Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
I shouldn’t.
I know I shouldn’t.
But like a scab I can’t resist picking I do.
“Alright, if it’s so terrible, then why’d you do it to begin with?”
“Trapped!” he aggressively shouts. There’s no warning to him draping his arm around me as he explains at a much quieter volume, “See, what they do is, they get you while you’re young…young and dumb-”
“And full of cum,” Mike callously adds.
Dad barks out a laugh and nods in agreement. “Yeah! They get you when you’re young enough to think life is all about love and roses. Sunshine and sex, but really, they’re just laying down the groundwork for the day they tell you they’re knocked up, and all you can do is marry them because you’re an ‘honorable man’…We’re honorable men in this family.”
Obviously.
However, I feel maybe now is a good moment to steer this conversation towards what honorable means? And who exactly is he honoring? Mom by staying in a miserable, loveless fucking marriage? His children by forcing us to choke down bullshit rants like this? Himself by getting more time to rearrange and hide money away for the next half of his midlife crisis?
What really fucking sucks is now…now I feel like there’s an invisible noose around my neck, tightening with each passing breath. He’s not wrong in his guesses. I absolutely fucking pictured marriage with Pres someday being filled with morning blowjobs and bagels and buying her bubble bath shit to help her soak after a fucked up day. Classic Indiana Jones marathons and “making love” in the middle of the day or squeezing in a quick fuck the minute I walk through the door before we have to go meet my boss or her boss or someone’s boss for dinner. I wasn’t thinking dollar signs and diapers. Bills and bill collectors. Being broke and then somehow still getting broker.
Nervousness spreads its way throughout my entire system, “Is that how you really feel?”
“Look, son, don’t make the same mistakes we did.” Dad says in a stern voice. “Presley is a nice enough girl. Smart. Loyal. Far from ugly.”
My face unconsciously twitches a smirk.
“Dump her.”
“Dump her!?”
“Yeah, she’ll come back. Puppy sick chicks like that alwayyyssss come sniffin’ back around.”
He doesn’t pause for questions.
“You two can get back together way in the future. Way. Way. Way the fuck in the future. When you’ve both got jobs you hate and car payments you’re almost done payin’ off and your arguments will be about who has to sell their house for who. Cut that girl loose now and live a little.”
“Fuck that,” Mike laughs in an obnoxious fashion. “Live a lot.”
My eyes dive deep into my father’s bright blue stare – which he gave to all of us – reading a pain I’ve never seen before. Yeah. He’s a grade A asshole. I’ve seen disgust in his eyes for me since I was old enough to fucking crawl. I’ve seen disappointment and shame at social functions or every family gathering. Disgrace for me being the delinquent he just knew I would be when I came out of the womb. All of that, and I’ve never once saw an honest, heartfelt agony like the one I’m seeing now.
I fold my arms firmly across my chest and frantically search for the tiniest speck of light in the darkness of the alcohol that has consumed him. That has broken the dam of emotions I didn’t even know he was capable of having.
Fuck…
I can’t become him.
I don’t wanna become this.
“That was the dumbest fucking advice he’s ever given me.” I let the candy cigarette shake between my lips as I tug at my unruly hair, eyes still planted on the ground. “What kind of father says that to his son? What kind of father tells his son to give up the only thing that makes him happy in his whole goddamn life? What kind of father dumps his own emotional bitterness for his sheer existence on his very impressionable, slightly more insecure than he would ever admit, teenage son? The one he never tried to connect with before that moment? The one who took that sliver in time as his way of trying to build a bond that he swore would never fucking exist. What kind of father destroys his son's life in less than ten minutes like a fucked-up pizza delivery?”
“You gave her up.”
I ash the fake cigarette on the floor at the same time I sardonically snip, “You’re fucking quick, Doc.”
“Had you taken his advice before?”
For a brief moment, I shut my eyes again, the pretend drug that’s starting to feel all too real, rolling around my fingertips. Honesty bubbles in the back of my throat, burning my lymph nodes on its way up. I wanna shove that shit back down. Deny it the freedom it seeks. Keep denying me the freedom I know I don’t deserve, yet I quietly confess, “No.”