AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The men cheered in the living room, making me roll my eyes. The cornbread had been slightly burned—not enough for the smell to permeate the entire house, but enough so that they should have smelled it in the living room.
"Get those and put them on the cooling rack." Mom was out of breath from her mini-run. She made her way over to a chair shoved against the wall and took a seat. "And then, make sure the greens are cooked all the way. Oh, and grab that pack of soda out of the pantry and put it in the fridge."
"Is something burning?" a voice asked far too late. I could feel the familiar thump of Dad's heavy steps on the floor. By the time he made his way into the room, I'd deposited the boxes on the table and removed the bread from the oven.
"Well, look who it is." Dad's voice was booming. He'd gained weight since I last saw him, making his already- round belly larger. His smile seemed welcoming enough, and the muscles in my lower back slightly relaxed at the sight of it.
I thought one or both of my parents were going to give me a hard time, or at least question my absence and semi-radio silence, but I forgot how much I took after them. Montgomerys didn't talk about things. We moved on. I used to hate that, but now, it almost felt like it was working in my favor.
"Did your mom show you that bag of clothes she kept for you?" he asked.
"I almost forgot." Mom gasped and got out of her seat to hurry to their room, as if the clothes were as urgent of a matter as the burning food.
"You still riding that bike?" Dad peered over my shoulder to get a look at my bike outside the window.
I nodded. "I am."
"Even to work?" Translation: that's a lot of riding, it makes me anxious.
"Even to work." I rearranged the pots and pans on the stove so everything would fit. A few almost fell over the edge, but my reflexes were enough to catch them in time.
"Huh." He opened the fridge and grabbed a soda, not even considering offering a hand. "I suppose that's nice. Must get a lot of practice."
"Yeah, guess you can say that." I didn't meet his gaze. The last time we spoke one-on-one, he'd asked for a couple hundred dollars, said it was for a course he wanted to take online. I found out from my brothers it was for a party he'd hosted at the house.
"What happens when it rains?" he wondered. "It rains all the time here."
"I wear a jacket."
"But there's wind."
"That does exist, yes." I bit back a harsher response.
He popped open his soda, ignoring his friends calling him back since the commercials were over. "What do you do when there’s lightning?"
"I order a rideshare," I said. "I'm almost thirty. I think I know how to get around the city safely."
Dad shrugged and held up a hand. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I was curious is all. I never knew how it worked."
Even back in the day, when he wasn't sober, Dad was always worried. He couldn't be a present parent, but that didn't negate him from being a worried one. Mom never made excuses for him, but early on, I learned to sympathize with him because of her.
She was the one to tell me Dad grew up in foster care. He never spoke of it on his own, and he even joked his existence was a mystery to himself. He had a new house and new family every few months. Each family was a different kind of challenge that made him wary of anyone not blood-related to him. Mom was his first exception. His high school sweetheart taught him how to mix paint and believe there was a reason behind existence. His struggle with sobriety happened soon after I was born, and it continued until I got accepted into the Art Center.
I didn't know sober Dad well. Alcoholic Dad wasn't exactly terrible. He was just never there if you needed him; always glassy eyed, giving nonsensical responses, and never answering texts while away. Still, both versions of him expressed huge amounts of anxiety over what his kids did.
He hated any kind of risk that couldn't be taken from the comfort of a plush living room chair, which made sense, since most of his risks had come in the form of a glass bottle.
My therapist said it'd be understandable if I hated him for letting me deal with Mom's hospitalization all alone, that no one would blame me for holding him at a distance, but no, I didn't hate him. I resented him. That was normal too, but when I talked about it, people were often confused by my reason. I resented him because he made me feel ashamed. I couldn't hack it for the family, at least not long term. So now, whenever I met his gaze, I was reminded of how inadequate I'd been, how I couldn't step up to the plate and hold things down long enough for him to get his shit together. It hadn't been my job, but it was. No one else was going to do it, so it was my job, and I screwed up and gave up.
The struggle to breathe rushed back. I was so consumed with it, I accidentally burned my wrist on the edge of a pan. I flinched, snatching my arm back.
"Careful, sweetheart." Dad took over, grabbing a pair of mitts to handle the pots.
I froze at the casual endearment. It was as much of a welcome-back hug as I'd get, and it was wholly unsatisfying. I shouldn't have wanted to cry, but the back of my throat hurt. The feeling was made worse when TJ came into the kitchen. If anyone could tell when I was about to cry, it was him.
"What's going on with you?" he mumbled around a low yawn.
"You were here this entire time?" I asked in a hard voice, trying to recover from my close brush with an emotional expression outside my usual sarcastic disapproval and disgruntled disappointment.
