My drink was empty. I looked at the empty triangle shape glass with the bloated green olive in the bottom speared by that toothpick. I looked at it with disappointment. I thought I'd have another one.

Shawn was nice, nice to listen to me ramble. And with the one drink under my belt and another one on the way I didn't feel so bad about talking about it. Spilling the family secrets.

"I used to love to see him; Craig. When I was little he was my favorite person. And he was so great then. He'd play with me, with dolls and coloring and everything. He was never, and I mean never cruel, like older brothers can sometimes be. He wasn't. Of course we didn't live together then, like I told you. He lived with his dad and I lived with mine and our mother was dead. It was very fairy tale like,"

The new drinks arrived. Shawn's beer was in this tall glass, and I watched the tiny bubbles rise. Mine was in another triangle shaped glass with a fresh olive stuck through with a toothpick.

"He had moved to Toronto when I was five, him and his dad, and he'd come and see me at daycare or my babysitter's house or the park but he'd say it had to be a secret. I was five, I didn't question it, plus pretty much whatever he said was the gospel truth. But I let it slip, you know? I'd tell my dad things he said and of course my father figured it out, figured out I was seeing Craig. This was an issue because Craig's father didn't want him seeing us, and I know now that because he did his father ended up hurting him…and I know it isn't my fault, I know that. But when I was a kid I didn't. I blamed myself that Craig was getting hurt because I hadn't kept the secret,"

I sipped on my drink, watched Shawn's calm face as I told him this stuff. God, I'd nearly forgotten how I had internalized that hurt, how I had blamed myself for a long time for all the stuff Craig went through.

"It would make things so much simpler if as a kid you could just lay it all out to someone. Like if I could have told my dad how I felt and then he could have reassured me that it wasn't my fault. That Craig's dad was abusive, period. If it wasn't Craig seeing us he would have found some other reason to beat the shit out of him. But I couldn't just say it, I felt too bad about it. Yeah,"

These Martinis were strong. That was okay. I thought I needed to get blitzed. It was always hard for me when Craig came crashing back into my world.

"But I did do one thing right. After the day at the park, that night some of his friends came over telling my dad that Craig ran away and he tried to kill himself by getting hit by a train and that his father beat him. I remember my dad's face so well when he heard this. He looked puzzled and kind of disbelieving, and he tried to tell them that you can't make accusations like that. So then I told him what I saw, because I knew that they were right,"

I tapped my nails on the table top. Dragging up all this ancient history. I watched as Shawn's adam's apple bobbed up and down as he drank his beer. I watched the hanging lamps swing in the breeze created by people's movements.

"So then he moved in with us, which was great. But it was also, I don't know. It took some adjusting, I guess. And he was just real needy from the start. I mean, of course. He was this abused child, having nightmares and jumping at all the noises and flinching away from my dad. My dad would never hit him, of course, but Craig kind of acted like he thought he might. And I know that made my dad feel bad. He understood it, I know he did, but still. It's like if you take in this puppy that's been kicked and the puppy flinches away from you you feel bad even though you didn't do anything. It was like that. Like living with this injured animal. We loved him, we both did. But living with him was sort of a sacrifice, and I feel bad for even thinking that but it was true. He started to take away the attention I had always received from my dad, and I started to resent him for it before I even realized it,"

I smiled at Shawn, realizing that this was becoming the Angela monologues.

"Shit. I'm sorry. I'm doing all the talking," I said, and I felt the red blush creep up my cheeks. Shawn smiled back at me.

"That's okay," he said.