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An office with a table that’s overrun with files. A cabinet that hardly organizes anything for him and a computer screen that he was squinting into because like me he can’t sleep either, until I interrupted him.
It’s a tiny place, much smaller than my father’s office, and Pete has had this as long as I’ve known him.
But this doesn’t suffocate me.
It doesn’t choke my breaths.
“Fuck no,” I spit out.
“And how’s that?” he asks, settling into his cheap leather chair that squeaks and is bad for his back. That I’ve told him a million times to replace. But he won’t.
It was a gift from Mimi.
He can be such a sucker.
I plow both my hands through my hair. “I don’t deserve it.”
“Well, that’s not your call to make now, is it?”
“It fucking should be.”
“But it’s not. You wronged her and she moved on. You need to move on too. That’s how it works. An apology, making it up to someone.”
My chest contracts. My fingers flex.
The fingers that touched her because she tempted me.
She wouldn’t let me keep my fucking hands to myself.
I’ve been aching, dying to touch her ever since she told me she was carrying my baby. I was fucking craving to touch her body, her belly that she so freely touches and every time she does, my blood heats up. My fingers hurt for not getting to touch her skin, the life inside of her.
And she fucking took advantage of that.
“What if…” I burst out but then trail off, pacing in his office.
“First, sit down. You’re giving me a headache. And second, what if what?”
I don’t.
I come to a halt though and grab the back of the chair in front of his desk. The chair that’s better than the one he’s sitting in but he won’t replace it because he still loves his dead wife.
What is with people and love?
Seriously though, why is it such a big deal?
“Thanks. But I’ll stand,” I tell him.
He studies my face before shaking his head. “You know what you are?”
“What?”
“A rabid dog.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Thanks, Pete. I feel much better now. I’m glad I came.”
“Good, because you are. You’re like a vicious wild animal that bites the hand that dares to pet you. Because that’s all you’ve ever known. Biting and snapping your teeth at the world. But as Mimi would say, it’s not your fault. It’s the world’s fault. Because the world has bitten you back.”
I clench my teeth. “Are we done here? Because I’ve got a fucking problem.”
“What is your problem, boy?”
“My problem, old man, is what if it happens again?”
“What happens again?”
I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I don’t even know why I came.
I don’t know why I keep coming to Pete whenever I’ve got a problem. I went to him when my father fucked her over two years ago. I went to him when I found out I fucked her over again and got her pregnant.
And I’m here tonight too.
He never helps.
But the thing is that I’ve got no place to go. And if that doesn’t burn, that the only place I can go to is a fucking garage and the only person I can talk to is a fucking old man who’s still in love with his wife and needs a beard trim, then I don’t know what will.
I swallow, curling my fingers into the chair. “What if she falls in love with me again?”
“Why’s loving you such a bad thing?”
“Aside from the fact that one time she did, and I broke her heart because I was too wrapped up in my shit?” I swallow, my throat feeling tight. “And then my father used her to get back at me. In case you didn’t know, my father is still alive. As much as I’d like to kill him, I’m not going to do that because that might also kill my mother. Who somehow still loves that sick fuck. So nothing’s changed. She needs to stay away from me, from us. From Jackson men. We don’t know a thing about love or being decent human beings.”
Pete stares at me for a moment, rubbing his bushy white moustache, before muttering, “You know why your father used her to get to you?”
“Because he’s a psychopath who only cares about what he wants and because he saw it as an opportunity.”
“Yes. But he’s also smart,” Pete tells me. “He was smart enough to know that you’d do anything for that girl. You’d give up soccer. You’d give up your scholarship, your whole plan of getting into the pros to stick it to him. He knew that.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So you’d give up your fucking soul for that girl. And your father knew that. So what does that tell you?”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “Why don’t you explain it to me?”
