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“I came here to…”
It’s only then I can see the pain on his face.
The last time he was here the pain and the anger that he may have shown were hidden underneath that stupid hockey mask that was supposed to go with his ridiculous rabbit outfit.
But this time there is no mask. There are no filters. It’s just him and me and although I know he felt pain last time, partly because of the way I grabbed a hold of him but more so because of the fear of losing his daughter, I can see this time the pain is different.
“I came here to apologize,” he says. “If you have the time to hear me out.”
A million thoughts run through my head all at the same time. The first one I have is that he should be apologizing to his own flesh and blood first, but she’s asleep and we’re here now so I guess the time to do this is now.
If he manned up and came here to say his peace then I should give him that chance, no matter how he acted the last time. He is going to be my father-in-law soon, no matter how messed up that sounds.
“Have you spoken to Penelope?”
“No,” he says. “I came here to say it to her face. I want her to know this is real. I want her to look in my eyes and know I mean it.”
I nod.
“You know, Bishop…when I left here I was mad as hell. That’s no secret. But after I got home I tried to think of all the ways I could bury you in the Bayou where no one would ever find you. But you know what the problem was with each of my crazy plans I concocted? That I wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about and I’m not sure if I appreciate his honesty right now or if I should reconsider our friendship based on what he just said.
Not that I haven’t reconsidered it already.
For the strangest reason an old Chris Rock skit from a stand up comedy special jumps into my mind. It’s the one where he says, “If you haven’t contemplated murder…you ain’t been in love.” He adds some other lines and then continues, “If you haven’t bought a shovel, and a bag, and a rug to roll their ass up in…you ain’t been in love. If you haven’t practiced your alibi in front of the mirror…you ain’t been in love. And the only thing that stopped you from killing this motherfucker…was an episode of CSI.”
And I never understood that line because I was never fully invested in being in love, until her. Now I would absolutely never do anything to harm her. I can say with complete conviction that I wouldn’t. But if someone tried to harm her? Let’s just say that I wouldn’t not be contemplating any of the above because I take any disrespect to my woman much more seriously than I take a slight to myself. And I take those pretty damn seriously too.
But I think the reason that line jumped into my head is because in a completely messed up way it shows me one thing about Peter’s character that you don’t find much these days.
Yeah he may have dressed up in more shades of pastel than a man should be allowed to wear, and I consider one shade way too many. Yeah he may not be the biggest or toughest guy or even the best athlete. And I’m not even sure the guy can drive all that well, I mean he’s known to have trouble just staying in-between the lines when he gets excited when he’s having a conversation with a passenger.
But that’s the beauty of this.
He’d learn to shoot a gun straight if he perceived someone was doing something wrong to his family.
And family is absolutely everything.
“But then I spoke with Paula…or more accurately I listened to her. Listened as she spelled out the friendship the two of us have. And as angry as I was, and damn was I pissed off like you’ve never seen me, Paula knew what to say. She never said I should give you a pass because we’re buddies or anything like that. She appealed to reason, even in my emotional state. Because Paula knows I may have my flaws but if you can spell something out to me logically then there’s a damn good chance that it will make sense to me and I’ll be okay with it.”
He pauses and takes a deep breath before blowing it out.
“Well, when she told me how Penelope experienced first hand how I spoke about you and how much praise I laid on you that it was no wonder she looked at you in a favorable light. And then she reminded me that all the women back home always had a crush on you, and that it probably wasn’t just because we were in a small town with limited options. So that, and about a hundred other logical reasons she gave me over the next few hours started to calm me down a bit.
