“So what’ll you say? You’ll help me?” He asks.
A pit in my stomach forms. I usually don’t have the money to help him so I’m about to tell him that, until I remember that Genevieve had Raul put the money she made in my account. So I have a little more than usual, but I was planning on using that money to take Genevieve out on a fancy date.
But now Genevieve’s gone.
So I guess I could help out my dad. It’s not like I’m going to be taking Genevieve out or anything, but I feel like an immense idiot for doing so.
I haven’t gotten paid just yet either so he will have to wait until I do get paid.
“When do you need the money?” I ask him.
“Tomorrow,” he says.
Shit. I don’t get paid until Friday, but I do have extra money in my savings for emergencies. I can always give it to him from there and then put the money right back once I get paid.
“Alright, I’ll see what I can do,” I tell him.
“You’re the best Aspen. I knew you wouldn’t let your old man down,” he says, then hangs up the phone.
I remove the phone from my ear and stare at the screen. Of course that’s all he wanted. He didn’t call to ask what I was up to, how my job’s going, nothing.
He never does.
I shouldn’t complain, I expected this.
He’s always disappointing my mom, Everest, and myself. Thank God my mom left him when she did. Even though she’s chasing men half her age, at least they treat her better than my dad ever did. She’s getting to go on vacation after vacation with all these milf chasers she finds. But when she was with my dad, she was in loads and loads of debt, unhappy all the time, and on the verge of becoming an alcoholic.
I’m glad he’s out of her life, but he won’t ever be out of mine. He’s my father, and I will always try to help him in any way I can.
Even if it puts me in debt.
I stare at my phone long after the call ends. He’s not the only one who needs a fix.
39
Genevieve
Every version of my father I’d had to bury inside me just to survive, it all came rushing back the second I saw him awake.
He blinked slowly, like he wasn’t sure if I was real.
And honestly? I wasn’t sure either.
Two years.
Two years of silence, two years of wondering if he was even alive, two years of holidays without his name mentioned or birthdays where I stared at my phone and pretended it didn’t matter that he never called.
No explanations. No apologies. Just… absence.
And now—this. A cold hospital room, machines humming softly in the background. His eyes finally open, bloodshot and tired, but open. His hand twitching weakly in mine.
I couldn’t breathe.
My feet were planted but my heart felt like it was pacing the room, slamming into every wall inside my chest. I thought of all the ways I’d imagined this moment—if it would even happen. Would I scream? Cry? Walk out the second I saw him?
Instead, I stood there frozen. A thousand words caught in my throat sharp as glass. All the hurt I’d buried all the questions I had trained myself not to ask. All the versions of him I’d had to let die inside me just to survive.
They were here now, sitting between us like ghosts.
