I wake up to find Lila pressing my finger against my phone. I put a lock on it again, just to see how long it would take her to notice, and you have to have my fingerprint to unlock it. She waited until I was asleep to try to get into my phone.
“You’re fucking crazy.”
She drops my hand and jerks her head to look at me. “We agreed that you wouldn’t have a lock on it.”
“We also talked about how there should be boundaries and how each of us should have this thing called privacy.”
Lila completely ignores me as she goes through my phone. “You’ve been grouchy lately with a piss poor attitude.”
That’s what happens when a person gives up to an extent. I’m tired of my life, but I’m waiting on my son. Lila treats me like shit and I take it. She hits me and I don’t even try to cover myself anymore. With her stomach growing larger, she’s taken to grabbing shit that’s close by and hitting me with that instead of her hands.
And then there’s the last letter I received from Idaline. It came nearly a month ago. Every time I try to write back to her, my pen doesn’t move to ink the words onto the paper. I don’t know what to say to her. If I can answer her questions without lying. She’s probably worried as it is because it’s taking so long to get a letter back. I need to suck it up and write her back before I let even more time pass.
“I want a chocolate bar,” Lila says just as I’m dozing off.
Without saying a word, or sighing, I roll out of bed, change my clothes, and leave the apartment. If it wasn’t for twenty-four-hour stores, I’d be fucked. Every night this week, she wakes me up, claiming to have a craving. However, half the time she doesn’t eat what I bring back. At this point, I think she simply enjoys disrupting my sleep and sending me out in the middle of the night.
I’m taking my sweet time tonight. When I get to the convenience store, I park and grab my pen and pad of paper that sits on the backseat of my car. This letter might just kill me.
Idaline,
I apologize that it’s taken me so long to find the words to write this letter. I’m still not so sure that I know what to say, but it’s long past time that you get a response, so here I am at 2:30 in the morning, writing this letter to you.
Justin is right. Lila is the reason we’re not talking like normal. I’m doing what I need to do, Idaline. It might not make sense and you probably don’t understand, but that’s all I’m willing to say right now, especially in a letter. I don’t like to think that I’m sacrificing us for her. Instead, I’m doing what I need to survive.
Please understand this. Please be willing to get through this with me. That’s all I’m asking.
But if you can’t, if you’d rather not, that’s okay. It’s not easy being in my life right now, trust me, I know. We can continue like we are or take a break from talking for a bit, if you’d like. I don’t want to make your life harder either, Idaline. Or make you constantly worry about me. That won’t do either of us any good.
I hope things are even better for you than the last time you wrote. I need to go, but before I do, I’ll say one last thing. Do whatever’s best for you. Don’t think about me or anyone else. Do what’s best for you, Idaline. The rest of us will be okay.
If you decide you want that break, there’s no need to respond and tell me. I’ll figure it out. A break might be good on my end, but the decision is yours. If we do stop talking for a while, we WILL talk again at some point. I’ll even make you a promise. When I feel ready to tell you everything I’m not currently saying, when everything in my life is good once more, I’ll write again. But not just a normal letter. I’ll tell you my name.
Until next time,
FC
I read over my letter and frown. It reads like a bunch of nonsensical bullshit. It sounds like I’m saying goodbye before she can say it to me. That’s the last thing I want to do. There needs to be one good thing going on in my life before Sawyer gets here. But the anguish in Idaline’s letter eats away at me every time I think about it. She might be better off without me. She doesn’t need to stress about me, especially when my life won’t be getting better for a handful of months still.
Part of me hopes she’ll ignore my goodbye and still write. Part of me hopes she won’t because this nagging voice in the back of my mind keeps telling me that’s the only way she’ll find happiness.
With a sigh, I grab an envelope, address it, stamp it, and stick it in the glove box. I’ll drop it in the mail first thing in the morning, but for now, I need to buy a chocolate bar. When I return home, Lila is asleep, but I set the chocolate bar on the nightstand on her side of the bed.
In the morning, she wakes me up by hitting my leg with a fucking rolling pin. “That’s for taking so long to get back last night and making me wait until this morning to eat my chocolate bar,” she snaps.
She’s asking for me to kill her. She wants me to break and hit her back. I don’t know where my limit is, or if I have one, but I swear every time she hits me, I get closer to it. If I ever hit my breaking point, I’ll never be the same. I will have already failed as a man and as a father if I hit her back. But every fucking day, she pushes and pushes me. My hands cramp sometimes from how tightly I fist them. My arms ache from tensing my muscles, forcing them to stay by my side and not move them.
Lila fucks with my mind, driving me crazy. She pushes me a little harder this morning by hitting me with that rolling pin. I throw back the covers, stand, and rush her. Not once do I touch her, but the monster she’s created inside of me feasts on the fear in her eyes as she backs up and holds the kitchen utensil to her chest.
My face is a breath away from hers. I stare while she takes fast breaths. “The proper thing to say, Lila, is thank you.”
As soon as I say it, her eyes harden and the fear is gone. “Fuck you, FC.”
“Say it.”
She tries to push me away, but I don’t budge. Not today. Not to mention, I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been because the only way to survive not smoking, not drinking, and being with Lila is to burn off the emotions and the urges. So, I workout and exercise. I’m bigger than before, just a little bit, and I’m going to use it to my advantage more than I ever have.
“FC,” Lila whines.
“Say it,” I demand.
“Thank you!” she shouts. “Now get the fuck away from me.”
I snatch the rolling pin from her and stalk out of the room, throwing it in the trash. Why we have that, I have no clue. The only time she’s ever used it is this morning on me. We obviously don’t need it. That sucker hurt and I’m sure it’ll leave a lovely bruise on my leg. Lila walks out of our bedroom and that’s when I notice she’s dressed nicer than usual.
“I’m going out with some friends today. Don’t do anything stupid.” As if what happened in the bedroom never happened, she kisses my cheek and then walks out the door, calling out, “Love you, babe!”
She’s going to be gone? All day? I pull out a chair at the table and fall into it, relief pouring through my veins and filling me up. I could burst with all the relief I feel right now. I can spend hours today, relaxing and not worrying about her. Tears burn my eyes. This is the first time in a while that she’s left me completely alone.
What am I even supposed to do without her up my ass?
That question plays on loop in my mind as I eat and then shower, getting ready for the day. Lila hasn’t really let me shop for Sawyer yet, so that’s what I want to do. Every time I buy something, it disappears. Later, she’ll tell me that she couldn’t stand to look at it or that my son wouldn’t be wearing it, so she returned it for something else.
With a day to myself, I can not only buy whatever I want, but ship it to my mom to keep for me. She won’t have the chance to return it. Before I shop, I mail Idaline’s letter and hope that I wrote what I needed to write. And then, I look for clothes for my son.
The idea that I even have a son on the way is still a struggle for me. I hoped by now that I would be excited about his impending arrival, but it hasn’t happened for me yet. He’s still linked with the moment I found out Lila wasn’t taking her birth control and trapped me with a baby. But if all goes well, I won’t be trapped forever. I’ll get away from her and hopefully take my son with me. I just wish there was a way I could keep her out of our lives forever.
I don’t want to share him with her. I don’t want her to attempt to taint him. I don’t want him to turn out to be anything like her, not even a little bit. He deserves better than us both, but he most certainly deserves better than her. And as long as I stay near her, this monster she’s crafted will always exist within me. I don’t want that around Sawyer either.
Sometimes, I think he’d be better off if we gave him up. It’s crossed my mind more than a few dozen times that maybe my parents, or someone in my family, or even someone hoping to adopt, should raise my son instead of Lila and me. She’s unfit and after being with her, there’s a good chance I’m unfit, too. Before Lila, I never thought of murder. I never imagined various ways of killing someone. I wasn’t an alcoholic before her, though I did drink here and there. I never thought I would need therapy, and I do, but I can’t seem to make that appointment.
She made me weak. Vulnerable. Unstable. Possibly disturbed.
And I’m supposed to start taking care of and raising a kid in about three months. It’s laughable.
My father calls me later when I’m packing what I bought into a box.
“Hey,” I answer.
“Hey. How is it going today?”
“Okay. She went out with friends, doing who knows what, so I went shopping for Sawyer. I’m mailing y’all what I bought so she can’t return it,” I tell him.
“That’ll be fine. The little boy will have everything he needs once he gets here.”
I nod, though he can’t see me. I tape up the box and sit next to it in my backseat. “Dad, can I ask you something and you answer honestly?”
“Of course, son.”
“Should I be trying to convince Lila for us to give this baby up? How do we know for sure that I’m not just as unfit as she is?”
The silence emitting from my phone terrifies me. But then, he says, “Son, if we didn’t think you were capable, we would’ve told you so. We would not be preparing for you to bring that boy home if we thought you couldn’t raise him and take care of him. You’re in a bad place right now, but that’s because of Lila. As soon as you put some space between you and her, things will get better.”
“I don’t know.” I don’t know if he’s right, if I can believe him.
“FC, you’re off to a good start already by being concerned for Sawyer. If you were unfit, you wouldn’t care. You’ll be a good father, FC. If only because I raised you to be a good man and you were raised by a good father.” He chuckles at that last part and that makes me smile.
“Thanks, Dad. If I’m not stressed from Lila, I’m stressed about what’s to come with Sawyer.” If I ever have peace in my life again, I won’t know what to do with it.
Dad and I talk as I address the box and then pop it into my trunk to wait until Monday when I can go to the post office. I sit in the parking lot of the store I was in last and talk to him, enjoying the fact that Lila isn’t anywhere around and isn’t bothering me today since she’s with her friends. After talking to Dad, I talk to Mom as I drive home.
I’m in the kitchen, eating dinner, when Lila walks in. She immediately pulls something out of a bag and I eye what’s in her hand, hoping it isn’t what I think it is. Because if it is, my life just became worse than hell. It confirms my death. There’s no way I’m surviving until Sawyer’s birth.
My eyes flick away from the object to Lila. To her smirk, raised eyebrow, and bright eyes.
“What the hell is that?” I force myself to ask.
“A whip.” She cracks it. The whip looks to be about two feet long and then has a bunch of little tails dangling from it. “Try pissing me off now, FC.”
I won’t have to worry about killing her because she’ll kill me before I have the chance.
Sawyer. I can’t trust her with my baby. I have to suck it up until she has Sawyer and then we’ll run like hell.