#m'boy

ʟᴏᴋɪ | ꜱᴇʀɪᴇꜱ

joe spent the earlier part of his life blaming everything else for his behavior but he's better now so it's cool.

his parents were each twenty when he was born in vancouver and, in theory, they gave it a shot. drew was working for the city and lisa was pulling in enough in bartending tips that it seemed like it would work - she took day with joey, he took nights. sneaking resentment towards the other for the wild youth that they didn't get to have creeped in and lisa wanted to take off first but drew beat her to it when joe was three.

he has absolutely no idea how she wound up tracking him down to wayfield but all of the sudden, he was seven and being hauled from the city to a tiny summer town on the bay to meet his father and grandmother. it was fine for a few days, he guessed, but when lisa conveniently left and forgot to take him with, he was mad as hell and stayed that way for…..quite awhile.

joe spent the next eleven years with his grandmother and father - sometimes. drew left for longer and longer stretches of time - oil fields at first, finally leaving for alaska when joe was thirteen and without a word since. it's not as though him and his grandmother don't get along. she took care of him the best she could and he's the first to admit that he was a pain in the ass. they see each other at holidays and aren't jerks when they run into each other at the store but…it just is what it is.

he started drinking when he was twelve. he remembers that his first drink was beer his friend tommy had swiped from his dad's fridge and that it was backpack temperature molson but it made him stop thinking so goddamn hard and made him feel invincible. so he just kept doing it. he stayed mad but at least he felt strong.

by high school, he was a master of smuggling liquor from his grandmother's stash and keeping his grades just above flunking. the art of skating by? a master at the craft.

aiyla was never something he could half ass or skate by with. when he fell, he fell as hard and fast and only a stupid sixteen year old boy can and maybe the uptick in delinquency had everything to do with trying to impress her and maybe it didn't. shut up about it.

in retrospect: he was kind of a shit boyfriend at the details - never took her to prom, definitely a little drunk the first time he met her parents, and never met a curfew he couldn't break. he never forgot an anniversary or her birthday and if the flowers were nicked from his neighbor's yard under cover of night, so be it. his girl got flowers just because.

the breakup was inevitable but joe still felt blindsided when it actually happened. they limped along for a bit after high school - long distance to some extent, half broken up already. he was working at the liquor store (because why waste time?) and he knew she was trying to make something of herself and it never stopped feeling like he was dragging her down. so he drank more about it. and that became more of a problem and then that became a really big part of the reason for the breakup.

frankly, he didn't even realize it was for real until her parents called the cops on him for trying to climb in her window and he spent the night in lock up.

planted the seeds though. took another six months of fucking around before he decided it was time to get sober but he did. he was suddenly very aware that he was twenty four with jackshit to his name except a burgeoning criminal record and some stories that were rapidly becoming embarrassing rather than cool.

he did the full twelve step shot - tommy had become a licensed social worker and took him on as a project. he wrote letters to his parents that he still isn't sure ever reached them but he felt better once the words were out. he wrote aiyla seven pages on notebook paper while sitting on tom's office couch and left it in her parents' mailbox. under cover of night - he knew he'd gotten lucky that the cerens didn't press charges the first time and knew it. it felt better once it was out.

newly sober and unemployed, he decided to become a firefighter. absolutely no rhyme or reason. just felt like something steady to do. he was pretty psyched to find out that he's good at it - he hasn't really been good at a lot.

and that's been about it. he's been in joe 2.0 mode for four and a half years now and it's finally starting to feel like the other shoe isn't going to drop. he has a townhouse and a rescue mutt named jake and learned how to cook so he could handle his dinner duty nights at the firehouse. his friends who stuck around get him, the ones that didn't weren't worth it in the long run anyway. sometimes, he even thinks that maybe actually getting into a relationship and planning a future with someone that lasts longer than a few months wouldn't be the worst.

he spent so much of his life hating where he was at and fighting the idea that it might just be the right place and that wayfield is home now is as surprising to him as it is for anyone else.