Taming Tyler

Chapter Two

Mitch

Name: Tyler Carter

Age: Twenty-one

Case Number: 21781281

O kay, so there’s gotta be a lot of Tyler Carters out there. California’s a big state. It’s just a cruel coincidence that life sometimes throws your way. A sad reminder of someone you cared about once, someone who slipped from your life. Slipped. He didn’t slip, Mitch. Don’t kid yourself. You left. I had a good reason to . To leave. Sure, you did, but did you have a good reason to cut that boy from your life like a dead branch? It wasn’t my choice. It wasn’t. Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.

“Mitch?” Lana looks at me over the rim of her purple-framed glasses. She’s standing in the door to my office, a cup of coffee in one hand and a look on her face that tells me it’s not the first time she’s said my name. “Your nine o’clock is here. A Mr. Carter. Tyler.” I nod, leaving the past exactly where it belongs. In the past. “Should I send him in, or do you need another minute with the case file?” She nods at the red manila folder on my desk, papers, mostly unintelligible hand-written scribbles, spilling out. “Looks like a thick one,” she winks.

Everyone at the parole office hates a red file. Because it usually means that we’re too late. That someone several steps before us slept on the job and let a kid slip through the cracks of a system that’s as holey as a fishnet. Yeah, red files, especially the thick ones, signify neglect and a failing system overspilling with kids who never really had a chance to begin with. Only this one… an address in Bel Air. Well-off neighborhood. Still, it could be a runaway or a made-up address. You never know.

“Yeah, I’m good,” I groan, wiping at my face. Bree kept us up last night. She had to go wee-wee four times. Jesus, the things you do for love. “Same old story, different kid. Just send him in. Mr. Carter.” I can’t say his first name. Don’t make me say his first name unless you wanna see a grown man fall apart in a gray corner office on a Monday morning.

“Got it,” Lana smiles. Then she looks at the cup in her hand. “Have this. Looks like you need it more than I do right now.” She walks over and places the steaming coffee on my table.

“What? You sayin’ I look tired?” I sigh, reaching for the cup.

“More like something the cat tried to drag in, then decided it was too much of a hassle,” she smirks. I love Lana. She’s a hoot. We’ve worked together for a couple of years now, and she and her fiancé Luis stop by for dinner occasionally. We don’t have a lot of people over during the week because of Cal’s ungodly work hours, but sometimes on the weekends, we try to make an effort. To be social instead of just an old married couple splayed on the couch like a pair of beached whales in front of the TV. I mean, don’t get me wrong. We are. Not beached whales, obviously. But an old married couple. And today, I’m definitely feeling the ‘ old ,’ thank you very much, Bree.

“Yeah, I feel like it too,” I muse, blowing at the steam before taking a careful sip.

“I’ll bring him through.” Lana smiles, and then she’s gone. I inhale the coffee right until I feel a lingering presence at the door to my office, and I look away from my cup.

“Mr. Carter, come in, please. Have a seat.” I motion at the office chair across from me, like I do several times a day because the kids keep on coming. They keep on piling through my door like I’m hosting a New Balance flash sale. Jesus, if only. At the beginning of my career, I tried to show them some direction and the possibilities for a new life, but these days it feels like I’m just someone who’s here to keep tabs. To make a tick in a box and note down their attendance in a protocol. We’re way too understaffed and underfunded to run a serious operation anymore. I mean, I still try. It costs you nothing to try. But who am I kidding, right?

When he continues to hover in the doorway, I look up. At first, when I take him in, relief courses through me. Because it’s not him. This kid is not my Tyler. This kid is not the boy I loved like a son for eight years and a couple of measly months. He’s not the boy I called mine, and he called me Dad in return. This kid… this is a broken kid and believe me, I know how a broken kid looks because I’ve seen plenty. His slumped shoulders and resigned posture tell tales of a life that has offered him a shitload of letdown with a side of defeats. Yes, plural. An endless succession of defeats.

Then he looks up and I see them. His eyes. That rare, golden cinnamon. Two pools of light chestnut brown with thousands of shades of orange intermingled. I only saw cinnamon eyes twice before in my life. My ex-wife Catarina’s eyes and then his, her son’s. My Tyler .

With that realization, the familiar dull ache in my chest returns and it’s like my heart breaks all over again. It breaks along with the future I made up in my mind for Tyler. A happy future. A future filled with laughter and wins. Friends and girlfriends. High school and college. A bright future. Bright. Bright like my dark-haired boy with the cinnamon eyes. Shit, the lies we tell ourselves to be able to look at our own reflection in the mirror.

I don’t know why I thought Tyler would make it. Make it to that bright, sparkly future I’d made up for him. Because he did tell me, or rather screamed at me, when he clung to my arm, leaving scratches that have since then disappeared, while the scars remain on my soul. He did tell me.

‘Please, Dad. Please take me with you. Why can’t I come with you? Why not, Dad?’ And then, ‘I’ll die without you, Dad. I will. I just know I will.’

‘Tyler. Tyler. Listen to me. I’m not going for good. You hear me? I’m not. I’ll be back. I’ve already made plans with your mom. For the entire summer break, you’ll stay with me, okay Ty? I’ll come for you and then it’ll be just you and me, right Ty-Man? Right, buddy?’

‘No, you won’t. You won’t,’ he shook his head, pleading with me, rivers of tears running desperately down his cheeks. Because he knew. How did Tyler know something back then that I didn’t? That it was going to be the last time I ever saw him. That my promises were worth shit in light of what happened next.

“Oh, fuck no!” the kid—Tyler—spits at me before turning on his heel, giving me the back of his beat-up leather jacket that promises a Sweet Ride in bright orange. Then he’s gone. Slamming the cup on my desk, spilling coffee all over Tyler’s case file, I scramble to my feet. Hell no. Not on my watch. I’m not going to lose him all over again now that he’s just walked back into my life after eight years. Hell no.

I catch up with him in the parking lot, panting and sweating like the old man I am. Well, not old -old. I’m forty-three. And I’m in pretty good shape if I dare say so myself, putting in some time at the gym whenever I can. But since we got Bree, I feel like I’m closer to eighty. I’m so sleep-deprived that I could probably sleep for an entire week if I had the chance. He’s about to climb onto a motorcycle when I reach him. A motorcycle. Why does my Tyler own a motorcycle? Doesn’t he know that those are dangerous? He should… Shit, he should be driving a fucking Volvo with state-of-the-art airbags. Not this… this death machine.

“Where are you going?” I manage to pant. He throws me a sour look, his golden eyes throwing daggers at me. They’re even brighter now that we’re outside.

“The fuck do you care?” he spits, looking at me like I’m solely responsible for ruining his life. Well, maybe I am. Shit.

“I care. Of course, I care,” I hiss, my side stinging like a motherfucker. “Of course, I care, Ty.”

“Don’t call me that!” he grits through his teeth. “Don’t you dare fucking call me that. I’m not Ty. Ty’s gone.” A glimmer of sadness appears in his eyes, the right corner of his mouth trembling slightly. Then he seems to catch himself and the stonewall comes back up. “I don’t want you.” I don’t want you.

“Look, Tyler,” I reach for him, but he shies away from me like a wounded animal who’s been hurt one too many times. I drop my hand to my side, taking a deep breath.

“Look, Tyler. You can’t just run aw—”

“Why not? You did, Mitch.” Mitch. Of course, I’m Mitch to him. What did I expect? And still, my name on his lips sounds like a mockery because I was only ever Mitch to him when he was mad at me. But who the hell am I kidding? Because the kid in front of me is mad. At me. And rightfully so. “Give me one good reason why I should listen to anything you have to say, Mitch .”

“Because you came with a red folder,” I rasp. “Your file,” I add. He looks at me like I just grew a pair of horns and a tail.

“And so fucking what? You think I give a fuck what color my case file is? What, are you fucking senile, Mitch ?” The kid sure does like fuck a lot, but even for his generation, the use is kind of excessive. Almost like he’s trying to make it a point to come off as hostile.

“It’s not about the color,” I say. “It’s what it means.” When I don’t continue, he stares me down. His attempt at looking bored fails, though. I see it. That spark of curiosity in his eyes. I know it so well.

‘Where’re we going, Dad?’

‘It’s a surprise.’

‘Is it a good one? Do I get at least a clue? Please gimme a clue, Dad?’

‘Jesus. Okay, so it rhymes with Ty kissing.’

‘Ty kissing? Ty kissing? But… No way? Really? Now? We’re going now?’

‘Sure are, buddy.’

“What does it mean?” he asks eventually, sounding like he can hardly contain his boredom.

“It means that this is your final call, Tyler. This is it. There’s no color after red. Only prison.” I pause while my words sink in. As hard as he tries to keep up his cool exterior, I can tell that Tyler has no illusions about what happens to a kid like him in prison. The US prison system will chew him right up and spit him out again years later, nothing but a bloody pulp with broken bones. There’ll be nothing left of him. Nothing left of my Tyler. “Look, Tyler. I’m your last chance. Your only chance. Just… just give me twenty minutes of your time and hear me out.” Please, hear me out.

He continues to stare at me, playing with the keychain in his hands, running it through his fingers as he contemplates my offer, or perhaps my untimely death. And that’s when I see it. The orange with the silver head. It’s worn and the orange that used to be bright and glowing in the mid-noon light by the lake is now dull and dirty. But it’s still the same. Just like Tyler, it’s still the same. His first fly. The one we made together. He kept it. All those years he kept it. And for some reason, that gives me hope even when there should be none. Tyler keeping his first fly gives me hope. Because that was our thing: fly-fishing. And perhaps he feels the same because although his voice is tinged with hopelessness when he speaks, I notice the tilt at the end. The tilt sounds slightly like the old Tyler when he was curious about something.

“Okay.”