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The pain becomes so unbearable, so intense that I clench my teeth and cut him off. “We’re not talking about this.”
“Why not? Dad, please. You gotta believe me.”
“Brian,” I warn.
“Please, just give me one good reason why we shouldn’t talk about this. I know you like her, Dad. I know that.”
“I don’t,” I clip.
“Stop lying, Dad. If you didn’t, you never would’ve called me and asked me to patch things up. I know how difficult I’ve made things for you. I know how hard it was for you to reach out to me after the way I acted. So I know. What I don’t know is why you’re resisting this. I know she’s there with you. She told me. Do this for me, Dad. You asked me to do something for you and I’m asking the same now.”
“Let it go, Brian.”
“I will,” Brian says urgently. “Just tell me why you dating her is such a bad idea. Just give me a reason.”
“Because she’s half my age,” I bite out. “Do you realize what that means? Because I’ve got a son her age. Because she’s still naïve and innocent and full of life. She talks about dreams and wishes and…”
And she saved me.
She fucking saved me from drinking when she had no reason to.
After the way I grew up with my drunk father, I’ve hated drinking. I’ve always considered it a liability, something I wouldn’t do. Something I promised myself that I wouldn’t ever put my son through.
But then, it became necessary. It became imperative to drown out everything that happened past summer. The guilt, the fact that my son hated me.
She saved me, though.
She came in and she saved me.
She saves people. She makes the world a better place. She dreams.
I don’t even remember the last time that I had a dream. I don’t remember my wishes or things that I wanted while I was growing up.
All I know is that my mother left when I was five and my dad was an alcoholic. All I know is that I took care of him and when I couldn’t and I needed a distraction, I played.
I played not because I wanted to or I loved it but because it took me out of the house.
It exhausted me so I didn’t feel lonely. I didn’t feel aimless or angry at having a father who drank and a mother who didn’t care enough to stay.
“Dad?”
Brian brings me out of my thoughts. “She deserves someone who’s good. You’re right. Someone who won’t hurt her. Someone who’ll give her whatever her romantic heart wants. I’m not that person. I’ve never been that person, all right. And I’m not starting now. She probably never even had a heartbreak and I have no interest in being her first. So drop it.”
I have no interest in making her cry and leaving her like the people in my life have left me. I’ve no interest in breaking her heart and making her a cynic like me.
I have no interest in taking on that burden. That blame.
I’ve got enough blame to deal with. I’ve committed enough crimes.
Brian says that he doesn’t mean any of the things he said. That he was angry, he wanted to hurt me.
The reason those things hurt me was because they were true. Every single one of them. Even that article was true.
They called me a pervert, a sick, twisted individual. A danger to society.
I am all of that.
Because two years and ten months ago, I saw a sixteen-year-old girl climbing out of her window and I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to look away.
It felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest.
Someone infected me and I lost my mind over her.
I’ve got a red dress on tonight.
And make-up.
It’s not much, really. Just some mascara and lipstick.
I’m not a dress girl or a make-up girl at all. In fact, I don’t even own a lot of dresses.
But I own this.
It’s red with flimsy spaghetti straps. It has frills along the hem that stops midthigh and along the neck that goes down to show a little bit of my cleavage.
I got it on my seventeenth birthday, a little present to myself. A dress in his favorite color.
I’ve hardly ever worn it, except for in the privacy of my room back in Connecticut.
When I was coming here, I didn’t know why I packed it. Or why I packed this little cherry-red lipstick and mascara.
You know what, scratch that.
I do know why.
I know why I packed these things.
I packed them because I love him. Because I was thinking about him and I was going to see him and even though I thought he hated me, I wanted to have this dress with me.
God, it’s so freeing to admit this.
To admit that I’m in love with him.
I’ve always, always been in love with him. Since the beginning. Since the very first moment. The very first sight.
