Chapter Forty-One
Ashley
Awful would have been a gross understatement to describe every long, daunting, terrible second of the ride back to the beach house.
Via car, the ride from where the competition was held back to the house was usually extremely short, but at the present time, I thought it would have been easier, quicker and far more preferred to get back home and spare the thick, awkward silence that surrounded us.
I sighed, trying to figure out what I should say to my father to get him to stop looking over at me with such a sense of disappointment. I knew that he wasn’t happy, but the silence and sizzling sense of nothingness that surrounded us was wholly unbearable.
At first, I went to speak to him, but the intensity of his eyes as they glowered at me from the driver’s side of the car made me rethink the idea. I didn’t want to upset him even more than I already had.
So the silence bellowed and the ride continued to be everlasting.
I looked out the window and tried to focus on something other than the situation I was currently in.
We passed plenty of different places throughout the entirety of what seemed to be the never-ending trip that I knew well, but that didn’t matter to me at the moment. All I cared about was trying my best to have something to think about and therefore, I felt as though I was seeing the entirety of the world anew. I noticed details of the familiar island that I had never realized were there.
I thought about everything I saw and tried to experience everything that was passing by my slow-moving window as though I was seeing it for the first time. It worked, sort of. I definitely saw plenty of new details, but none of them were able to distract me from the forbearing silence that bore down upon the vehicle.
Part of me still wanted to try to talk to my father, but each time I went to speak, his cold, angry eyes dissuaded me.
I didn’t want to fight. I knew that wouldn’t do us any good, but by the look on his face, it seemed that anything I said or did would cause an eruption of pent-up emotion that would lead to a meltdown of nuclear proportions.
Therefore, I continued to conclude that my silence was probably best.
Eventually we made it to the driveway. After my father pulled in and stopped the car, he turned off the engine and air, which automatically made the heat burst through the crevices, making the small space even more uncomfortable.
I drew in a deep breath, even though it made me feel sick to do so, just so the hotness of the car would not suffocate me.
My father didn’t get out of the car right away, though, so I figured that I shouldn’t try to get out of the car either.
I wasn’t sure how I could escape the car without incurring more wrath, so I just stayed there patiently as my blood began to boil and my breath began to pant.
By the time my father made any kind of move, I was fighting back panting, sweating profusely and feeling as though I was going to be dangerously sick.
“Ashley,” he said, in a voice that made me wish he sounded angry, “why would you do this to me?”
“Dad I…”
“Don’t…” he whispered, shaking his head and sighing angrily. “Please don’t lie to me.”
“I wasn’t going to lie!” I exclaimed, narrowing my eyes at him and trying my best to remain as calm as possible. I huffed a long sigh before I crossed my arms and sat back against the cushion of the seat. I ground my teeth and rolled my eyes at the absurdity of what was going on. If he wasn’t even going to hear me out, then I really had nothing to say to him.
“What were you going to say then? You were going to tell me the truth? You were going to admit to my face that you did this to get back at me, that you wanted nothing more than to see my marriage fall apart, while you just sit back and watch what you think is a house of cards crumble? I know you two think that all Theresa and I do is have sex, but we actually have a very loving relationship and this little attempt at sabotaging that relationship just isn’t going to work.”
“You always think everything is all about you!” I screamed, finally having enough of all his crap. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was that had made me snap; there was sure a whole host of different things that I could have picked up on, but I decided to lead with the big picture. When I did, I felt the wave of fury strike me down suddenly and with a great deal of strain. I felt my eyes bulge out of my head as my forehead grew red and began to ache with pain and aggravation. I could tell that my blood was boiling and all I wanted to do was scream.
The heat of the car certainly wasn’t helping matters, but by that time, I wasn’t thinking about that at all. All I was concerned with was making him see my side of the story.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded. His face was red for a while now, but I didn’t even care that he was angry with me. I was far too irate with him to worry about what he was going to say or do.
“Of course! You conveniently have no idea,” I shot back. “When Mom died, it was all about you and how depressed you were and now it’s all about you and how I could possibly do this to you, instead of once thinking about my feelings.” I was screaming now. “I’m your daughter! I lost my mother and all you could do was sit around and feel sorry for yourself, feel guilty for what happened because you know as well as I do that if she hadn’t gotten sick, you would have left her!”
“Why would you say that? I loved your mother…” He yelled back, but with far less conviction than he had previously.
“Yes, well I still love her and you know damn well that you were cheating on her. She knew it and I knew it. That was what Mom had to hide from me and why she had to keep her illness from us, because she didn’t want you to stay out of guilt!” Once I started, everything began to tumble out. “I needed you and all you wanted to do was go crawl in a hole and die for four years, not because you were grieving, but because you were guilty. You couldn’t believe that you would do this to a woman who cared about you, faults and all, literally until her dying breath.”
“Did your mother tell you that?” he demanded.
“No! She didn’t say anything,” I answered, growing even angrier by the second, “probably because she knew that I would be stuck with you when she died and she didn’t want me to hate you.”
“Do you hate me? Is that why you did it?”
This time, I did scream and when I was finished, I turned around and said, “When did you become so selfish?” I stopped, put my hand up and answered, in a slightly calmer voice, “You know what, I don’t even care. I am out of here.”
With that, I burst out of the car, automatically feeling the temperature change hit my face as the air finally moved around me again, while I stomped up to my room.
I heard my father in the background, screaming for me to get back there as he loudly got out of the car, but I continued forward. To my surprise, I didn’t even cry.
When I made it up to my room, I grabbed my suitcase and began to pack it feverously. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going to go, or if I even really wanted to leave Tyler, but I was sure that I couldn’t stay in this house any longer. There were too many emotions running rampant around here, and I was fairly certain that I had just completely tore the top off of our family’s Pandora’s Box. I was also fairly certain that I didn’t want to wait around for the fallout.
I had probably already decimated my relationship with my father, but I supposed that was a long time coming. I didn’t want to ever have to do what I did, but he had pushed me to the limit. How dare he accuse me of trying to ruin his relationship, when I was the one who wanted him to start dating in the first place?
After a little while of me quickly and angrily throwing things into my bag, I heard a light and gentle rapping at my door. I heard my father’s voice as he said, “Hey… I wanted to talk to you. Can I come in?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer before the door opened. He looked around the room and instead of answering him, I just glowered in his direction for a long while. I felt that anything I had to say to him now would only make matters worse for us both later.
He sighed first and answered, while his eyes continued to glaze over my hurried packing job, “Well, I just wanted to…um…Wow! You’re really going, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I answered in a scary-calm voice that I was sure my father picked up on. “I am really going.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know, but I cannot stay here.”
Instead of getting angry, he sighed again and rubbed the back of his neck. “You’re right, you know? I did cheat on your mother and I felt terrible for it, even before I knew she was sick…and you were right about feeling guilty. Even though it was sudden, once I knew how sick she was, I knew that it would only be a matter of time, so her death wasn’t a shock, by the time she died. I knew what was happening and although there was a long period of grief for the woman that I loved…” His eyes then rose to meet mine as he amended, “The woman that I still love, I was mostly guilty. That is why I didn’t date. I didn’t feel I deserved it.”
“And you were right, Dad. You didn’t deserve it,” I answered coldly before I threw what was left of my personal items in my suitcase and started to zip it up.
My father fell silent in an awkward manner, as though I had just slapped him across the face and was now pretending I had done nothing of the sort. In a way, I felt that was justified and so, I just went about my business. I was determined to leave, after all. For once, I was being completely honest with my father and it felt really good.
However, he said, “You know Ashley, I’ve made some mistakes in my life and I understand that. Hell, maybe this is all my fault...the universe getting back at me for a moment of weakness…because you know, having my wife die and my daughter want nothing to do with me wasn’t bad enough. But I still can’t fathom how the hell I am supposed to allow you to continue to fuck your stepbrother, just because I’m a bad father!”
I lost it. I swung around to meet his irate gaze and narrowed my eyes at him. “If you’re trying to make me feel guilty, then you can go to hell. And if you’re really just trying to provide me insight into the way your mind works, then you are even more selfish and stubborn than I thought.” That was when I threw my hands up and screamed, “How many more times do I have to tell you that what I did had absolutely nothing to do with you, Mom, Theresa, or anyone else in our screwed up little household. What happened was between me and Tyler. We are both adults and I don’t give a shit what you say! I haven’t given a shit what you had to say since the moment Mom died, because emotionally, you were nonexistent. You might not have lost me if you weren’t so wrapped up in your own damn guilt.”
I sighed and took a moment to catch my breath, but then quickly started again when I thought of more that I wanted to say. “I would have given anything to have my father back, the one who I could tell anything to and therefore, I was willing to forgive and forget. I encouraged you to date, because I thought it would make you feel better, but then, once you married Theresa, it was like you forgot about the life that you have. Instead of enhancing your life and helping you to move on, you just used it as an escape route to start all over.
“But guess what, Dad, I’m still here! I didn’t disappear when Mom died. I grew into a person who needed to find her own way in life, in addition to worrying about you and trying to make the best of the situation I found myself in. The only reason you think I pulled away from you was because by the time you wanted me again, you had already pushed me so far away that it didn’t matter to me anymore.”
I stopped and let go a shuddering breath. I couldn’t believe that I had said that. Everything that had built up inside of me for so many years was now out in the open and despite what I had always thought, I didn’t feel one ounce of guilt over it.
In fact, I felt better.
However, I knew from the look on my father’s face that he wasn’t going to embrace my feelings as I had always hoped he would. Yet, I wasn’t expecting any kind of tearful reunion, so it didn’t break my stride.
My father didn’t speak for a long time. He just sat there and brooded, glowering at me with an angry sense of hurt and despair.
I knew that I didn’t want him to feel terrible, especially since I was feeling so good about having my feelings finally heard, but I couldn’t help the way he felt. I couldn’t make him feel better and I never could. I finally accepted that about a year after my mother died, but it wasn’t until now that I had gotten up the strength to tell him what I was feeling, I knew for as hard as it was to make him feel better, it was just as easy for me to make him feel badly.
Still, I held my ground and did not look away. I stared at him, waiting for his reaction to come fully to fruition, until finally, his red eyes narrowed and he spat in a harsh tone, “Get the fuck out.”
Even though his words and tone stung, I managed to stay strong. I nodded once, turned around, grabbed my bag and my keys, and looked back at him. “Okay.” I walked out the door.