“And then, my father died; cirrhosis, and that time finally came. I should’ve been ecstatic. I should’ve been happy. I mean, yeah it was devastating that my father died but by then, he was so checked out from the world that he was as good as dead for a long time anyway. But instead of being happy and relieved and ecstatic, I was something else. Do you want to know what I was?”
My tears are blurring my vision now. I didn’t think I’d start crying so easily, that I’d give up so quickly and my heart would force me to go to him.
But it’s happened.
He sounds so lost and sad that I almost want him to stop talking. That I want to wrap my arms around him and tell him that everything will be okay, but I don’t.
Because I think he needs this.
He needs to say all these things. So I stand here, glued to my spot as before, not because I want to be away from him but because I want him to get this out.
“What were you?” I whisper.
He swallows again and replies, “Terrified. I was terrified.”
Frowning, he pauses to gather all his thoughts. “I was scared that I was going to do the very thing that I wanted to do for the longest time: escape. I even had a scholarship for a college. And I wanted that scholarship. I worked hard for it. I wanted something that would take me away from the cabin, from my dad and when the time came for me to go, I was fucking shaking with fear.
“But then, Brian happened. I was terrified about that too, about taking care of a baby. I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know if I could do it. But I did. In fact, I threw myself into it, into taking care of my kid. I became everything he wanted me to be. Everything he needed and I did it happily like every other parent, I imagine. It was all about him, his homework, his practice, his friends, his school, his needs, his wants. Everything was about him. I became his father and nothing else. Until you. Until I saw you and something happened to me.”
My heart skips a beat when he says that.
Something happened to him…
You do something to me…
He said that too, and even then, my heart squeezed for him. Squeezed for that look of confusion I saw on his face.
He’s not confused now, just vulnerable and I breathe out, “What happened?”
He brings his hand to his chest, right where his heart is. I imagine him feeling his own heartbeats under his fingers.
I loved doing that. I loved feeling the beats of his heart whenever I slept with my head on his chest. It was soothing to me.
I hope it’s soothing to him too.
He needs that, in this moment.
And since I’m standing all the way over here, I want his heart to give him peace until the time comes for me to close the distance and do it myself.
“When I saw you, Violet, it felt like someone stabbed me in the chest,” he rasps.
My eyes go wide. “What?”
He chuckles; it’s brittle and thin. “Or at least, it felt like it. I saw you up on the roof, with your thick, gorgeous hair and your arms open wide, something got lodged inside my chest, just under my heart and for the longest time, it felt like a knife of some sort. Something that made me… different. It wasn’t that, though.”
“W-what was it?”
“My soul,” he whispers. “It was my soul waking up. The thing that keeps a man alive, came alive in me when I saw you. You woke up my soul, Violet.”
“I did?”
He nods. “Yeah. I’d watch you after that. I couldn’t help myself and I was angry about that, you know. I was angry about watching a girl half my age. I was angry that something was happening to me. I planted a fucking rose garden – something I hadn’t done in years – just to watch that girl. Just to have an excuse to look at her at night. God, I thought I was losing my mind.
“Suddenly, I started to feel things. I started to want things for myself. I started to crave and I was so used to not doing any of those things, I was so used to not wanting anything for myself that I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t know how to handle you. So I kept away from you. I kept away from you for so many reasons until I didn’t. Until the night of your eighteenth birthday.
“And then, everything happened and months later, you found me at my lowest. Jesus Christ, I wanted you to go away. You were so young. My son liked you. You made me feel things.”