CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE – GABRIEL
The sound of Alyssa’s angry voice echoed down the hallway. Panic shot straight through me, and I quickly pulled on a shirt and rushed down the hall to find Alyssa backing away from the living room. She twisted around to look at me with eyes full of disgust and anger. Tears welled in there, too, as she shook her head at me.
“Please tell me none of what I just heard is true,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “Please tell me that the two of you aren’t--”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. I looked over to where Penny stood with tears streaming down her cheeks as well. No more lying. I couldn’t utter one more lie about my relationship with Penny. It only had hurt everyone around us in the process of trying to keep it a secret.
“Try to hear me out, baby girl,” I said as placidly as I could. “It happened. Neither one of us wanted it to happen, but things developed between the two of us. It’s true that we want to be together.”
Alyssa’s eyes fluttered shut while a horrified expression crossed her face. She twisted around to compose herself, and when I tried to reach out to rest my hands on her shoulders, she jerked away from my touch. My heart collapsed in the center of my chest at the coldness radiating off her. I knew the only reason she reacted like this was because something painful waged a war inside of her.
“It’s a lot to take in,” I said. “I know that it is, Alyssa. Just trust me when I say that Penny and I never intended for it to happen like this.”
“You both lied to me!” Alyssa burst out, turning to glare up at me. “You’ve never lied to me in my entire life, Dad. Why now? Why this?”
“We were trying to figure out what was happening and what we wanted to do about it,” Penny added, rubbing her hands together in agitation. “We weren’t sure what was going to happen between the two of us, so we didn’t want to tell you until we both knew for sure what we wanted.”
“So you wanted to figure out if you were going to keep fucking each other before you told me? Is that it? Oh my God, you two are so disgusting! You were supposed to be my best friend, Penny, and you have been fucking my father?”
“Alyssa,” I interjected when her voice raised a pitch. “Please, calm down. Let’s sit down and talk about this rationally.”
Alyssa swatted my hand away from her. Tears were dripping down her cheeks as she took a step back from me.
“No, I’m not going to sit down. I’m leaving. I don’t want anything to do with either of you right now.”
She yanked the door open and slammed it shut behind her. Footsteps hurried down the hallway before the ding of the elevator doors echoed.
“Oh my God,” Penny cried out, cupping her face in her hands. “I should’ve known things would go down like this. She hates us both now.”
“You need to talk to her,” Nikki said, rubbing at Penny’s trembling shoulders. “The both of you together. It might help to have you both calm her down because it’s a lot to take in. Trust me.”
My heart ached while I hurriedly grabbed my coat, in case I needed to chase Alyssa out into the dark night. Penny grabbed her sweater from the living room and followed me out into the hallway. She didn’t say a word as we hurried down the stairs to hopefully catch Alyssa before she disappeared.
I should’ve known this would happen. Shame intermixed with guilt while I hurried through the lobby, with Penny at my heels, into the dark, cold night. I spotted Alyssa pacing the curbside around the building with her phone in hand.
“Alyssa!” I called out. “Hold on a moment. You can’t just go running away from this!”
Alyssa looked up from the bright screen of her phone. “I can run away from this. That’s exactly what I plan on doing.”
“You need to hear us out,” I said, reaching for her hand. “I’m not kidding you, Alyssa. You need to be mature about this and talk about it.”
“Mature about this?” Alyssa repeated dubiously. “I just heard that my best friend is in love with my father. It makes sense now, all those weird interactions between the two of you. It’s fucking disgusting, knowing you two were sneaking around behind my back. The two people I trusted most in the world. I feel sick.”
“We’re both adults, Alyssa,” I said. “Nothing that happened between us deserves this sort of behavior from you. Has it occurred to you that maybe I’m in love with Penny, too?”
Her eyes widened in visible shock at that. I glanced over at Penny, who was watching us with wide eyes as well. I reached out a hand for her to take, and she grabbed ahold without hesitation. The feeling of Penny’s warm fingers against mine soothed a bit of the ache lingering in me.
“We are going to see each other,” I said, turning to face Alyssa, who shook her head. “Yes, we are. I hope that you can come to accept it, but Penny makes me happy. The one person I feel like I can be myself with is standing right next to me.”
“It’s not right, Dad,” she said. “I don’t care how much you two try to spin it, but it isn’t right. It won’t ever be right. Not to me at least.”
A taxi pulled up to the curb. Alyssa reached for the door, but stopped to look at us with cold eyes.
“You know, if the two of you would’ve been honest about this in the first place, it wouldn’t feel like so much of a betrayal. But you both lied to me. I’m not okay with that, and I won’t ever be okay with this, either.”
She pulled the door open to hop into the passenger seat. I attempted to grab the door before she could shut it, but the car pulled away a second later. Alyssa kept her face turned away from the us as the taxi drove by and exited the parking lot.
We stood together in the icy wind of the night with Penny huddled against me. She cried softly into my shoulder.
“What are we going to do, Gabriel?” she asked, her voice thick with tears. “First, my mom. Now it’s Alyssa. I don’t think she is going to be convinced as easily.”
“No,” I replied, smoothing a hand along her shoulders. “You’re right. She won’t be easily persuaded like your mom. She’s very stubborn, like me.”
“What do we do now?”
I noted the trembling in Penny’s shoulders. Rubbing at them, I steered us back in the direction of the lobby. I didn’t know what would happen next, but I knew that Alyssa needed a bit of time to cool off. My daughter, while short and sweet, had a temper when she felt threatened.
“We’ll give her some space,” I said, even though a part of me ached to hop into a cab after her. “She just needs to cool down for a little bit, is all.”
Penny glanced up at me as we entered the warm lobby to head in the direction of the elevators. “You aren’t going to go after her?”
“No,” I said, sighing painfully. “As much as I want to chase after her, I know that it will only make her angrier. She’s an adult, Penny. I can’t run after her to explain things to her every single time something happens that she doesn’t agree with. That’s just how it is.”
“I don’t want this relationship if it is going to cause problems with Alyssa. I’m being serious when I say that, Gabriel.”
The elevator doors opened. Ushering Penny inside, I waited for the doors to slide shut before I turned to cup her face in my hands. I backed her up against the mirror hanging in the elevator to kiss her deeply, to feel a bit of something that made my heart warm over.
“I am not going to give you up,” I whispered when I pulled back to look into her eyes. “The world will have to accept it, and Alyssa will, too. That’s just the way it’s going to be.”