He’s open and adventurous and friendly. He’s always been popular and well-adjusted with regular teenage concerns. It makes me feel that maybe I did do something right after all, giving him a normal environment to grow up in when I had no idea myself as to what a normal environment consisted of.
After that night, when he left to go live with one of his friends, I didn’t stop him. I figured he needed some time alone. I figured he needed some time away from me.
But it’s been almost a year and we still don’t talk. He still hates me. We barely keep in touch. Our form of communication is either texts or two-minute phone calls.
It’s okay, though. I deserve it all.
I deserve his hatred. His anger, his disgust.
For watching a girl half my age. For watching my son’s best friend, a teenage girl when I had no business to.
But more than that, I deserve it for watching a girl my son, my blood, my kid watched as well.
“You know how creepy this is? How perverted? Have you been watching her or something? She’s my age, Dad. You have a son her age. And you like her? You like Violet. Fantastic. Guess what, Dad, I like her too. She was special. She was fucking special. I was going to… I was going to ask her out before she moved away for college. I was finally gonna take a chance but you fucked it up. You ruined everything. So fuck you, Dad. Fuck. You.”
I take a long pull of whiskey when I hear my son’s words from ten months ago. When for the first time in my life, he looked at me with disgust, with horror, with fury.
I take another swallow of Jack Daniels and it goes down my throat burning, scorching me as my guilt does.
And now, she’s here.
I came here for you…
Goddamn it. Her soft voice makes me crazy.
She needs to leave. She needs to fucking leave. I’m going to make her leave.
No matter what.
I’m back to where I started.
At my car.
I walked for miles and miles and for hours and hours and I’m almost dead now. Almost but not quite.
I’ll die as soon as I open the door to my car and hit the seat though. I’ll die of exhaustion and hunger and cold.
Jesus Christ, it’s cold.
A second later, I practically fall on the seat, my legs giving out. I get rid of my disguise, my hobo, my headphones. I empty my pockets of the lollipop wrappers, littering them all on the floor.
I promise to clean it tomorrow.
But I can’t figure out if it’s tomorrow already and I should get on with the cleaning.
I’m in a daze and it’s still dark outside. So maybe not.
Maybe I can just rest my head on the wheel for a while. Just for a little while and then, I’ll go and find a motel, and figure out how to book a room without freaking out about talking to the receptionist.
“Okay… just… five seconds. Just five and then I’ll go…” I whisper and hug the wheel before closing my eyes.
The next thing I remember is a tap and it wakes me up with a jolt. Shrieking, I jump and bang my head against the headrest.
That’s when I realize it couldn’t have been a tap. It had to have been a bang because the face staring at me through the window belongs to a very angry, impatient man.
It belongs to the man who left me on the side of the road.
“Get out,” he clips when he knows he has my attention.
I frown at him, unable to understand how he got here and what he’s even saying.
Then I hear a bang on the roof. It’s not a huge bang but it’s enough to clear off my sleepy cobwebs, making me think that he just kinda smashed his fist on the roof of my car.
Yikes.
How can he make my car feel – a piece of heavy machinery – all puny and little, I’ll never know.
“Get out now.”
I don’t even wait to obey him. I get out.
“W-what are you doing here?”
He stares at me blank-faced. “You got luggage?”
“Yes.”
“In the trunk?”
“Yeah…”
“Open it.”
“Huh?”
He shoots me a look. “Just do it.”
He doesn’t wait to see if I’ve obeyed. He simply turns around and makes it to the back of my car in two steps. When I still haven’t popped the trunk, he throws me another impatient glance and I dive into my car to do his bidding.
It’s the sleep, I tell myself.
I’m sleepy and that’s why I’m acting like his slave girl. That’s the only reason.
Yeah, right.
Mr. Edwards grabs my luggage – a red suitcase – from my trunk and strides back to me. “Let’s go.”
“What?”
Again, he doesn’t explain, nor does he wait for me to see if I’m following him. He keeps walking, carrying my suitcase in his hand. He doesn’t even wheel it and I know it’s kinda heavy. Needless to say, it makes my entire body tingle that he’s carrying my heavy luggage like it contains air.