an idea for some sandwich and she thinks it'll be really good."

"I'll ask her." I agree easily, cringing at how my mom will ask why I haven't found a nice girl like that Emma, just as Beau did. See honey? She'll say, Everyone deserves a chance at love.

"Thanks." Beau's brows furrow on screen. "You okay? You look pissy." He quirks one side of his mouth up and amends, "Pissier than usual."

"If you heard the noise inside, you'd be pretty damn pissy too." I raise a brow just as Maggie's banshee call can be heard through his speaker, discrediting my point. I can't identify a single word, just a string of super loud, super nonsensical toddler screech.

Maybe if Beau can put up with that, I really am being a miserable shit.

He winces but shakes his head. "No, I mean... You look like Eeyore or something."

"Now you're watching too many cartoons."

Beau just stares at me, eyes piercing into mine in that unimpressed way he has, the way that makes you open up just so he'll stop looking at you like that, and so I do, spilling my guts to him while his kid screams in the background.

There was a time his girl was screaming in the hospital and I had to convince him to fucking see her, to be there when his kid came into the world, and now look where we are. He's happy as shit, I'm the lost one. For a minute there, I felt like I was getting it together.

But then last week Principal Rivers called a meeting to bitch at the janitorial staff for a mess I swore I'd already cleaned up and I started to wonder if I really did and now...

It's the way I feel a lot, when I come home. Which I always thought was really backwards - home should be where I feel the best, a safe spot to make everything make sense, but it's the opposite for me, has been forever. Whenever I'm around my brothers, their perfect, happy lives, I'm reminded how I had everything they had, could have had everything they have now, if only I could've just got it together. If only I could've just been happy with what I had, who I was.

But I couldn't. The only time I felt that way was when I drank or took enough to not remember who I was at all.

"Can I be honest with you, man?" Beau narrows his eyes at me.

"Aren't you usually?"

He continues talking as if I didn't reply at all. "This whole woe-is-me shit? You needa cut it out." At my glare, he shrugs. "I know I'm the last person to be able to say shit about it. But that's why I am - because when it was me in your spot and I was this close from becoming a miserable prick, it was you who got me off my ass. You've been bitching for months about how your drinking messed stuff up. About how the job search went, how shitty your job is now. How women don't wanna be with you because of it. But honestly P? You have a job. Work there awhile and go to the next, better one. Girls? You don't know if women won't accept your past because you don't let them. You don't give yourself, or them, a chance - if you want one, take it. If you want things to be different, change them."

I stare at him, willing myself to feel angry at him. But I can't, because I know it's all true. That's what makes it all so damn obnoxious in the first place - it's only me, myself, and I to blame, and only I can change it now.

"So you tell me, man. What do you want?" He shrugs again, which is so Beau of him, to drop insightful advice like it's nothing more than a passing statement before he moves onto something more entertaining. "Decide. And then do something about it. If we can help, let us know, but... Shit. You've got to figure it out first. I could probably go about it in a gentler way, but fuck it. I'm not letting you go down this road. Not when you're getting things together."

I nod, saying nothing, the cacophony of noise from inside finding its way to me once more through our open windows. Dog barks and kids laughing and grown ups shouting over each other to make sure they're being heard in a silly conversation.

Decide what I want. And then do something about it.

"Parker!" Mom calls from inside, dragging me back to the day-to-day monotony that I'm suddenly incredibly fed up with.

"Hey, I gotta go. I'll ask Ma about the bread." I end the call, his words on repeat.

Decide what I want.

A pretty face with pale freckles and fiery curls.

Tucking my phone into my back pocket, I step back into the house with a newfound purpose in my step.

Now it's time to do something about it.