Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
“Dad,” I said very carefully. “I think you’re the one that needs to seek medical attention. Possibly a psychologist would do you some good.”
“I would never…” he started, but I interrupted him. Something I’d never done, not ever. It was a for-sure way to make him mad. Very, very mad.
“I hope when you see me in a store, you keep walking,” I continued. “I hope one day, when I finally have a child, and I’m happy, that you see that happiness and realize that you aren’t a part of it.”
There was a moment of silence, and then he laughed.
“You can’t have a child with that fake illness of yours, if what you told me once was true,” he countered.
A child was my pipe dream.
I knew that having a baby would fuck with my POTS—and even my neurocardiogenic syncope—but I wanted a baby. One day, if I was ever in a stable relationship and my partner knew everything about me and wanted me anyway, I might bring it up to him. I might ask him if he was willing to practically hover over my every move for nine months.
I wanted to give my child something that I had never been able to have myself.
Though, logically, I knew that would be very hard to do. It’d be easier if I had a man that was willing to pull out all the stops for me. To put me first. To give me the world.
“Are you even listening to me?” my father snapped.
“From now on, don’t call me,” I said with certainty. “Don’t send me any letters. Don’t look at me when you see me in a restaurant. Don’t send your wife my way because I won’t respond. Don’t engage me at all. Act like I’m nothing more than a stranger on the street, since that’s what you’ve treated me like since the day I was born.”
“I raised you,” he said.
“You fed me. You clothed me. You did the bare minimum. But let me tell you something, Gus.” I refused to use his title anymore. From now on, he would be no more than “Gus” to me. “You barely did even the bare minimum. In fact, I think you stunted my emotional happiness every chance you got because deep inside, you don’t think anyone should be happy. I think that one day, you’re going to wake up and need me, and I won’t give you the time of day. Because I’m letting it all go. I’m letting you go. You are no longer anything to me more than a memory. A joke that wasn’t even funny.”
I hung up, then I blocked his number. I blocked their house number. I blocked my stepmother’s number.
And for good measure, I blocked his work number.
Granted, it might actually call one day and be someone that wasn’t him—him working for one of the largest shipping companies in the world meant that anytime he called me from his work, it showed up as a generic shipping number company-wide—but I’d take that chance.
I’d miss any package as long as it came with never hearing from my so-called “father” again.
And a thought occurred to me in that moment as I stared down at my hairbrush that I’d put down sometime in the middle of my phone call with my fath— Gus.
All this time, had Aodhan thought that I’d never called him? Had he thought that I’d just left, never to be heard from again, and hadn’t taken a single glance back?
Had I inadvertently made it to where he thought that he wasn’t good enough? Had I made him think that, after all our time together, that he wasn’t worth fighting for?
Did he know what it meant that my phone had been blocked from calling him? Did he know that I would’ve never given him up? That I would’ve stayed in touch? That I would’ve come back way sooner than I had, had I known that he hadn’t blocked me?
Had I known that he would’ve welcomed me with open arms, I would’ve come back, and I would’ve known that deep down, he was putting on a brave face. That he was hiding the fact that he never wanted to let me go.
I deflated.
I had let him go.
I hadn’t fought for him at all.
“Okay,” I said to myself in the mirror. “You’re going to stop acting like this is about to end at any second. You’re going to convince him that this time, he’s good enough. This time, you’re going to stay, and you’re not ever going to leave. You’re going to grab him by the proverbial horns and tell him that he’s the one for you. And y’all should give this a try.”
“Are you done in there?” Folsom asked from the other side of the door.
My eye twitched. Did it surprise me that she was inside a house she’d never been to before? No.