Pershing Park looked different in the day, he noticed. The rust on the playground equipment was much more noticeable under the setting Tulsa sun and standing still rather than in the glimpses he got when cruising by in Bob’s car or helping hold down some East Side trash for a quick beat down in the otherwise silent evenings. Those occasions when tossing the flask and the football back and forth had proven too boring and they decided to get some energy out. The grass seemed taller in the dead of night when rushing back to the car with bruised knuckles and high adrenaline, not like now as he stood by the run-down fountain and picked at his nails.
Paul felt stupid waiting around like this. Part of him wondered if it had even been worth it to be early to begin with. It’d serve Darry right to make him wait around for him for once. It’d be payback for the last four months. But he was a stickler for punctuality if nothing else, and he felt like he had some kind of high ground being there first. Not like he needed it anyway, he wasn’t in the wrong here.
After what felt like hours of standing around- it was realistically only twenty minutes, Paul had checked his watch enough times to mark every mind numbing second and add it to his pile of disdain- he saw the familiar beat-up truck pull up on the road and the even more familiar figure climb out of it.
Darry’s shoulders were tense, Paul could see it from a mile away. He always had a specific way of carrying himself after a rough game or a long practice, and it was no different when he’d traded his football for a hammer.
“Was starting to think you weren’t gonna show,” Paul told him when he was sure he was within earshot. “You sure took your dear, sweet time.”
“Work went late,” Darry replied with a raised brow, shoving his hands into his pockets when he momentarily forgot himself and made the beginning motions of a hug.
Paul resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “You couldn’t just ditch early? You practically live there the rest of the time anyways.”
“Not if I wanna keep my job,” he snapped back as he crossed his arms over his chest. The tension hung in the air as they stared at each other, waiting for the other to say something, anything.
It was Darry who finally cut it, sighing tiredly. “You gonna tell me what this is all about? You called me out here, remember? Not the other way ‘round.”
Paul clenched his jaw, his fists following shortly after. “Again, didn’t think you were gonna show,” he said, voice short. “Wouldn’t surprise me. You’ve had a pretty good track record of that lately.”
Now it was Darry’s turn to tense, glaring back at the boy across from him. “I’ve been-“
“Busy, I know!” Paul interrupted, his voice dripping with exasperation. “When have you not been busy?! Hell, this is the longest I’ve seen you around in months! I’d have better luck reaching the damn Queen of England than you!”
Darry’s face shifted into that unamused expression Paul recognized all too well, the one that told him to quit while he was ahead lest he cross a line he was tiptoeing towards. “Sorry I gotta work for a living, man! The state’s been on my ass nonstop and bills are kicking my ass-“
He ignored the warning and stepped closer to both the line and Darry. “So because of that I just get shoved off to the side? I just gotta deal with that? How the hell is that any fair to me?”
Darry scoffed. “Jesus Christ, Paul, ain’t none of this fair!” he snapped, raising his voice as the tension rose with it.
“Double negative,” Paul mumbled on impulse.
That made the other pause, glaring back at him in silence for what felt like ages. “…I’m gettin’ real sick of you correctin’ me like that. Like I don’t know how to talk right. Like you gotta teach me or somethin’.”
The Soc didn’t even hold back his eye roll this time, tilting his head with obvious annoyance. “That’s not what I mean and you know it-“
“Do I?” Darry bit back, eyes locked on Paul with a hint of exhausted madness flashing in his cold stare. “Sure seems like I don’t know a damn thing when I’m around you. Always remindin’ me about proper speech and etiquette like I grew up in a goddamn barn! And now here you are all upset that I gotta work and pay bills and I ain’t got the time to hang around you!”
Paul had stopped looking at Darry halfway through his rant, the anger bubbling under the surface and threatening to spill over until his clenched jaw began to ache like hell. “Sorry I can’t just be okay with being ignored like I don’t matter, asshole!” He took a deep breath to try and steady himself even as the rage flowed through him like a live wire. "You told me we were gonna figure it out. When you dropped out you told me it was gonna work out. I figured you were insane to just throw it all away like that but I thought ‘hey, at least me repeating senior year won’t be so bad if he’s sticking around. Least I won’t have to wait around til I finally make my way there too’. And now look where we are.”
Darry scoffed. “Yeah, well I said a lot of shit three months ago, didn’t I?”
The tension had risen to a level that made both parties uncomfortable beyond belief, each locked in another stalemate as they dared the other to break the silence. They knew where this was going. It’d been a long time coming, four months of “I can’t, I’m busy” and “We’ll talk about this later” and “Gotta work, sorry” piled with “Why are you wearing that” and “It’s ‘don’t have’ not ‘ain’t got’” and “I don’t get why you’re so hellbent on playing parent”.
“…Not too late to take off, y’know,” Paul mumbled after a long time, eyes shifting away from Darry’s stern face to focus instead on the grass he absent-mindedly ghosting his shoe over. “We could still do it. Hop in my car and haul ass.”
“And go where? Do what?” Darry tested. “Get stuck in some other dead-end town where we’ll have to act like buddies and do the same damn thing we’re doin’ here? Wake up, man! This was always gonna be a problem! We were stupid for even makin’ that plan to begin with.”
Paul bit the inside of his cheek. “…So that’s it then? I just get put on the shelf so you can go play Dad?”
“I got a responsibility, Paul!”
“Nobody asked you to do it, Darrel! You could put ‘em in a boys home and move on with your life and you know it!”
Darry took three steps forward to be inches away, the rage clear in his eyes. “You don’t get it. Damn it, you never will,” he said, voice low enough to keep the conversation between them in fear of any passersby eavesdropping. “You’ll never fuckin’ get it. This- us, whatever the hell this is, we gotta cut it out. I got my brothers to worry about. I got bills to pay. I ain’t got time to worry bout whether or not you miss me. Talkin’ about runnin’ off somewhere and abandonin’ the two family members I got left? You’re the crazy one here, not me.”
Paul wanted to hit him. He wanted to scream and curse his name and leave the park with discolored knuckles and diminishing anger just as he always did. But it was daylight and he was a Soc without backup. That wasn’t how they did things.
“…You know what? Fine. Fuck you, man. I don’t need this,” he huffed, hands up in frustrated mock surrender. “You wanna stick around here on this shitty side of town with those lowlifes then I’m not gonna stop you. Can't say I didn't try, pal.” He began the trek back to his car, only making it a few feet away before turning back to glance at Darrel with his hands in his pockets and the same set expression of anger on his face. Though, from the angle he was stood Paul swore he could see the glint of tear tracks on his cheeks and some part buried under all the accumulating hate wanted to wipe them away. But he didn't. He couldn't. And he never would again.
Later that night in the haze of booze and the rush of adrenaline, as he and the other Soc boys chased after one Sodapop Curtis who’d been cutting through the park on his way home from work, Paul Holden made the decision that he’d been wrong. Pershing Park looked the same in the evening as it did during the day. Dingy, run down and disgusting. Just like everything on the East Side of Tulsa.
maybe i’ll get famous (as the man who can’t be moved)
Darry should’ve known it was coming. Not “it” necessarily, that would’ve been harder to guess at. Scratch that, he should’ve known something was coming.
