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“I’d like you to make it better.” Acid burns in my throat. He keeps walking closer, hand grazing the top of one of my tables as he moves closer to me. “You talk to your father recently?” he asks, a smile playing on his lips, a thick eyebrow raised. This is a game for him.
A sick and twisted game to pull me into this shit.
My stomach drops.
New me might be putting myself first and saying fuck it to everyone else, but old me? She knows what this means.
And old me knows that no matter what new me tells herself, I can’t just ignore this problem.
“I can’t say I have,” I say, not giving him much of anything. Though it’s the truth. I haven’t heard from him. Stupid of me to assume that silence on his end meant his chaos wouldn’t be touching me any longer.
“Johnny, you need to leave or I’ll call the cops.” All joking, any hint of vague friendliness leaves his voice.
“You call the cops and it won’t end well for your daddy,” he says, and honestly, that should be the expected response.
Even more so, I should sayokay, do it. I should sayfine, he deserves it.I should tell Johnny and my father and the world at large that I’m done with this burden. This burden that I’ve wastedso damn muchof my life shouldering. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? When you spend so long taking care of someone, you don’t want to see all of your hard work go to waste.
And when you tie your self-worth to keeping someone out of trouble, it makes the way you see yourself—for better or worse—inherently tied to that person.
It might not have always been my job to take care of my dad, to shield Lilah from the messes he always got himself into, from the messes Mom left behind, but I made it that. I took it and never questioned a thing, never said no. It was wrong of my mom to ask me to help when I was that young. But I know to my soul she didn’t wantthisfor me. She never thought it would go this far.
And for that, I have no one to blame but myself.
“Johnny, please. Leave,” I say again, this time firmer, but internally I feel like Jell-O. Terrified. Quaking.
His smile has turned from teasing to sinister.
“What do you have for me, Lola?” I sigh, my eyes looking over my bakery, my small haven.
My dream.
“I have nothing. I built this place on loans and savings.I have nothing.”
“He’s gotta tab, Lola,” Johnny says.
I already knew this.
I already know the total.
You’d think those words, the acknowledgment of what I already knew, wouldn’t cut. You’d think that after all these years, I’d be numb to it.
I’m not. It still cuts, even more knowing my dad has a debt that he clearly expects me to settle.
I sigh, the feeling going bone-deep.
The exhaustion.
Anyone who has ever loved an addict knows that feeling too. The bone-deep exhaustion from life closing in on you.
“Not my problem, Johnny,” I say, trying to sound tough, trying to sound resolute.
“Unfortunately,bellissima, it is.”
“I didn’t make promises. I’m not in power. I don’t have access to anything.”
“He says you have the money.”
“My father has no concept of my or anyone’s financial situation. The money he thinks I have to dig him out ofyet another holewas spent to open this bakery.”
