AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1
Dillon
Taking a deep breath, I walked towards my father’s building. Each step echoed my thumping heartbeats. After years of neglect and abandonment, I was confronting him. I wanted answers, and a tiny, fragile part of me needed an apology.
The graffiti-filled, three-story brick building loomed in front of me. Holding my breath, I entered the narrow alley. Spilling into the backyard, I found the emergency exit.
To my surprise, pushing on it, I found that it had already been pried open. So, using the weight of my slender body, I leaned on it and forced my way in.
How many childhood hours had I spent staring into my father’s window from across the street? Were the people I sometimes saw inside his family? Were they who he had chosen over me and my mom?
Navigating up the damp, stained, concrete stairwell, I exited onto the top floor. Like the retail space at ground level, it looked empty. With dingy peeling wallpaper everywhere else, the only sign of life was the brightly painted door at the end of the hall.
Taking a moment to wipe my sweaty palms against my jeans, I steeled myself. Approaching it, the dull thud of my knock vibrated off the walls. Each echo was a gut punch.
Quickly, the door opened with a creak. On the other side was a pale figure, doused in the sterile glow of light spilling from behind him. This was my father. I had never seen him up close before.
When he recognized me, his eyes bored into me.
“You,” he gritted out.
I saw no reflection of myself in the man standing in front of me. My refined features that guys had so often complemented me on were broken curves on him. My mixed-race caramel complexion didn’t hint to his fair-skin. And the unruly curls that defined my profile, lay dark, straight, and flat on his head.
Despite that, I knew who this man was. I had been told many times by my mother. It was time for him to say it too.
“Yeah, it’s me. Your son.”
The words came out steadier than I anticipated. Each syllable brimmed with my years of pain, years of yearning for acknowledgment that never came.
Walking the streets of my old neighborhood, I looked up at the once-familiar buildings. This was Brownsville, Brooklyn, a place that was once home and now seemed so alien. I glared at the streetlights that pierced the inky darkness of the late-night. It cast eerie, elongated shadows that seemed to follow me.
As I walked, my stomach churned. I shivered as a cold wind slithered its way down my collar. Goosebumps pricked my skin.
Why was I here? It was miles from my college apartment in New Jersey. And having moved from Brownsville during middle school, everyone walking the streets were strangers. The only person I knew who still lived here was,
“My father…” I muttered to myself.
That’s right. I had come to finally confront the man I never knew. I had a plan for how I would pry open the emergency exit of his almost abandoned building and knock on his door. How could I have forgotten that?
Pivoting on the balls of my feet, I gritted my teeth and set my gaze on the bland three-story building that lay two blocks away. The ugly façade of my father’s apartment building gnawed at me as the reality of my impending confrontation set in.
My heart hammered in my chest. Sweat broke out on my palms as I neared the familiar but loathsome structure. It might’ve been an eyesore to everyone else, but for me, it was a symbol of the ignorance and indifference of the man who lived there.
Lifting my gaze, I spotted the glow of his lit apartment window. It pulled at old, familiar strings in my heart; a reminder of a simpler time when all I wanted was to cross that threshold. Countless times as a child, I’d stood yearning in front of it, but today, I wasn’t here to yearn. I was here for answers.
As if I knew it would be open, I rounded the building to the back door. The lock was lose as if it had been forced open many times. Ascending the stairs, it dawned on me how similar the stairwell looked to others. Why did it look so familiar? It was like I had been somewhere like it recently. But where?
Entering the hallway, I was overtaken by a similar feeling. Was it in a dream that I had seen this place? Throughout my childhood, I had had more than one dream that had come true. Was the feeling I was having an extension of that? It had to be, didn’t it?
Slowly crossing the hall, I approached the brightly painted door that for some reason felt burned into my mind. What was going on? Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to let it stop me. I had decided that this would be the day and it was.
Lifting my balled fist to knock on the door, it hit me. I had done this before. But that didn’t make sense. Never in my life had I spoken to the man my mother had said was my father. So, when I knocked and a sickly pale man opened the door and stared into my eyes, things made even less sense.
“What are you doing here?” The man spat in angry confusion.
“I’m your son,” I said determined.
“You will go away and never come back,” the man said peering into my soul almost replacing my thoughts for his own.
