Carl climbs through the living room window around 3 a.m. when the house is asleep and Rick is half-drunk on whiskey.
"Carl?"
Carl freezes momentarily before his timid voice shatters the silence. "Dad? What're you doing up?"
"I oughta be askin' you the same thing." Rick sets the glass on the counter and moves toward Carl. As he gets closer, he can tell the kid is stoned. The stench of marijuana smoke has seeped into his clothes and his hair. Carl's head is down, and Rick is sure that if it wasn't he'd be able to see the glazed pink of his eyes. "Who were you smoking with?"
Carl opens his mouth as though to protest but thinks better of it. "Nobody. Just some kids from school."
"I want names."
Carl swallows thickly. He still hasn't looked at Rick. "Ron. Ron Anderson."
"You hate Ron."
Ron is Carl's "archnemesis" (as Carl so aptly puts it) on the King County High School baseball team, the Saviors. Both boys pitch for the team, so naturally this puts them in a bit of competition with each other.
Carl shrugs, looking guilty. "He's okay."
Rick tilts his head. "Are you protecting someone?"
"No, I just—"
"How many times have you done this?" Because if it hadn't been for the nightmare, Rick wouldn't even be down here.
"Just tonight, I swear."
Rick could press that but chooses not to. "Who else were you with?" He knows forbidding Carl from hanging out with someone is almost impossible to enforce and dangerous at best. There's no better way to make your kid do something than to tell them not to do it. But Rick would like to know for his own sake, so he can scowl menacingly at this mystery kid whenever he sees them.
Carl digs the toe of his left shoe into the carpet. He seems to understand there's not much use in lying. Rick's experience as the town sheriff has taught him how to sniff out lies like a bloodhound, but it also helps that fifteen-year-olds are not the best liars. "Her name is Enid."
A girl? Rick's both surprised and not. Teenage boys will do stupid things to fit in with their peers and impossibly stupid things to impress girls. The same holds true, Rick has learned, for grown-ass men.
Rick scrubs a hand through his unkempt hair and paces the floor. What would Lori do, he wonders. A thousand possibilities race through his mind. Should he forbid Carl from seeing Enid and experimenting with drugs, a surefire recipe for Carl to do exactly that? Should he play the role of the Cool Dad and say it's okay for Carl to smoke as long as he does it with parental supervision? Should he suggest Carl switch to booze instead?
His eyelids grow heavy, the whiskey beginning to sing its lullaby. Rick rubs his face. "You know you shouldn't mess around with that stuff."
Carl scoffs. "You're gonna give me the drugs talk, Captain Jack?"
Okay, so Rick hasn't been the best role model lately. That's on him. "You're on house arrest for two weeks."
Carl makes an exasperated noise.
"Wanna make it three?"
"No..."
"Alright. Go upstairs and go to bed."
Carl obeys, trudging up the stairs like a death row prisoner on his way to the chair. Rick watches him go, adds an awkward, "I love you," because he knows too well that the last words you say to someone can indeed be the last. He hears Carl's bedroom door slam shut and hopes the sound didn't wake Judith.
Rick listens, waits. Silence.
He heads back into the kitchen to take one last slug of whiskey from the bottle. He doesn't want to chance falling back asleep to that horrible memory, the nightmare that tore through his head and blasted him awake in a cold sweat.
As the bitter liquid coats Rick's throat, he wonders if Carl's experimentation with pot goes beyond typical teenage curiosity. Does Carl get the nightmares too? Rick wonders how bad they must be—his own dreams have Carl's beat, no contest; there are few things as scarring as being called to the scene of your wife's fatal car wreck—but Carl was thirteen when Lori died. The loss, the grief, the void where Lori once was could have fucked Carl up pretty badly.
Rick climbs the stairs and settles into bed—the bed he shared with Lori. The alcohol doesn't keep the thoughts at bay, but it does lull him into sleep, and his subconscious takes care of the rest.
In the morning, Rick drags himself out of bed and knocks on Carl's bedroom door. When Carl doesn't answer, panic grips in Rick's chest, and he swings the door open.
"What?" Carl groans, lying in bed and pulling the covers over his head.
"It's time to get up."
"Just five more minutes?"
"Did you forget about last night?" Rick says in his Serious Sheriff voice. "Get up. Now."
Rick can hear Carl's sullen grumbles even as he heads down to Judith's room. Three-year-old Judith is much easier to rouse from sleep than Carl. Rick reaches into the bed, picks her up, rests her weight against his chest. "Good morning, sunshine," he murmurs, making her giggle. "At least you're happy to see me."
Rick fixes a bowl of Cheerios for Judith once they get into the kitchen. He's preparing bacon and scrambled eggs when Carl finally comes downstairs. Carl doesn't speak; the only indications he's in the room are the soft smacks of his feet against the tile floor and the slide of his chair as he pulls it out from the table. He's probably embarrassed about being caught last night and angry at Rick for punishing him.
Rick tries to mend fences while they eat. "Is everything... okay?" he asks, treading awkward emotional territory. "I mean, if there's somethin' goin' on, you know you can talk to me, right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," Carl says. His dark hair hangs over his eyes.
"If you want, you can talk to Denise. She can't tell anyone."
Rick saw a shrink, Dr. Denise Cloyd, after Lori's death, mostly for the anti-depressants. But it had helped to talk about things, especially in the beginning when the pain was so raw, like a wound he never wanted anyone to touch.
Carl shakes his head. "I'm fine, Dad," he insists with a bit more emotion. "It's just—it's nothing."
"Sounds like somethin'."
Carl pushes around the food on his plate, deliberating whether or not to continue. He scowls as he says, "I'm not starting tonight's game."
Rick blinks. "Because of me?"
When Carl played in little league, he wanted his dad in the stands cheering him on. Now he's probably embarrassed when Rick shows up. It's not like Rick is one of those sports dads who gets into drunken fistfights with the other parents. But ever since Lori died, Rick has lost control of the internal valve that filters his thoughts from becoming words. On multiple occasions he has shut down overbearing, loud, and drunk fathers with a few choice words, or even just a look.
This, however, makes him somewhat of a liability for Carl.
"No, 'cause Coach Negan's a douchebag."
"Language."
Carl rolls his eyes, shaking his head like he doesn't know why he bothered to have this conversation if Rick's going to nitpick semantics. "Whatever. He's a jerk. He hasn't put me in the last two games, and he won't do it tonight. But he'll put stupid Ron in."
"You want me to have a word with your coach?"
"God, no, that's embarrassing. Everyone'll make fun of me."
"I can do it in private. Your teammates don't have to know."
Carl scoffs. "Everyone knows everything sooner or later. Remember when Ron's dad went to jail?"
Rick remembers, because it was prison, not just jail, and he made the arrest. Pete Anderson had beaten the hell out of some poor bastard in a barfight and earned himself five years in prison for the assault and the cocaine Rick found on him while shoving him into the squad car. It was all anyone in town could talk about for weeks.
"Alright, if you want me to stay out of it, I'll stay out of it."
Rick doesn't stay out of it. He sits in the stands at the high school baseball field alongside Jessie Anderson, mother of Ron and wife of jailbird Pete. Jessie is small and blonde and perky and flirts a little too hard with Rick since her husband went to prison two months ago. She's always been somewhat flirty with Rick after Lori passed, but in a harmless, tender way. But now there's a bit of pointed invitation to her smiles and casual touches.
She has a triskele tattoo on her left shoulder, which Rick only sees because she's wearing a tanktop. Her skin, despite being showcased almost every time Rick sees her, is pale white like a porcelain doll. It's entirely possible Coach Negan put Jessie's son on the mound so she would show up to the game.
"How are you doing?" Jessie asks during the top of the fourth inning.
Rick knows Jessie would just love it if he fell apart in front of her so she could comfort him, but he's past that stage. There's an emptiness in his chest now where Lori used to be, a dull ache that occasionally needs to be satisfied with Jack Daniel's.
"I'm fine," Rick says, which is what people say when they are absolutely not fine. But Rick is fine, for the most part. Sometimes he wakes up wishing someone were there with him, which Denise told him is completely normal.
Beside Jessie is her ten-year-old son, Sam, who whines, "I'm bored," and slumps against her like a bag of peat moss.
Jessie strokes his hair. "Shh, baby, we're gonna watch your brother play." She looks at Rick and gives him a smile as if to say, 'Kids, right?' Rick smiles back, albeit awkwardly.
"But baseball is boring," Sam complains.
Rick exhales a tiny laugh. High school baseball isn't the best example of the emotional heights of the game, and it's hard to get too invested in the major-league season when your local team has been consistently mediocre for the last fifteen years or so.
"I know, sweetie," Jessie's saying, "but it's important to Ron."
True to Carl's words, Ron is the Saviors' starting pitcher against the opposing team, the Wolves. Rick secretly hopes Ron will fail hard and force Coach Negan to put Carl in as a relief pitcher, give the kid a chance to hold the Wolves at bay and demonstrate his skills.
But Ron doesn't crash and burn. He almost pitches a no-hitter until one kid gets a piece of the ball and knocks it into left field. Rick watches the Saviors' dugout. Carl's leaning against the fence, looking bored and angry at the world. Which is the usual expression for a teenager, so Rick doesn't read too much into it.
Then some other kid starts throwing in the bullpen, and Rick's heart sinks. Ron is taken off the mound in the sixth inning after some of the Wolves started hitting off him.
No longer interested in the game now that her son has been retired, Jessie turns to Rick. "Are you having better luck than me?"
Rick feels like he's walked into a movie fifteen minutes late. "What?"
"With the kids, I mean. Now that you're..." She's struggling to find a nice way to say 'alone' and coming up short. "Like me."
Sweetheart, I'm nothing like you, Rick wants to say, but he knows enough to keep his mouth shut this time.
"I mean, I know juggling two kids and work and everything can be hard, and, God, Judith isn't even in school yet, how do you—"
Rick shrugs, cuts her off. "I manage, I guess. Carol helps out a lot. She watches Judith when I can't."
Rick's next-door neighbor, Carol Peletier, has lived alongside the Grimes family since they moved in. An older woman with short, greying hair, she invokes images of homemade cookies and snuggly sweaters. In the weeks after Lori died, Carol would drop off casseroles and meatloaves for dinner, anticipating Rick's complete helplessness in the wake of tragedy.
Jessie smiles. "That's great. I'm glad you've got somebody." She runs a hand through her hair. "Is there anything you need? I could bring over some dinner once or twice a week, take that off your plate."
"You don't have to do that." As a byproduct of Rick's incompetence in the kitchen, he and Carl know their pizza delivery guy on a first-name basis. His name is Glenn, and Rick's tips have probably single-handedly paid for his college tuition. "We're okay. Honest."
Jessie tries another smile but it falls flat. Rick realizes she may have been trying to arrange a date-like sort of thing with him. How is he so oblivious to female attention? He notices the lingering touches, the nervous smiles, the quick eye-contact, but it doesn't register in his brain as attraction. He assumes it's all symptomatic of pity for him, and there might be some of that there, but it's been two years and maybe these women assume he's fair game now, that his grief has been tapped like a keg and he's back on the market.
Except he still wears his wedding ring, mostly to ward off this sort of thing like a crucifix against vampires feeding off his mourning and assumed male helplessness.
Rick wants to apologize for brushing her off, but that would be a tacit acknowledgement that Jessie was trying to make a move, and he doesn't want to make her uncomfortable, so he doesn't.
After the game, Rick finds Coach Negan loitering near the home team dugout. Negan is big and broad, with salt-and-pepper facial hair, and thick forearms hidden beneath the sleeves of his leather jacket. Who the fuck wears a leather jacket in the Georgia heat, Rick wonders. He looks pretty much the opposite of what you'd expect a high school baseball coach to look like.
Negan has a baseball bat slung over one shoulder while he whistles a tune Rick vaguely recognizes but can't place. He turns at the sound of Rick's footsteps. His dark eyebrows shoot up as a sinister grin cuts across his face like a knife. Rick opens his mouth to introduce himself, but Negan stops him.
"No, no, let me guess," he says, his voice gravelly with a hint of a drawl. He points the barrel of the bat at Rick and says, "You're Carl Grimes' dad."
Rick isn't surprised. Small towns and all that. "Sheriff Rick Grimes." He nods and offers a hand. Negan shakes, because that's what you do.
"Well, Sheriff, what can I do for you?" Negan says the word with a little attitude, and Rick feels a twitch of annoyance.
"I was just wondering why Carl hasn't been put in the last couple games," Rick says with a shrug, playing casual.
"How do I put this tactfully?" Negan scratches his chin. "Your kid sucks. I could time his fastball with a calendar."
Rick wants to jump to Carl's defense, but maybe Negan's right. And that's a startling thought for a parent to have, that their child might be terrible at something they love.
"He's part of the team," Rick says. "He should get to play."
Negan chuckles, his grin widening. "I'm coaching teenagers here, Rick, not kindergarteners. If a kid plays well and earns for me, I put him in. If he doesn't, he warms the bench." Negan likes to gesture while he talks, and as he does the bat moves with him, as though part of his body. Rick feels oddly on edge, like Negan's waving around a loaded gun. "What are you, one of those touchy-feely daddies who thinks no one should get their feelings hurt? No one should win or lose? Hell, maybe we shouldn't even keep score."
Carl was right about this guy. Major douchebag.
Negan tilts his head, giving Rick a curious look. "This," he says, gesturing with his bat to the field, "is my domain. Now, you seem like a smart guy, Sheriff, so you tell me: would you send a dopey, uncoordinated cadet to do the work of a hardened officer?"
"They're just kids," Rick reminds him, struggling to keep his tone even. "Not cops."
"Well, I'm not an English teacher, so excuse the shit out of my piss-poor metaphor or simile or whatever."
In his time on the force, Rick has dealt with plenty of back-talk and disrespect—it comes with the job—but something about Negan irritates him far beyond the angry tirades of the raving offenders he's handcuffed and put away. Maybe because Negan's so goddamn smirky while he talks. Maybe it's the ridiculous leather jacket, or the way he wields the bat like an extension of himself, or the way he sizes Rick up and decides, yeah, he could take him.
Negan's smirking at him, and Rick wants to punch him right in his stupidly-white, perfect teeth.
Don't make things worse for Carl, Lori reminds him, as though she's watching him from the afterlife and feels personally responsible for the dumb-ass decisions he makes in her absence.
Rick's fists clench at his sides. "Just let Carl play next time."
"Or what? You gonna arrest me, Sheriff?" Negan points the barrel of the bat at Rick again, poking him in the chest.
A hot band of rage tightens in Rick's belly. He looks at the bat, then looks at Negan. Is this fucking guy for real? If Rick were wearing his sheriff's uniform, if he wasn't dressed like a suburban dad, would Negan still goad him like this?
Probably. Big guys like Negan think they're hot shit.
"Give me a reason," Rick almost growls.
Negan sees something in Rick's eyes and backs off, that shit-eating grin still plastered on his mouth. "Wow. You do not scare easy. I like that."
Rick just glares at him, unmoving.
Negan chuckles and rests his bat against his shoulder. "See you next week, Rick." He turns on his heel and walks away, whistling a jaunty tune.
Rick's pretty sure he hates everything about Coach Negan.
