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Shit.
Am I really going to beg her not to leave me alone?
“It’s the anniversary,” I say.
“Yeah,” she slumps back down. “I fucking know.”
Not of their deaths. They died on separate days, and that came later. No, what I mean is that it’s the five-year anniversary of the night they were taken away.
And, on a lesser, but equally important note, it was the same night I kissed Emilia for the very first time.
The only time.
It’s a shame, really, that the night our fathers were taken away was the first time we kissed. Now that memory is forever tainted with shame, sadness, and shock. I wonder if she ever thinks back to that night because I certainly do.
So much about it had been special and perfect.
She had been perfect.
“It seems like it was a lifetime ago,” she whispers.
“Do you remember the night it happened?”
“How could I forget?”
“I think about it every day.”
“They should have warned us,” she shakes her head. “I mean, I know why they didn’t. Nobody can give their embezzling secrets to their kid, but it would have been nice to have a heads-up, you know.”
“It would have been nice to know our worlds were going to change,” I agree quietly.
She looks at me sharply.
“You know, Gavin, I think you’ve forgotten that you aren’t the only person who lost something that night.”
She’s wrong.
I’m well aware that we both lost someone.
We both lost our dads, but I lost more than Emilia because my father lost his reputation. Her dad was a snake, a slime ball. I’m not going to say he deserved to die because that’s too shitty, even for me, but he wasn’t the angel she likes to think he was.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, I think I do.”
When I look at Emilia, I see something that wasn’t on her face before: resolve.
She’s resolved.
“Gavin, you’ve been shitting on me for five years now. Five years. That’s a long time to hate someone as deeply as you hate me.”
I want to open my mouth to tell her that she’s got me all wrong and that my actions are justified, but for some reason, I don’t.
“My dad went to prison with yours,” she says. “My dad made the choices that got him there, and he went down with your dad, but did you know that he tried to get your dad off?”
What.
The.
