Old Man: Part I - Can't Tell Me Nothin'

Sometime Middle of 2023 2nd Floor of the Chandelier Bar Cosmo Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, NV

"You couldn't have picked some place a little quieter than this?" Lindsay Troy took a seat surrounded by the lavender sparkle of the massive bar in the middle of The Cosmopolitan.

"It’s the extremely public nature of this place that’s gonna be the only thing that keeps me from completely snapping." Matt Ward didn't look up from the double pour of blanco tequila he held so tightly that he half-expected the glass to shatter. "Even then... no promises."

A frown flashed across Lindsay’s face as she set her phone and keys atop the table. "Probably shouldn’t bother asking what you want to talk about, then.”

"You have no right to train my daughter."

"Matty," Troy sighed and waved off the server who'd wandered over to take her drink order. "We’ve talked about this. Georgie is eighteen. It has nothing to do with 'rights' and who has what."

"You know I don't want her wrestling."

"I do. You’ve made that perfectly clear on more than one occasion. But she’s an adult now and can make her own decisions."

"She's just a kid."

Lindsay took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Matt’s eldest child following in her father’s footsteps had become a very sore subject between the two of them, and it seemed like every time they talked, the conversation got a little more heated.

"I know you still think of her as a kid, Matt, but she came to me because you brushed her off,” she finally said after a moment. “And look, you know this isn’t the way I would have done it, diving off in the middle of the night like she did, but that’s what happened, and that’s where we’re at now.” She leaned forward and cocked an eyebrow at her long-time friend. "You're lucky she came to me, to someone she knows. I made her finish high school; not everyone would have. I'm making sure she's safe and that she's training with the best people on the planet."

"You had NO RIGHT!" Matt slammed his fist against the table hard enough to make Lindsay jump and to splash a bit of Ocho up and over the lip of his glass. For a moment, the two sat in silence, a couple dozen patrons of the bar side-eying them, the exact attention he needed to force things under control.

"Have you called her?” Lindsay finally asked.

"A couple dozen times."

"An..."

"And she doesn't answer."

More silence.

"I know she’s working part time when she’s not training, and…well, she probably needs a little time." Troy grabbed a small cocktail napkin and sopped up the spill that had pooled in the middle of the table. "I’ll talk to her. Why don’t you stop by TCS while you’re here in town? You know you’re always welcome."

"I think the days of you and I being 'welcomed' are over." Matt stood from the table and pointed towards the remnants of his tequila. "This conversation probably isn't going anywhere useful. Get yourself whatever you're drinking these days and put it on my tab. I need to catch a flight home tonight."

Matt headed across the floor of the Chandelier, ready to leave everything Vegas behind, but Lindsay’s voice briefly pulled his attention back to the table.

"Say hi to Mary and the kids for me."

"Sure."

*****

A Decade and a Half Ago Ohio

"Georgie, can you please finish eating your pasta. You ain't gettin' any ice cream until you eat more than two bites of your dinner."

"It's too hot!"

"Baby girl, its been on your plate for twenty minutes." Matt rubbed the wrinkles of his forehead in frustration. "I doubt its even still warm."

"I'm not hungry."

"Then no ice cr..."

"For pasta." Georgie glared at her father, "I don't like pasta."

"Dad," Matt looked across his parents’ hand-carved dining table, "Little help here?"

Matt's father, Dean, chuckled and looked at his granddaughter with a soft smile. "Hey, pumpkin, Papaw has a big pint of mint chocolate chip in the freezer than i really need some help eating. But we gotta eat our pasta first."

"Why, Papaw?"

"Carb loading." Papaw smirked, "Pasta is energy and we're gonna need a bunch of energy to get through all that ice cream!"

"Ok." Georgie picked up her fork and stabbed at a couple of noodles.

Matt looked at his daughter, then to his father. "I dunno how you do it. She's so damn stubborn. I can't make her listen to me for nothin'."

"5 Year olds can be that way. You'll figure it out with time and practice."

As Georgie continued eating her pasta, Matt's mother started clearing the table, and his father nodded toward the front door, his go-to move whenever he wanted to talk on the porch. The two men excused themselves from the table and headed across the foyer and out onto the front porch.

"Ok, what's goin’ on, Dad. I don't reckon your about to tell me you don't actually have any mint chip."

"The cancer has spread. Not just in the prostate anymore."

"Where?" Matt leaned across the railing of the porch and stared aimlessly at brown spot in the front yard.

"I dunno. Hard to understand the doctor's sometimes. I guess sorta just in the general area right now. It’ll go the hip soon, they said. Or maybe the spine.”

“What’s next?”

“Enjoy whatever times left.”

“Is that a couple months? Couple years? Couple decades?”

“Matthew,” Dean shook his head as he answered, “cancer or no cancer, I ain’t got two decades in me. I’m probably looking at a year, maybe two.”

“I dunno what to say, Dad.”

“C’mon” Dean gave his son a pat on the back. “Lets go see if Georgie finished that pasta yet. I’m hungry, and given recent news, I think my granddaughter and I are absolutely gonna eat ice cream till we explode.”

“I might not be able to to tell you what to do, but no way Georgie's eating that much ice cream.”

“Bud” Dean laughed as they headed back in the house, “you can’t tell that girl what to do either.”