Chapter Twenty-Three
Ashley
However, I didn’t stand up to leave. Instead, I continued to glare at him. He stared back at me with a hardness in his eyes that made me second guess what I thought about him.
What if he really did kill his father? I thought as a gurgle of fear bubbled inside of my stomach. I bit my lip nervously and breathed heavily, wondering what my next move should be.
The look in his eye certainly wasn’t helping me any. I wished that I could tell, but I wasn’t sure if he was being serious with me or just trying to get a rise out of me. Yet, at the moment, I wasn’t sure which I thought would be worse.
If he was lying, that was terrible, but if he was serious, I wasn’t entirely sure that I was safe with him anymore. So I glared at him in place of my nervous laugh before I went on. “Okay, fine. You win. What are you talking about?”
He shrugged slightly and turned away from me before he answered, “Fuck you! I didn’t win anything…And I didn’t kill him on purpose.”
Confused, I could not help myself from responding, “Tyler, I didn’t say that you did.”
He barked a laugh and answered in an almost quiet fashion, “Yeah, well, you didn’t have to. I could hear it in your tone.”
I thought about this for a moment before I picked my hand up and placed it on his shoulder. Even though I wasn’t completely sure what was going on, I was beginning to see the real picture. This, for once, wasn’t an act. Tyler was actually ashamed of what happened. I was surprised when he didn’t throw my hand off, but I was also happy. I certainly didn’t want to do anything that would make him not want to tell me what was going on. I was trying my best to do whatever I could so that he would be comfortable with me.
I didn’t know why I felt the need to make him comfortable, but there was just an air that he was giving off that told me I didn’t need to be afraid of him; but I did need to be there for him.
I stayed there silently, with my hand on his shoulder for a long moment before I spoke. When I did, I made sure that my voice sounded opened and interested, and not the least bit judgmental. “What happened to him, Tyler?”
The large, muscular man before me did not respond right away. I watched as his shoulders sagged and his head hung down in an ashamed fashion. This was definitely a different side to Tyler. It seemed to make him human to me instead of this shell of a tough guy. It was then I saw he really did have feelings.
When he finally responded to my question, his voice sounded broken and jaded, but also extremely emotional. I could tell this really was a big deal for him to be telling me this and I didn’t want to mess up the trust he was placing in me. “He was teaching me to drive. I had my learner’s permit…It was the first real father, son thing I had ever gotten to do with him.” He smiled just a little as his eyes flashed back, I guessed to gauge my reaction. He scowled as he went on. “It was going great and then, it started to rain. My father asked if I wanted him to drive back, but cocky piece of shit that I am told him I would be fine…it was just a little rain. It was going to fucking get the best of me.” He sighed before he began again. “I wasn’t speeding. I wasn’t even trying to show off. It just happened.” As though still confused about what had exactly happened that day, he threw his hands out and insisted, “I lost control of the car and we spun off the road.”
“Oh God…” I answered, covering my mouth with my hand and shaking my head. “That’s terrible.”
Even though he didn’t give any reaction to my response, I took it upon myself to move over to him and hug him closely to me.
Still, it barely seemed to register with him that I was there. He just continued his story. “The car ran off the highway and sailed down a ditch. It flipped a few times, shit I don’t know how many and then came to a stop as we slammed front first into a tree. My father was wearing his seatbelt, but something happened to him during the accident, he was struck with something just right and when we stopped, I looked over at him…He wasn’t breathing. I tried to wake him up and then ran to get help, but he was fucking dead by the time the paramedics got there.” Then, as though his emotions got the best of him, he slammed his hands down on the bed with such a force that it rocked the entire thing. “Fuck!” he screamed.
I squeezed tighter, knowing that it might not help but hoping that in some way, it would give him a sense of companionship.
It was then that Tyler glared back at me with smoldering anger in his eyes and he spoke with a saddened voice. “He shouldn’t have died. There was no speed, he was following all of the laws, trying to make a good example, but I screwed up and now he’s dead. It wasn’t my mother who ultimately ended my relationship with my father.” He tucked his head again in shame as he finished. “It was me. I not only ended any shot I had at having a relationship with my father, but I also ended my father’s life.” He shook his head. “That’s just fucked up and I’ve never been able to get past it.”
Once again, I tried to hug him back into me, before I snaked my arms over his shoulders and down across his chest. “It’s not your fault.” I said to him.
“I was driving. If it wasn’t for me he would still be alive,” he answered.
“You don’t know that!” I exclaimed, making sure my face was so close to his that he couldn’t help but see the conviction in my eyes.
“He’d have a hell of a lot better chance,” Tyler grumbled, finally shrugging me off of him. He stood up and before I could say anything more to him, he sighed heavily and turned before he answered, “So what’s your sob story?”
“Huh?” I asked, squinting my eyes at him and turning my head so that I could catch his gaze squarely.
“Enough about my fuckups. What happened to your mother?” he asked and I was surprised.
Although I was pleased that he felt comfortable enough to speak to me about what happened with his father, and was now trying to pretend it wasn’t as big of a deal to him, I still had not expected him to ask about my mother.
Somehow I was still convinced that he wouldn’t care. Yet, when he asked me, I could see that there was a sense of genuine concern in his eyes that I frankly was unaware he was capable of.
“Please…” he insisted after a moment, while his shoulders fell and he moved back towards me. “Tell me what happened.”
I bit my lip, unsure at first, but I decided that it couldn’t hurt to tell him. It might even be good for us both, to be able to have something like that in common, as terrible as it was.
“Okay,” I conceded finally and as though he was getting ready for a story with a happily ever after, Tyler scooted back onto the bed, taking up more than half of it and made himself comfortable.
His mock sense of entitlement caused me to laugh slightly, but even with the chuckle, the mood that I felt swarming in around us did not change.
“Well, my mother died from cancer. She kept it from us until she couldn’t anymore and I resented her for a long time for that…But I realize now, there was a lot more to her decision than just trying to spare our feelings, which caused me to resent my father...” After I had said it, I realized that I didn’t want to get into that part of it with him and so, I returned to the pertinent part of the story I was telling him. “By the time she told both my father and I, she had already exhausted all of her options and she didn’t have much time to live.” I shrugged, feeling only slightly uncomfortable. “The day she told me she had cancer and that she was going to die, she looked perfectly normal. Six months later, almost to the day, I was staring down at her coffin as it was being lowered into the ground; the body of the woman inside looked and acted completely different. If I hadn’t known better, if I wasn’t in the hospital with her every day until the second that she breathed her last, I wouldn’t have even known it was my mother. I would have easily insisted that the doctors had made a mistake.” I sighed at this and looked away from him, even though his eyes held a touch of concern that I had never seen him show anyone before.
Tyler was no longer wearing that goofy smile and instead of being sprawled out comfortably; by the end of my story he was pulled up to his side so that half of him was leaning close to me, as though doing his best to be comforting.
I shrugged and smiled, being able to admit for the first time, probably ever, “It’s all right. It was a long time ago and for what it’s worth, the idea that when she passed was just her time helped me to get through her death, even though seeing me in this house, I might not seem like it.”
He didn’t say anything to me for a little while, but when he spoke again, he had an air of understanding that stopped his voice from saying anything completely inappropriate. Still, I supposed he couldn’t help himself but to pry. “If your mother died from cancer, why do you despise your father?” Unintentionally, I must have glared at him because he shrugged at me almost as soon as he finished speaking and answered, “I’m sorry, it is fucking obvious…I mean…shit, the only time I have ever seen you spend a significant amount of time with him without looking like you would run him off the road if you could was the other day. You give him death stares like your ass depended on it.”
I squinted at him again and asked honestly, “I do?”
He nodded. “Even at the damn wedding,” then, he conceded, “But I guess I kind of get that.”
“No, it wasn’t that,” I answered. “I was actually the one who told him to start dating again and I thought I would be all right with the marriage…”
He shrugged again as an amused simper played at his lips. “Then, what did he do?”
I thought for a moment about telling Tyler that it was none of his business, but then, I thought about what he had told me and knew that had to be harder to get over than what had happened between me and my father. I decided to come clean. “I knew that his decision not to date after my mother died was not because he was truly mourning her, but because he felt guilty. A little while after my mother passed away, I found out that my father had cheated on my mother, before he knew that she was sick. She found out and went to the doctor, fearing that he had given her an STD, because she wasn’t feeling good, ended up getting a mammogram and that is when they found the cancer.”
Tyler made a face, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was supposed to represent.
So I continued with my story. “The bottom line is, if my mother had not been diagnosed, she would have left my father, but when she found out that she was dying, she decided to keep it from everyone and forgive my father, so that she didn’t have to worry about any kind of legal battle or unnecessary heartache, mostly for me, during the time she had left.” At that, I began to tear up and that was when Tyler did something that I would have never expected. He moved over, enveloped me into a long, thoughtful, careful hug, and held me while I cried.