Chapter 2 – Carly
“You piece of shit!” my dad shouted. Then he grabbed Brad off the bed.
“Dad, no!” I grabbed for Brad as if I would have been able to pull him back if I hadn’t missed and groped in thin air. “Stop it!”
My dad didn’t listen. He was blinded by rage, and he was a strong man even when he wasn’t angry. Brad was strong, too, and may have been a match for him had he tried, but he hung back, hesitating, looking at me as if he didn’t want to be violent with my dad. I appreciated the respect he was showing him even though it wasn’t being shown to him.
My dad pinned Brad up against the wall, his arm to his throat. Brad kicked his feet that were inches from the floor and clawed at my dad’s arm. I found my shirt and threw it on. I didn’t know if my dad had seen that I wasn’t wearing one, but there was no need to make it worse.
“Don’t you put your hands on her, again,” my dad threatened. “In fact, don’t come around here again, ever.”
It wasn’t a death threat, but it might as well have been.
Brad tried to say something, but his voice was strangled, and it only came out as a cough. My dad let go of him, and Brad dropped to the floor, sinking to his knees. His hand was massaging his throat, his breathing hard and heavy.
“Carly, we’re leaving,” my dad ordered.
“No,” I said.
My dad glared at me with eyes full of fire, and I fought the urge to cringe away. “I’m eighteen, Daddy. I can do what I want.”
“Not if you want a place to stay and someone to pay for your studies, you can’t. You’re not looking at another boy until you graduate. And if I find something like this again…” he paused, but his glare said more than enough.
Brad managed to stand up on his feet and was no longer trying to show respect to my dad— not that I blamed him, at this point. He barreled towards him, trying to talk although his vocal cords had just taken a beaten.
“Carly can do what she wants,” he started to say, through gasping breaths, but just then my dad took something out of his back pocket. A gun.
“Stay away from her,” he told Brad. “I could ruin your life.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant literally or figuratively. My dad was very powerful in our small town and could ruin Brad in multiple ways. But, since a gun was currently pointed on him, I thought perhaps my dad meant he would kill him. Suddenly I realized it wasn’t fair for Brad to have to go through all of this just to be with me.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Brad. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Brad said, breaking his stare from my dad’s gun to look at me.
At that, my dad barked a laugh. He took me by the arm and walked us to the door, while still aiming the gun at Brad. I tried to fight him, but he was strong, and I was just a teenage girl. There was no way I could get away from him.
“I’m so sorry,” I wailed to Brad. Tears ran down my cheeks. Brad still wouldn’t look at me. He sat on the floor now, his hand still on his throat, his face turned away.
My dad dragged me through Brad’s house and to the front door. The car was parked on the curb, askew, one tire on the road. My dad opened the passenger door and forced me in, and only then did he let me go. He marched to the driver’s side and got in.
“We’re going home,” he said and put the car in reverse, backing into the road. “I never want to hear that boy’s name again. Do you hear me?”
I didn’t answer him. I was still crying, but I didn’t want him to see it. I had my face turned to the window, watching Brad’s house slide from view as my dad drove away. I wasn’t going to be able to see the love of my life any more. We weren’t going to be able to have sex again after that first time that’s always so awkward.
And it was all because my dad was such a bully.
“How long have you been seeing him?” my dad asked.
I didn't answer him. I didn’t want anything to do with my dad. He had just destroyed the one thing that was most important to me.
“I’m talking to you. You’re in a hell of a lot of trouble. The last thing you want to do is make this worse. If you keep ignoring me…” he stopped, adding weight to his threat by not completing it.
I turned to him and put every bit of hate I felt for him into my expression, looking at him like he was the devil himself.
“You want me to talk? Fine. But this is the only thing I have to say to you.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “I will never forgive you for this.”
He shook his head, and I knew that he didn’t believe me. He thought it would just blow over. He thought I would eventually get over it, and we would go back to our perfect little father-daughter relationship.
He was wrong.
We drove in silence the rest of the way home. He didn’t have anything else to say. All his threats, his rage, seemed empty now. It was just me and him, the emotion sucked out of the car so that we sat in a void. There was nothing that tied us together anymore. Nothing but the small pieces of my heart shattered all over the car.