Welcome to Trainwrecks: Season 2 (2005-2006)! If you haven’t read Season 1, please start there! Trainwrecks is a free-to-read fiction serial that follows a group of six Seattle-adjacent friends from the year 2004 to the year 2015. Join Luna Cruz, Sebastian Velasquez, Dimitri and Victoria Hale, Duke Kingston, and Jasmine Nolan as they stumble their way from adolescence to adulthood, falling in love, making mistakes, overcoming their pasts, and staying together through it all.
For series introduction, character profiles, relationship charts, and general orientation, check out the Table of Contents!
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When Dimitri was four and his father was a twenty-something-year-old med student, he craved nothing more than to spend time with him. Time uninterrupted by studying and exams and work and chores was hard to come by. In hindsight, he had plenty of things to give James kudos for. How he’d managed to succeed in school, see to his wife’s needs, and be home every night to read his son a bedtime story was a mystery. Dimitri was now the age that his father had been when he’d had him, and he couldn’t imagine taking care of an infant. He could hardly take care of himself.
For their coffee appointment, they decided to meet at a Starbucks in downtown Seattle. There’d been a back and forth of are-you-sures from James and Dimitri insisting he didn’t mind driving, no really, why would he have bought a sports car if he didn’t want to drive, etc. Still, he hated to be on time, so he arrived a few minutes late, if only to have the pleasure of making his father squirm. He spotted James through the window, seated at one of those high tables for two, dressed in a t-shirt that showed off his muscular arms. Dimitri almost envied his physique before he remembered such gains were the result of gym time, which he didn’t care for.
“Sorry I’m late,” he lied as he approached the table. A drink sat in front of his empty chair. “Did you order me something?”
James nodded. “Hope you don’t mind. Your mum said the chai latte’s your favorite.”
Dimitri’s face tried to betray him with a smile, but he scolded it back into aloofness. “Thanks.” He slid into the chair across from his stupidly handsome father, picked up his drink, and took a sip. Ah, liquid joy. Now began the stilted and awkward silence before one of them ventured to speak. Dimitri’s leg jiggled up and down nervously.
“How’s work going?” James asked.
“Fine. My favorite obaa-san tried to get me to meet her granddaughter, and I told her the only woman I was interested in marrying was her.”
“What did she say to that?”
“She laughed and told me to quit playing around.” Of all the regulars that came through Uwajimaya, Dimitri loved the old ladies best. Making them laugh was the singular goal of his work shifts. And if he didn’t think too hard about the psychology behind his desire to please older women for scraps of motherly affection, he could be perfectly happy with that. “She keeps asking me when I’m going to go to college. I don’t have the heart to tell her no college would want me.”
“I’ve been meaning to speak with you about that,” James said, wrapping his hands around his coffee cup. Dimitri tried to imagine those steady hands holding a scalpel, cutting through layers of flesh. “Have you considered getting your juvenile records sealed?”
He stared at him blankly. “That’s a thing people can do?”
“Of course. A colleague of mine has a son who went through something similar. They were able to file a motion with the court and he’s in his second year of uni now.” James looked a little embarrassed. “I took the liberty of doing some research. It’s been more than two years since your conviction, the fines are paid, and you’ve kept yourself out of trouble since.”
Dimitri grinned. “Have I?”
James closed his eyes as if to ward off a headache. “The police have not gotten wind of whatever trouble you’ve put yourself in.”
For the life of him, Dimitri could not get his leg to stop jiggling. His memories of the days following his heroin overdose were choppy. He remembered waking up at the hospital to the sight of his mother in the chair beside his bed, curled up in a ball so tight her knuckles were white. He remembered breaking down when his exhausted, rumpled father appeared in the doorway, fresh off a plane from London. He remembered needing to be sedated when his so-called girlfriend wouldn’t pick up the phone no matter how many times he called her. And he remembered refusing a visit from Sebastian and Luna because he didn’t want them to see him in the grip of his heroin withdrawals.
What came after that were lawyer consultations, court dates, apologies, rehab. His therapist, bless her heart, had tried her best to undo the years of damage that had been done to his mind. But Dimitri, too clever for his own good, had outwitted his doctors and gotten them to release him early, all so he could get home to his mother. His poor mother. She’d quit alcohol cold turkey after his overdose, and together the two of them had sat on the couch making murder-suicide pacts to keep themselves entertained through the worst of their cravings.
Dimitri had assumed his life was over, that the only way to stay sane would be to bury the boy genius with all his potential and find contentment in whatever part-time job he landed. He’d never gone searching for alternatives because it would have hurt too much to be told there was nothing he or anyone else could do for him.
But his father—his no-longer-cool, perpetually tired father—had never given up on his future. Or perhaps he was simply trying to take responsibility for his role in Dimitri’s self-destruction.
“Anyway, it’s just a thought,” James said. “If you don’t want to pursue it for whatever reason, you don’t have to.”
Dimitri had lost the habit of wanting. “I… do,” he said, so quietly he almost couldn’t hear himself over the café soundtrack. “I want to.” The child in him that had been hungry for knowledge, who’d reached for the world with grasping hands, stirred in his grave. “What do I have to do?”
~*~
Makoto sat on the couch writing when he came home. She looked up from her laptop, her glasses halfway down her nose. “Hey.”
Dimitri translated her greeting: How was coffee? Were you nice to your dad? “Shouldn’t you be asleep or something?” he asked.
“You calling me old? It’s not even eight.”
He walked into the kitchen and sniffed the air. Good, it smelled like ramen noodles. She’d remembered to eat. He washed the few dishes in the sink with his hands because he hated touching wet sponges, then joined his mother in the living room. The television was on low, set to an I Love Lucy rerun, and he watched in silence while the sound of his mother’s steady typing filled the space where conversation would have normally dwelled. “Did you know Star Trek owes its existence to Lucille Ball?” he asked after a while.
Makoto spared him a glance. “What did James say?”
“You can ask him next time you two go on a date behind me and Victoria’s backs.”
“We aren’t dating.”
“Fine, next time you two have sex behind me and Victoria’s backs.”
“Sass me one more time and see what happens.”
“Bring it on, grandma.” They glared at each other for a moment, then Dimitri broke out into a grin, and Makoto smirked back. “Dad’s going to help me get my juvenile record sealed. Your baby boy may live up to his full potential after all.”
His mother smiled down at her laptop. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
Dimitri’s heart ached for her. This wasn’t his redemption alone, it was his mother’s, too. His mother, who loved him more than anyone, and who’d failed him worse than anyone. If he could make something of his life after everything they’d been through together, then she’d be able to rest a little easier. And whatever he could do to make her happy, he’d do it, no matter how much it cost him.
When he retired to his bedroom a while later, he dug through the closet until he found an old folder containing his community college records. He’d earned thirty credits before dropping out, all of them general education courses. Would they transfer? Were they too old? If he got into a university, would he have to start over from zero? He didn’t know. He’d have to look it up.
He spent the next hour on his computer scrolling through the University of Washington’s website for answers. And then he spent another hour clicking through the School of Law’s page, reading everything he could about their program.
His mother may not have needed saving anymore, but there were plenty of dumb kids like him, like his dad’s coworker’s son, who needed someone to advocate for them when they were at their lowest. And if life was going to give him a second chance, he ought to use it to pay back the kindness he’d been shown when he least deserved it.
Author’s Note: Oh, the places this decision will take him (and everyone else).
Re: the author's note--
What do you mean? WHAT DO YOU MEAN? CARLAGETBACKHERE--!
This made me smile so much!!!!!!!!