That’s no excuse.
“Anyway, this is probably fucking depressing and the last thing that you expected when you asked me if I was okay.”
“It’s alright. You can tell me what you need to tell me.”
“Here I thought you were just with me for the multiple orgasms and the vague promise of waffles.”
“I’m here because from the second I saw you, and yes, I saw you in that coffee shop, I knew that I couldn’t not be here.”
Cason hesitated like that meant something to him, but he wasn’t exactly sure how to tell her, so he opted for silence instead. She left it that way, until he was comfortable continuing.
“The last time I saw him, he was tanked. I’d picked him up from some fucking bar at three in the morning and I was pissed. I just wanted to be a kid. I wanted to have a normal life. I’d lost my mom too, but he acted like he was completely alone in that. I told him I wasn’t going to haul him home again. That I wasn’t the parent. That it was supposed to be the other way around. Of course, he went off on me. He wasn’t usually violent when he was drunk, minus the tree fort incident, but he did like to say stupid shit. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he just needed to vent all the badness out of himself. I don’t know. He started telling me that I was good for nothing. A piece of shit. That he was never going to leave the company or any money to me because I’d just fuck it all up anyway. It would have been fine if he’d left it at that. I knew he didn’t actually mean much of it.”
“Still- that’s- that’s awful.”
Cason’s fingers stroked down her hair, smoothing the tangles out of the strands. “It’s alright. A lot of other people have it worse. And it wasn’t like that all the time. I’m not painting a very complete picture, telling you about all the bullshit.”
“Yes, you are. You’re giving him more credit than I feel like he deserves.”
“That may be. I just don’t want you to think he was a terrible man. He wasn’t. He was lost. Lost and fucked up by something that never should have happened. But it did. It tore out his soul.”
“But he still had you. He should have lived for you. Children shouldn’t have to parent their parents or go through any of that.”
“I knew kids at school that had it a lot worse. Anyway, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. The next time you come over here, I don’t expect a pity fuck. What I do expect is for you to lay down on the kitchen table and let me lick whipped cream off just about every single body part you own.”
It was obvious that he was trying to deflect and change the conversation. She let him, because she wasn’t going to push into all the open wounds and spread her own brand of salt in when he chose to open up to her, to let her in on his private pain, when he didn’t have to do any of it.
“Anyway, for the grand finale, since I can’t just leave that shit hanging like that… he started going off. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it. But then he just- was different. He looked at me and he was just gone… checked right out. Blank. Not drunk blank, like really blank. Like I truly meant nothing. He told me that he would exchange me for my mother in a heartbeat. That if he’d had the choice, he would have made it be me.”
“What the-”
“Yeah. Harsh. I know. Anyway, I didn’t take it well as a sixteen year old kid who was bitter and hurting and had enough already. I told him to go fuck himself, and no, not in uncertain terms. I threw the car keys at him and told him to drive himself home from now on, on the odd occasion he felt like being there. I said that I got why he felt like that, because I’d trade him in for my mother any day. Then I said that I felt like I’d be better off if he wasn’t around, because he was a shit father anyway, and I went inside. It was cold. Winter. The streets were icy. He got in the car. Tanked. Drove himself nine blocks from the house and crashed into a pole going seventy miles an hour in a thirty zone. Died on impact because he ejected out of the car.”
What Cason said wasn’t funny. What was funny was that Noemi felt like she’d just ejected through something and into something. It felt like her heart had ripped through her chest and landed on the floor. Gory, but true. It hurt. Her chest. Her body. All of her. Cason’s pain ate away at her like the cancer had at her own mother. She didn’t tell him that her mom had gone the same way. That her mom was dead. She didn’t tell him any of it, because it wasn’t what he needed to hear. She didn’t know what he needed to hear. She doubted she could form words past the lump the size of a fist choking her throat, making language impossible.