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Chapter One
Tracey
If I had a nickel for every time my teenage daughter told me I was ruining her life, I could retire tomorrow. While retiring at forty-four doesn’t exactly sound horrible, I would prefer it not happen at the expense of my relationship with my daughter. When I was my daughter’s age, my mother would have shown me exactly how she would destroymylife if I had dared speak to her the way Deja speaks to me.
I can’t really blame her. Deja’s sixteen, and her hormones are running wild. Her father had walked out of our lives with little more than a goodbye—that and the unwanted image of the secretary he was fucking behind my back.
I can’t tell Deja that, though. It’s my job to protect her, even if that means protecting her from the ugly sides of her own father. Even as she tries to stare me down from across the dining room table and blames me for all that was wrong in her life.
“You just don’t get it!” She rolls her eyes—another classic teenager move I can’t stand—and shakes her head. “If you weren’t such a horrible wife to Dad, he would still be here.”
“I prefer worthy woman to horrible wife,” I say dryly, not knowing what else I can say. In the last few months, she had called me every name under the sun. I let her. I continue to let her just so I know she’s still feeling something. “You might be mad at me, but you should still show me some respect. At least enough to not call me insulting names to my face.”
Her lip piercing twitches as she grits her teeth. The lip ring is new, another act of rebellion since her father left. He had called me, screaming bloody murder, the first time he saw her wearing it. I’d nearly given him a piece of my mind then and there, but he was still the father of our daughter. Keeping the peace for her sake was a weight only I seemed to carry.
"Deja, this act is getting old. Your father left, and there’s nothing either of us can do about it now. If he wanted to be here, he would be. I don’t know what you want me to say anymore.”
Tears glisten in her dark-brown eyes as she brushes her box braids off her shoulder to hang freely down her back. “I want you to call him and apologize. I want you to fix this.”
“I know you don’t want to hear this, honey, but there’s no fixing what went wrong between your father and me. We still love you, and that isn’t going to change, whether we’re still married or not.”
“This isn’t about me,” Deja says, shoving her chair back from the table and getting to her feet. “This is about what you did to drive Dad away. He wouldn’t even be with Britney if you asked him to come home.”
As I watch her blink the tears from her eyes, I can feel my heart tearing in two. There’s nothing I can say to ease the pain she’s feeling. Her whole world is falling apart, and she’s lashing out. I can understand that.
With Jake moving on, I’m missing the person I thought I would spend my life with. Though Deja is still mourning her father’s absence, I’m trying to pull myself together for her sake. I need to be the mother who supports her right now—not the mother who makes her life harder because I’m grieving the loss too.
I want to help her in any way I can, even though she doesn’t want it. I want to be the person she grieves with instead of the one she blames. If she needs to keep blaming me, though, I can be her personal punching bag.
Being the villain in her story still hurts, however.
“Deja, your dad and I have had our problems. All couples do. This time, there were some problems that we couldn’t overlook anymore. People grow up and they grow apart.”
She shakes her head, turning on her heel and heading to the back door. Her shoulders are stiff as she rips open the door before slamming it behind her. I stare down at the table, wondering where I’d gone wrong. In shielding her heart, I’m making her hate me. There’s no compromise with our situation, as much as I wish there were.
I wipe away the tears that have started to spill over and grab my phone, sending a message to Deja to tell her I love her. No sooner have I put the phone down than it starts ringing. My ex-husband’s name flashes on the screen, a new ache forming in my heart.
These days, Jake only calls me when he wants something. Most calls mean I have to go apologize to Deja on his behalf for his bailing on her yet again. Since he started sleeping with Britney, he has done nothing but forget that he has a daughter who needs him right now. Deja needs to know he still loves her despite moving on with his life. She needs to know her father is still there for her, even though he’s doesn’t give a fuck about showing her so.
“What do you want, Jake?” I ask as I answer the phone, skipping the pleasantries because I know my heart can’t take them.
“Why is Deja calling me and begging me to come pick her up?” The sounds of rock music and the voices of people singing along fill the background.
What the actual fuck?
I can’t believe he’s at a party instead of coming to get our daughter who’s desperate to see him. She’s calling him because she needs him, and he has the nerve to call and ask why.
Even though I keep our relationship civil for Deja’s sake, there are still days I consider cutting Jake out of our lives completely. If Deja didn’t idolize her dad, I would have done it already. All he does is disappoint her. And one of these days, I may just kill him for it.
“Because you left me picking up the pieces after you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants.”
“Well, I had to tell her I couldn’t tonight.”
Jake laughs on the other end of the line, hopefully in response to something someone else is saying. Surely he’s not so insensitive to think that what we’re discussing is funny. I want to leap through the phone and wring his neck. I want to demand he start acting like a better father. But I do neither of those things, simply because I can’t.
My hand clenches, nails digging into my skin. I take deep breaths, trying to compose myself before asking why he can’t be there for our daughter yet again.
“And why can’t you come get her?” My voice is tight as I stare daggers at the picture of us still hanging on the wall. That picture is long overdue for a trip to the curb on garbage day.
