CHAPTER17
“You two broke up? Why?”he asks.
I carefully consider this, and finally, I mumble, “We’re both going through some shit, and instead of turning to one another, we’re not handling things all that well.”
“What shit?”
“He has his mommy issues, and I have daddy issues, and it’s just a big ordeal. Freud would have a field day with us.”
Ace chuckles. “Parents suck. Believe me. I know. If you ever meet my parents, you’ll see how hard my father rides me—”
“I so wouldn’t phrase it like that.” I smirk at him.
He groans. “Get your mind out of the gutter, woman,” he says gruffly. “You’ll also see just how fake my mother is. I swear she’s gone under the knife so many times that nothing about her is real anymore. Not even her emotions. She acts like she’s some kind of perfect suburban housewife or something. Everything is all peachy keen with her. She used to make these elaborate dinners all the time in the hopes my father would come home and notice her, but he was so often late, not coming home until eight, nine… and that’s if he came home. I would eat at seven, but she would wait for him. She ended up losing a lot of weight because if he wasn’t home by nine, she would put the food away for me to have for lunch, hoping my father would take some into work too so he could taste her cooking. She would usually have a salad then or maybe a bit of a liquid diet, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m sorry.”
“If she would just let herself feel… She acts like everything’s fine, that it’s normal. It’s not.”
“She knows,” I murmur. “She’s not a fool. What I don’t understand is why she keeps having surgeries. I always thought that guys who cheated would buy flowers, chocolates, jewelry…”
"Oh, Father buys all that shit for her, too, but the plastic surgery… I don't know if that was originally his idea or hers, but…" Ace rolls his eyes. "I have a feeling she's doing it in an effort to become the perfect woman for Father, so he'll stop straying."
“She’s trying to turn into his dream woman.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s only going to make her miserable.”
“Deep down, she probably already is.”
“That’s so depressing.”
Ace shrugs. “Yes, but nothing is worse than the holidays around them. God, is that the worst.”
“You aren’t thankful at Thanksgiving?”
“I would rather them just divorce, but my mother doesn’t work. She stays at home, and I don’t know if she could handle being a divorcee.”
“Really?”
“As for Father, I think he likes to keep up appearances, but it’s all bullshit. All of it. A farce. Half the time, my father has a business trip over Thanksgiving, only I doubt that if my mother would call his work that his coworkers would back that claim up.”
“He spends holidays with another woman?”
“Yep.”
“What about you?”
“I’m a disappointment, remember?”
“Your father is an idiot,” I say.
"So's my mother for thinking that she can keep him happy. Maybe he strays because he's unhappy, but I wonder if anyone can keep him happy. I think he probably bounces around from woman to woman, but I can't be sure. He told me once…" Ace wrinkles his nose. "He said that women are a dime a dozen, that they're only good for one thing, pleasuring a man."
“Your father sounds like a real winner. No offense.”
“I was eight when he told me that.”