Cole

 

Surgery sucked. I hated everything about what was happening to my body. I couldn’t move the way I wanted to, the way I used to. I couldn’t get dressed by myself. I could barely eat on my own. I wanted my old life back. This new reality was crushing me.

I’ve always been active. I’ve always been independent. I’ve never had to rely on anyone the way I’ve had to rely on my mom and dad- even my little sister, who wasn’t so little anymore.

“Do you need anything before I go?” Macy asked from the doorway of my room. I moved back home before my surgery. I was finishing my classes online. It had all been worked out with my professors. Joy. Something else I couldn’t do on my own. I couldn’t even use the computer without someone else typing.

“I’m good.” I wouldn’t admit I needed help right now if I was visibly bleeding to death.

Macy rolled her eyes at my tone. “Dad will be home in about an hour.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t set the house on fire. I won’t play with knives. I don’t know where dad hides the keys to the liquor cabinet. There. Satisfied now that I won’t do anything stupid?” It was childish, but I just couldn’t seem to stop myself.

“Good to know.” Macy backed away from my door, her footsteps echoed down the hall. “And dad keeps the key to the liquor cabinet in the top drawer of his dresser!”

Letting out a deep sigh, I dropped my head back against the mountain of pillows propped up behind me. It had been two days since my surgery and I was so depressed I was half tempted to go looking for that key. The one I didn’t want to think about Macy knowing about since she was only seventeen.

“Ugh!”

After punching the mattress at my side, I closed my eyes and struggled to regain my composure. Glancing at the time on my phone, I wondered if it was too early to take my next dose of pain meds. I wasn’t supposed to be laying around. My doctor wanted me to be up and moving around as normally as possible as soon as possible. I pretty much just didn’t want to move at all. Maybe this was the new normal and I could get away with just staying in this bed until I rotted.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. It wasn’t good, this wallowing in self-pity. It also wasn’t healthy all the time I’ve been spending thinking about Joie. I still hadn’t responded to her text message. I’ve stared at it, though. For hours since I received it right before my surgery, I’ve stared at those five little words and wondered what they meant.

I am so, so sorry.

If she was so sorry then why did she leave?

If she was so sorry then why wasn’t she here?

And then the rage was back. Picking up the gaming controller beside me, I hurled it at the wall across from me. Left-handed because my damn right arm didn’t work! I hurled my tv remote next.

My dad walked in after I’d dumped my book case and made it to my computer keyboard.

“What in the hell is going on in here?” His eyes were wide as saucers as he took in the destruction that was my state of mind.

“Nothing,” I grunted, sweeping my arm across my desk.

“Cole!”

I fought his vice like grip.

“Cole. Stop it! You’re going to hurt yourself.” As strong as he was, my dad was trying not to hurt me as he struggled to keep me from hurting myself.

“Cole! That is enough. I said stop it.”

The tenderness was what finally got to me. The love in his voice. And I broke down.

“Oh, son. It’s alright. That’s right. Let it all out.”

We sank to the floor amid the rubble and my dad just held me.

I cried for myself. My shoulder. For Joie. For loving her. I cried for my lost dreams. Football. Joie. College.

Joie.

Joie.

Joie.

It all came back to her. How could I lose football and her? How?

For the first time in years, I felt like a little kid. I couldn’t even tell you how long I cried or how long my dad held me like that, but by the time my body stopped shuddering, my legs were numb.

“Come on, son.” Dad’s soft voice brought my head up. His cheeks were streaked with tears and his eyes were as red and puffy as I imagined mine to be.

He practically had to carry me to the edge of my bed.

“Now, what’s this all about?”

I snorted. I needed a tissue. The t-shirt on the floor would have to do. I wiped my face, before tossing it in the corner of the room.

Dad sighed, and I had a feeling he was wondering what kind of punishment we were both going to get for the state of my room when my mom came home. For some reason, the thought of her face when she saw this mess made me start laughing. The sound that came out of my mouth was half sob, half hilarity.

“Cole. You need to get ahold of yourself and talk this out. And I don’t even mean your shoulder. Or football. What is going on with you?”

“Isn’t it enough, dad? Isn’t it enough that I can’t play? I can’t even pick up this useless arm.” To prove my point, I tried with all my might to lift my arm and could barely lift it an inch.

“Well, two hours of physical therapy will do that to you.”

Why was he being so rational!

“So, will being smashed by five hundred pounds!” It was probably closer to seven hundred. There were that many guys on top of me that day.

Dad shook his head with a sigh. “Cole. This isn’t new. You’ve hid it well with football and college life and girls, but this has been an issue for a long time and it’s time to work it out. Why don’t you just go after her, for heaven’s sake?”

“What are you talking about?” But I knew.

Dad’s look said he wasn’t buying it, either. “Get a ticket and go see her.”

No way. “I’m not doing that.”

“Why the hell not?” Whoa. Dad hardly ever swore. Even ‘hell’.

“Because- Because-” Frustrated, I stood up and attempted to pace the length of my room. It wasn’t easy with all the broken stuff all over.

Sighing again, dad propped his hands against his knees. His penetrating gaze saw right through me.

I dropped down to the bed again.

“She left, dad.”

He nodded. “I know she did, son. But she left a long time before graduation. Before USC. And I know all that stuff with her mom. But there was more wasn’t there?”

Mom and dad didn’t know all Joie’s secrets. It wasn’t long after things went down with her mom that Joie left and once she was gone- well, I didn’t see the point.

I nodded. Tears pricked my eyelids again. Maybe I needed to tell my dad. Not for Joie, but for me. I’d been hiding her secrets for too long. Maybe if I told someone about it, it wouldn’t be so hard anymore.

“There was more, dad. Lots, lots more.”

His face crumpled for a split second before he got it under control. “Tell me.”

And so, I did. For the next half hour, I told him about Joie. And the trash bins. And about that time she hit me during our game of pretend school and I realized I’d never been hit before. But she had. I told him about wrestling around with her and the bruises. And the bruises. And the bruises.

I told him about holding her when she was scared and inviting her over to our house to get her away. I told him about the locks on her door. I told it all.

And I held onto his shoulder as sobs wracked his body when I was finally done.

“Cole-” His voice broke. I knew without having to be told he was crying for us both, Joie and me. Joie for the shit she had to go through that she never should have had to go through. Ever. And for me, because I was his son and he’d spent his whole life trying to protect me and I’d been carrying that burden all by myself for a long, long time.

“Son. I am so, so sorry,” he said a while later. We’d both gotten our emotions under control, for the most part, but when he said those words, those exact words, I almost lost it again.

I showed him the text from Joie.

“And you haven’t answered,” he finally asked after staring at the words for a while.

I shook my head. “I just- I don’t know what to say.”

“Cole, you are one of the strongest men I know. It’s hard to think of you that way, as a man, because I changed your diapers,” he cracked a grin and I appreciated the attempt at humor. “But you are a man and you’ve grown into to a man I am prouder of than I could ever say. And I’m prouder every day. How is that possible? I don’t know, but it’s the truth.” Dad sighed. We were both emotionally wrung out. I was exhausted and needed another pain pill.

I didn’t know what to say to that. My parents were always proud of us kids and were free with compliments, but this- what my dad just said- I will never forget this moment as long as I live.

“But Cole, you can’t be afraid of love.”

“Dad-”

“No, now hear me out. I know it isn’t easy. It never is, but these circumstances with Joie, all that the two of you have been through together. It makes a little sense now.”

I snorted. “I’m glad you get it, because I sure don’t.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m here. To tell you the things you don’t know.” Dad grinned.

“Hmm. I thought that was mom’s job.” I raised my brow, smirking at him.

“Ha. No, mom’s job is to tell me the stuff I don’t know, so I can impart that wisdom to you.”

We shared a smile knowing that was the truth.

“Look, I can’t tell you what to do or how to respond, but I can tell you this- you will never be able to completely give yourself to another relationship until you get this one with Joie resolved, whatever that may mean.”

I shook my head. “Dad-”

“I mean it. I watched you all through high school. Broken hearted because your best friend didn’t want anything to do with you. Dating girls you didn’t give a hang about. Then that play. Those months with Joie- it was the happiest I’d seen you in years. You need to figure this out, son, before it ruins you.” Dad glanced around my room at the destruction I’d rendered. “It’s never a good idea to let things fester. And this has festered for a long time already, too long.”

Dad sat quietly, staring ahead for a bit before slapping his huge hand down on my knee.

“Let’s get this mess fixed before your mom gets home. I’m not sure either of us have the energy to deal with that this evening.”

I knew he was right. About mom. And about other things.