Winter Anxiety and Summer Depression - Chapter 2

James

James never really knew his biological parents.

Well, not really.

Ever since he was four, he was raised by his father’s younger brother. The memory of his parents was limited, just fuzzy images of bespoke suits on his father and a string of pearls around his mother’s neck.

Then a dreadful plane crash took his parents away.

Derek Ward, his uncle, managed to raise him just fine. He actually agreed but he refused to admit it out loud. Whenever Derek said that, James would retort, “No you didn’t. Now I have both mommy and daddy issue!”

Derek would let out a bark of laughter before telling him to wash the dishes. Derek was a great uncle, really. He ran a small but well-off private security company. Derek had been a private bodyguard in a bigger company before James was thrusted into his care.

The rest is history.

When he was younger, he used to address Derek as ‘daddy’ then ‘dad’ then, when he was in middle school—urgh, his emo phase—he found out that Derek was not actually his father, he stopped. Pre-pubescent angst and all, distanced himself, and called Derek ‘uncle’.

Now, he called Derek with a range of things, ‘dad’, ‘uncle Derek’, ‘uncle D’, and sometimes ‘Derek’ when he feels particularly bratty. Derek was a bit hurt at first but now, he lamented (jokingly) where did his cute James went.

It was good fun.

So yeah, Derek managed to raise him just fine.

James would never admit that out loud.

Unlike Emily Darling, James Ward only attended St. Peter up to his fourth grade. He was not expelled, the headmistress had politely said, he was recommended to move to another school. The reason? James punched the son of the school’s biggest benefactor.

It was not a completely baseless brawl, though. James has always been a friendly kid. The other boy mocked James for not having a mother and said that his mother must have left him because he was not a good kid. That made James super angry so—

Yeah

On the car ride home, Derek said that it was never okay to hit people but Derek was proud of him for standing up for himself. James got to eat a big chocolate fudge ice cream and three days without television.

It seemed like the headmistress knew that it was not completely James’ fault so she did not expel James. She recommended him to move to another school. James belatedly found out that the headmistress had personally written a brilliant recommendation letter so he could enter another private school but James said he did not want to move to another city so they stayed and James enrolled to a public school.

Public school was kind of a nightmare. The kids were rowdier and bigger and scarier. They don’t have uniforms and that made James woke up earlier just to pick out what to wear that day. After a year, James learnt that nobody gave a shit about what he wore yesterday. He could get away wearing the same shirt for three months.

(Derek did not allow that).

Middle school—

James shuddered every time someone mentioned those words (middle school), he did not want to remember the first two years of middle school. He’d rather eat the socks that he wore to a soccer game.

And this summer, there’s a possibility he is getting a new step-sister.

Derek never really had any serious relationship until.. Well.. Jemma Stark. Most of Derek’s dates ran away when they realized that Derek was looking for something real because Derek has a kid to take care of. James used to feel guilty about it—thus the emo phase… James never wanted to be reminded of that phase ever again.

Well, at least until Derek met Jemma Stark at this particular government convention that related with complicated science and that shit. Apparently, one of the scientist had completely enamored Derek. Derek never really invited his girlfriend back, though. When the convention was over, they still talk to each other, through Skype. This continued for a year.

They never really talked about Jemma Stark, Derek mentioned that she has a daughter and lives in England. James never really wanted to know about them, because, really, you don’t want to hear about your father dating.

“James, I need to talk about Jemma Stark,” Derek announced one week into his summer break.
“Daaad, no, I don’t want to hear about her…” James protested.
“James. This is, uh, important,” Derek fidgeted.

James frowned.

“Fine. Did you guys break up or something?”
“Uh, no, what makes you think that?”

James shrugged.

“No. We did not break up, I want to tell you that Jemma and her daughter are moving… To here,”

James looked at Derek.

“Uh, yeah. Something about her research.. She was given a choice here or Moscow. She doesn’t like the cold so she picked here,”
“Are you guys going to get hitched?”

Derek blushed.

Holy shit, his uncle was blushing.

“Dad? Uncle D? Derek?”
“No!! No… Not yet, at least. We just want to, you know, see if we can take it to next stage and all,”
“Oh,”
“So… Yeah, they’re moving… In fact they’re moving right across the street,”

The house right across the street belonged to Madame Wu, an elderly Chinese woman who often gave Derek and James her homemade dumplings. Just last month, she moved in with one of her sons.

“Oh,”

Derek grinned awkwardly.

“Dad, that’s good,”
“Yeah,”
“Congrats, Dad,”
“Thanks, James. It means a lot,”
“Of course. I am happy for you, Dad,”

Since both of them are guys—Derek as the manly man and James as the too-cool-for-feelings hipster—, they were never really good at expressing… things.

So they just sat across each other, fiddling with their coffee mugs awkwardly.

James was glad, though. Derek finally found someone.