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“I say do what’s best for you. It’s paid off so I would go there, but that’s me. I didn’t experience what you did in that house.”
Derek Morgan takes our attention away for a couple minutes and then Jennifer turns toward me. She is tapping the wine glasses with her index finger.When I finally ask her what all the suspense is about, she blurts out that she met someone last night.
“He’s a firefighter, too. And before you ask, yes we had sex, but it feels like more than that. He texted me not even six hours after I left and asked if I wanted to see him again.”
I never thought the day would come where she would be interested in settling down.
“Aren’t you the same woman who once said you couldn’t understand how anyone would sign up to have sex with one person for the rest of their life?”
“Guilty as charged, but things change. If the sex is off the charts, then at least you are having good sex for the rest of your life.”
As she chuckles, my phone dings. Please be Theo. Please be him.
Theo: Sorry for not texting back sooner. Not in a great place right now. If you want to come over, I can explain why. I’ll order takeout.
I show my phone to Jennifer and she smiles. “Go! But take an UBER because you have already had almost three glasses of wine.”
She goes to the app and orders me one while I get my shoes on and throw my hair up into a ponytail. A relief washes over me receiving that text. It proves that our date isn’t the problem, something else is, and whatever it is, at least he will talk to me about it.
Going to a man’s house alone. Here goes nothing.
16
THEO
Hearing those words in my brain ever since talking to my uncle is haunting me. He’s dead. Why did he take his life? Was finding out that Nathan’s father killed himself the tipping point for him? Or was it me refusing to have any contact with him? I shouldn’t feel guilty about that decision, since he is the reason my life has been subpar until recently. His actions directly affected my life as a whole, and if he would have recognized what he was doing was wrong and stopped, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up in prison. He would have been able to attend my football games and graduation. Instead, I had no one.
I have hated the man for so long that I’m conflicted. Do I despise him? Yes. Did I want him dead? No. I never thought he would take his own life. This is dumbfounding.
I wrap my robe tight around my body and lay down on the couch. Beers are lined up across the coffee table and my lunch is still in the takeout container. There is no motivation to do anything right now. Why am I so upset about this? Twenty plus years and now I wonder what if I wrote him back? No, I don’t need to do that to myself. Things aren’t as black and white as they seem. No matter what, he abandoned me and left me with strangers. The what ifs don’t matter. They didn’t happen.
He never got to see the man I’ve become without him. Foster care helped me learn to be tough, but also how to survive. There were many times where I was abused, but if I said anything then I would be sent to another home and have to start all over. So I kept my mouth shut. As a kid, looking back, I should have never done that.
There are so many things that I could never forgive my father for, and being carted off to prison is one of them. Taking his own life is next. Why did he take the cowards way out? He should have faced his demons head on instead.
A knock on my door causes my eyes to fly open. I forgot about Felicity coming over. My brain has been pulling me into these sessions of rage about my father and everything else just fades away into the distance.
“Come in!” I scream, not moving off of the couch. “Thanks for coming.”
She’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but stumbles a bit as she shuts the door. “Anytime. What’s going on?”
Has she been drinking? Her eyes are glossed over and she’s extra smiley.
“So, after our date last night, I met up with Nathan for a drink. My father wrote him a letter.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Apparently my father is the reason Nathan’s dad killed himself.” I look at her. “Yeah, I know. I just found out myself.”
She looks around the living room. “From the looks of this place, something more is going on.”
As she walks into my kitchen and comes back with a trash bag, I begin to explain some of the details. “My father killed himself. He didn’t even have the fucking decency to face me or Nathan.”
“Maybe he was depressed. When was the last time you talked to him?” she asks, putting beer bottles into the bag.
“The day he went to prison.”
She stiffens. “You aren’t serious?”
