MARISSA
I spotted the waiting room in the maternity wing and immediately placed my brother. He was pacing and raking his hands through his thick hair, getting his wavy strands in all directions. At looking at him, you wouldn’t believe it was the best day of his life.
“Jamie!’’ I called out as I neared him. A nurse speeding by glared at me for the disruption of the otherwise quiet wing excepted for the rush of the hospital members, a couple of women grimacing and taking a walk with an IV stuck in their arm and the men that kept asking them questions.
His head snapped in my direction, and his eyes went upward in silent prayer. “You’re here.’’ He ran to me and grabbed me into a tight hug that made it impossible to breathe. I groaned and patted his back. He released me and kept his hands on my shoulders. “Mom and Dad won’t make it for another hour.’’
“You don’t need the parents, and you certainly don’t need me, Jamie. Relax.’’
“Easy for you. Shit, I’m about to be a dad.’’
“It’s a bit late to get cold feet, don’t you think?’’ I teased him with a light punch on his pec. “Dad gave you the perfect example of how to be a great father. I know you’ll be amazing. I have no doubt.’’
He closed his eyes and nodded slowly. “You have no idea how I needed to hear those words.’’
I went into his waiting arms and hugged him once again. “I’m proud of you, you know.’’
“I love you too, sis. You okay?’’
I tensed against him. The first thought was to lie to him, but I had never lied to my brother. He had always been my best friend, the person I easily turned to when I needed comfort or to rant. I wouldn’t start now.
“I will be.’’
“It’s him, isn’t it?’’ He asked, and the anger in his voice and the way he hugged me tighter talked of brotherly protection. It warmed me in places that had been growing icicles since that awful Sunday.
“I was stupid. I need time to sort out what’s in my head. Don’t worry about me. Focus on your wife and the little boy you get to meet soon.’’
“You know at any other time I’d push you until you told me everything.’’
“I know. Your boy is truly a blessing,’’ I said with a forced laugh as I pulled away from Jamie’s embrace and pushed him away just as a nurse called out to him. Aimee was asking for him.
“Go. I’ll wait here for Mom and Dad.’’
With a last nervous look my way and worries for me gone, he walked down the hall and toward his wife.
The miracle of life.
A family was about to turn from two to three. New love would burst, new possibilities and hopes. New worries would be born with my nephew too. In the meantime, I wallowed in self-pity, shamefully and quietly self-centered in my pain when it took no comparison to the wonderful changes happening in my brother’s life.
I mourned a love story that barely touched the love part, that lasted such a short amount of time people would laugh if I shared my pain from breaking up with Wyatt. I was in pain from losing a man that had never been mine to begin with, who played with my heart until he shattered it for a reason I didn’t know and honestly didn’t care.
He hurt me once, and I came back to him.
He hurt me a second time, and he taught me a lesson.
I hoped my heart would soon catch up because my fingers tingled from the need to send him a text to let him know about the new Thornton family member about to make his appearance.
***
WYATT
I wrote down another ad from Craigslist and sighed. Fuck, what could you do without a college degree, and three-years job experience at a gym and a few stints as a waiter in family restaurants around Atlanta?
I rubbed at my eyes and shut the lid of my laptop. If things kept going like this, I wouldn’t be able to afford to live in this apartment, even if it was mine thanks to my grandfather. My hours at the gym weren’t enough to pay all the bills, and I kept on snatching more and more money from my meager savings.
Nothing went right anymore, and it only put another strain on my fucked up life. I had lost count of the number of times I declined my parents’ calls after the fiftieth. Ralph's laconic texts went unanswered too. I hadn’t been going out since I drove Marissa out of my life and I spent my time at home, mostly doing pushups and situps to get some of the ever-present tension out of my system and to keep my mind from wandering to Marissa or my biological father that haunted me.
Staying outside? It was out of the question. I felt eyes on me at all times now, pushing me into a paranoia so strong I had to fight off panic attacks.
Once again, I pictured Marissa around my place. Behind my closed eyes, I saw her sweet smile that made her eyes dazzle like amethysts. She would be curled up on the couch, and I wouldn’t resist joining her. I didn’t just crave her for her body, but I did miss those naked moments with her with a passion. I’d damn myself for the soft moments when she polished my edges and lulled me into the pretense of safety and happiness. I craved her finger massaging my scalp when I would put my head on her lap while watching TV. I craved the way she felt when I hugged her. I craved the way she would look at me like I deserved those looks, like I wasn’t the screwed up guy who had a truckload of baggage he didn’t know how to discard.
Mostly, I wished for that moment before the Sunday morning that ranked in my worst moments in my life.
All my days were dark, no light in sight, not even a brief moment with sun rays. I didn’t let any of those. They’d lull me into a fake calm I couldn’t have. It was only a question of time when I’d be knocked sideways.
He was around. I knew it, felt it.
So, I hadn’t seen my family in weeks. Ava had left a sad voicemail the other day, and I still didn’t budge. They needed out of my life for now.
My eyes fell on the short list of job offers. Most of them were already scratched out on the paper. The lines angry and so deep they almost tore apart the paper in my haste to strike them out.
I was fuck out of luck.
Then, someone knocked on my door. I started in front of my laptop. My eyes snapped to the closed door, ears straining to hear any sound. Greeting my teeth, I waited and stopped breathing. My heart sped up with possibilities, with vain hopes that had nothing to do with my life and my present. Because the truth was, I hoped it was Marissa at the door, that it was her that knocked again with more insistence, the sound louder than before. But I knew it couldn’t be her.
She said she wouldn’t be coming back again and I let her go anyway.
My heart didn’t stop beating wildly in my chest. The fucker was on a mind of its own, messing with my head more than I was already.
But where it beat and pumped blood so hard through my whole body, it didn’t warm me. No, the ice seemed to envelop me fast, awakening a sentiment of dread.
I had no idea how I knew, but I knew then.
My hope flew out of the open window in the living room. My excitement, vanquished, was just a memory. I was left with dread and that same fear that I loathed and knew like the back of my hand.
He was there.
My stomach rolled as I stood up. I had lost any sensation in my legs, but I walked to the front door and stopped right there, bringing my ear closer to the wood panel.
Breathing, low and even. That’s all I heard, but it raised the hair on the back of my neck.
If I closed my eyes, I’d smell the stale tobacco mixed with cheap liquor in his breath. I’d remember the sweat permeating his skin along with some whore’s perfume.
Body coiled tight, I pushed away the little boy inside me screaming, and I twisted the locks open and pulled the door.
The first thing that staggered me was that I was taller and more muscular than him. Funny how, when you haven’t seen someone in so long you couldn’t picture them as in any other manner than what you used to see them as a kid.
He didn’t tower over me, if anything, I was the one towering over him. It was over the time when I had to look up to stare at his face. He was the one looking up while I looked him down my nose.
But then memories collided with the present in my mind and the distance I felt from the man who made my life a living hell was gone. It only took one raised bushy eyebrow from my biological father to reduce me to a quivering mess only held up on my feet by my grip on the door.
He used to raise his eyebrow just before he would slap me, punch me or pawn me off to one of his “friends’’ to fuck me up too. Bile rose in my throat.
“No hello?’’ He rasped, and his voice sounded viler than even in my darkest memory. He snapped like he had smoked two packs of cigarettes before he knocked at my door and smelled of whiskey as if it emanated from his flesh, flesh that appeared too white to be natural. His eyes, dull but calculating, went from my face to above my shoulder to get a glimpse of my apartment. “Hell, thought your new family would have taught you something. Guess when you’re trash you can’t do any better.’’
Nasty words. Old insults came back as if blurted just yesterday to my bruised face. And I stood there, frozen in front of a man who I used to want him to love me but who had always given me disdain, hatred, and violence instead.
I was a man now, but it took this one man to reduce me to a scared kid who waited for his father to unleash vileness without doing a single thing to stop him.
“Let me in, son.’’
Son.
That hurt more than the other words, more than the insults. I was this man’s son, a man who held more semblance to a monster than a person.
His eyes turned from dull to hard as he fixed me, ordering me silently to let him in. And what did I do then?
I let him in.
***
MARISSA
“Meet Paul Adam Thornton,’’ Jamie said as soon as I walked through the threshold of the maternity room and my eyes landed on a bundle of joy in my sister-in-law’s arms whose smile mirrored the ecstatic and completely in love ones that split my brother’s face in two.
Quietly, I marched to the bed and glanced at our parents that went in a few minutes before me to meet their first grandkid. The tears on their faces spoke volume of the monumental moment.
Then, when I reached my brother’s side, and he gave me a side hug as his dark eyes didn’t stray from his wife and son, I got my first real look at my nephew. He was all pink and with a scowl on his tiny little face. His eyes tightly shut made me wonder if he wasn’t hoping to be back in his mom’s belly, but the way he took hold of my finger when I touched his pudgy little hand and gripped tight, I knew he was well and truly in our world. His head, covered by a cute beanie made it difficult to know if he had any hair, but I would have ample time to discover that.
From now on, I was an aunt, and I would never spend more than a week without a look at this perfect little person and smell his baby smell that made my chest tight and full to bursting at the same time.
“Congratulations, Mommy and Daddy,’’ I said in a whisper to Jamie and Sarah, my smile genuine and fond. But it was impossible to look away from the perfect bundle for too long.
“We’re parents,’’ Jamie whispered in reverence and then looked up to find our parents at the foot of the bed. “It’s incredible.’’
“It’s the most precious gift. Children are a treasure to cherish. Paul will bring you the kind of joy you would have never imagined and give you early wrinkles too,’’ our mother said in a happy sniffle. Dad wrapped an arm around her shoulder and nodded at her words.
Jamie and I exchanged a long look then. A lot went through that look. We weren’t blood, but our bond was one of real siblings. We couldn’t have a better family, and for the first time, I understood why he didn’t need or want to look for his birth mother. He was happy in his life, created a whole family of his own. He didn’t need a disruption of that kind of happiness, a disruption that could very well break his heart.
My heart bled from looking for my birth mother even if she had nothing to do with the pain that never failed to pour out of me, earning me concerning looks from my family.
Jamie then looked at his wife and the love that was there in each of their looks for each other as their newborn son yawned in her arms, that pure and unyielding love pressed in on me. It hurt. It should make me happy for my brother, thrill me even, but it only put my failure in the love department in stark contrast.
I didn’t have the person I loved looking at me with love in their eyes, the kind of love that brought a shine to the eyes and seemed to brighten a whole room.
I didn’t have someone to hold me as I met my nephew for the first time.
What I did have was an aching pain in my chest, the kind that made me wish for more, that made me mad at Wyatt for everything that tainted my life these days.
Eyes prickling, I pulled away from Jamie’s side hug and smiled at the glowing new parents. “I better go. I left InkSpired in a rush and promised I’d call Kam and Sophie to tell them everything.’’
“Don’t you want to stay a little?’’ Dad asked me, dropping his arm from around Mom.
“I’ll come back tomorrow to visit. If that okay with you,’’ I added to my brother and his wife who immediately nodded before their attention went back to their baby. Aimee yawned, and her eyes started to close as she reclined further in her bed. “It looks like the new mom needs a break anyway.’’
“Don’t leave because of me. I know you’ve been waiting a while outside. I just need a nap.’’
“It’s almost ten in the evening already, baby,’’ Jamie whispered and bent to kiss his wife and then his son’s head. Parenthood already seemed to suit him perfectly.
“Oh,’’ she said with another yawn and gently put the baby in my brother’s arms. The slight tension in his shoulders at first told me he was scared of hurting his son, but as soon as he had him against him, secured in his arms, his stance relaxed. “Thank you for coming,’’ Aimee said and gently squeezed my hand. She had smiled at Mom and Dad before the last yawn made her stop fighting sleep.
My parents mimed Jamie that they were going too and he nodded. I kissed his cheek and had a last look at the baby asleep in his arms before I followed my parents out. Their smile was still there, and I knew mine mirrored theirs, but where it reached their eyes, mine, I knew, was trapped in the dark hole in my chest, reflecting only pain.
“You alright?’’ Mom asked me as we neared the front desk of the hospital, sidestepping busy nurses and doctors along with patients littering the halls.
“Just tired. It’s been quite a day. You should have heard Jamie on the phone when he called me! He was losing it,’’ I said and chuckled at the memory of my brother’s high pitched voice.
“He has many years to go crazy with Paul now. Wait until he takes his first nasty fall,’’ Dad said with a laugh that warmed me. He shook his head then and found my mother’s eyes. “Do you remember when Jamie and Marissa fell from the swing and both cut open their heads?’’
My mother shuddered and then patted my father’s shoulder before she looked at me. “One hurt child is awful, but the two of you at the same time? The doctor at the hospital asked me to lie down for fifteen minutes before we could leave once he was finished with you. We were a disastrous mess.’’
I remembered that day hazily. I was around six, so the memory faded with time, but it still made me smile. “I don’t say it enough, but I love you both.’’
They stopped then, and my mother grabbed my hand, forcing me to face them when all I wanted at that moment was to leave and lick my wounds so damn raw it was hard to hide them.
“Did something happen with Lydia Burton?’’
“No.’’ I chuckled then because of course, that was their first thought. They kept waiting for something to happen with her, but the reason for my ever-present sadness was much stupider. “She’s a good person, and she doesn’t force anything between us.’’
“Except there’s something. You’ve been quiet these past few weeks,’’ Dad said, voicing what I knew worried them a lot.
I bit my lip and hesitated. While my parents were great at letting me deal with things on my timeframe, if they felt that I was hiding something from them that hurt me, they were like all good parents. They were like hounds that wouldn’t let it go.
“A guy broke my heart,’’ I said in a choked voice that called for sympathy. They immediately gave it to me in the form of a sad smile and warm eyes. “Listen, I want to go home. It’s nothing that time won’t heal. Don’t worry.’’
“Call us if you need us. And if you want to spend some time at home with us, you have your key.’’
“Thank you.’’ I hugged them and right when tears threatened to fall, I escaped from their too comforting embrace and jogged out of the hospital and back to my car.
Breathing choppy and eyes stinging with unshed tears, I blew out air from my lungs, long and slow, pushing out of me the tension that kept on mounting and mounting, pressing down on me. Eyes closed, hands gripping the steering wheel, and head against the headrest, I bit my trembling lower lip. And right when I was about to lose my grip my phone buzzed in my pocket with an incoming text.
“Shit!’’ I cursed and hit the steering wheel with the flat of my hand before I twisted on the seat and got a look on the screen of my phone.
Have you seen Wyatt? I know you two aren’t together anymore, but he’s been avoiding all of us. - Ralph
“What?’’ I whispered in the quiet car. The air was hot even now that the sun was past the horizon. My forehead was coated in sweat, and I cringed when I put my hand there. Worry hit me hard, so damn hard it stole my breath and pushed my heart to beat faster, ignoring the squeeze in there from the pain Wyatt pushed on me. But then, I shook my head and gave a laugh that had nothing to do with joy. It was a dreadful sound that grated on my ears and made me squint at my phone until the screen went dark again.
He threw me out weeks ago. I don’t know what he’s up to, and it’s none of my business. Good luck. - Marissa
I threw the phone in the cup holder and then turned the car on. Anger radiated through me, the kind of anger that came from the intense pain I hadn’t been able to shake off. I was there, turning into a person I didn’t like, either moping around and obsessed with a man that hurt me or now so angry I didn’t care what could happen to him.
He didn’t want me in his life?
That was all right with me. I was out.
Only, I wasn’t completely out of his life since Lydia was his mother and Ava was his sister. That mess linked us together, even now.
My stomach twisted, and at a red light, I pressed my face against the steering wheel.
***
WYATT
I had never felt like everything, my fucking reality, was surreal. I had often thought that the reality around me was a bit too real, mostly when I was fucked with as a kid.
Punches were helluva real when they split your lips, made you taste copper in your mouth from the blood. They were incredibly real when breathing hurt like a bitch from kicks you got in the ribs.
Right that moment with my biological father in my apartment, standing there eyeing every single item in my apartment and stopping on the big flat screen, the Apple TV and the PS4, it was surreal.
I blinked and looked away, my eyes landing on the couch. Cursing quietly, I walked to the couch and dropped my ass on it, making sure to keep my eyes on the man who made me the screwed up individual I was today.
“Nice,’’ he remarked with a dirty chuckle that raised the hair on my arms.
He ran a hand along the dining table. The knuckles looked angry as if he had recently hit something. That wouldn't surprise me. The veins, blue-green under his white skin, stood out and I had no idea why I was stuck on his hands. Maybe it was because I used to always look at his hands when I was a kid, taking stock of where they were at all times to see where and when the hits would be coming. How sad was it to be back to that at my age?
“Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?’’
“I’m your father. I don’t need a reason.’’
“Sorry to disappoint you, but you relinquished your rights years ago. You’re not my father,’’ I lashed out steadily, surprised I could hide the shakings coursing through me, the way my muscles bunched as if getting ready for a fight. Most of all, I was anticipating something, anything that would come next. Survival was in knowing what you had to fight against to keep on standing.
His eyes landed on me again, and he slowly made his way to the armchair and took a seat. His knees cracked, but he let nothing on, nothing but malice in his eyes that burned through me.
“Looks like you should be thanking me.’’
“What?’’
“Adopted at thirteen. Raised like a little prince. In possession of an apartment.’’
“Yeah, maybe I’m not garbage.’’
He squinted at me and then gave me that smirk, that awful smirk I served left and right whenever I kept people at bay, the same one I gave Marissa plenty of times when I first met her. Seeing it on his face, I wanted to disfigure myself and never see my reflection in a mirror again.
“Trying to convince me?’’
“I don’t need your validation,’’ I blurted and clenched my hands into fists on my lap. His eyes followed the movement. Shit, he didn’t miss a single thing.
“Oh really? From our common friend’s words, you wanted to see where I was.’’
“Common friend.’’ I shook my head and glared at him, reminding myself that I wasn’t the kid I used to be. Once Marissa had told me to stop being a scared little boy. She was right. “That asshole is bad news, just like you. I don’t want anything to do with either of you.’’
“You let me in.’’
“Because I have a question for you,’’ I said, voice even as I pushed my back into the couch. I was determined. I’d get some answers, and then he was out. I was taller than him, and if it came to hands, I could get him. I wasn’t a kid. I wasn’t.
“Let me guess.’’ He steepled his hand under his chin. “Why did I abandon you?’’ He mocked me. He had no shame, no respect. That didn’t surprise me. Nor did it surprise me when he got an old flask from his jeans pocket and gulped some liquor, without a doubt the cheap kind that burned through your stomach and liquefied your insides.
“No.’’ Teeth gritted, I unclenched my fists and gripped my thighs. The denim was coarse under my fingertips. “Why did you keep it? WHY?’’
His eyebrows raised just as he pocketed his flask. He didn't look fazed. “What are you talking about?’’
I shook my head and bent down to blindly grab his gift stored under the coffee table. When my fingers closed around the mangled thing, I pulled it out and held it up.
“The fucking stuffed turtle! You abandoned me when I was eight. Eight!’’ Words poured out of me, louder and louder as my chest heaved. “I remember everything from that day. You told me how useless I was, garbage and stupid. A dead weight. You said that it was my fault Mom left. And the worst is that even after everything I wanted to stay with you. Even after you beat me up for years, had your friends beat me up, had a fucking pervert come all over me while I had to touch his saggy balls as he jerked off. Even after I had to listen to you fuck women, saying that it’d teach me for later. Even after I starved for two days alone in a crappy apartment while you went on a bender. Tell me how fucked up is that that I wanted to stay over being abandoned? And now you’re back, and you leave this at my door, my old stuffed animal. Why do you have it?’’
“Don’t raise your voice with me, son.’’
“I’m not your fucking son!’’ I yelled and stood up, towering over him from the other side of the coffee table. I didn't detect a hint of regret in his dark eyes. “A father doesn’t do what you did to me. Now answer me.’’
“Paint me as the devil all you want. I kept the stuffed turtle for a reason.’’
“To fuck with me when you wanted?’’
“So you would let me in when I would see you again.’’
“Right.’’ I snorted and raked my hands through my hair.
“And it’s a souvenir of you. I gave you that stuffed turtle when you were three.’’
My next words, sure to be vitriol, never left my mouth. Just like that, I stood there with my eyes on a man I despised who told me that my most treasured possession as a kid came from the monster. I had always thought, even distantly, that it was a gift from my biological mother or another distant relative. Not from him. He had never shown me any kindness.
“You seem surprised, son.’’
“I don’t believe you.’’
“Then don’t.’’ He shrugged as if it didn’t change a damn thing for him. But for me? Shit, it changed something. It had to. It meant that maybe he wasn’t just a monster. Maybe he was screwed up and twisted, but not a monster. To me, it made a difference.
“What do you want?’’ I asked quietly, shoulders dropping and eyes on the floor. My walls were on shaky foundations, my anger smothered by confusion and still the ever-present fear, that bitch of a best friend.
“Help.’’ He waited until my eyes locked in his to go on. “I’ve been evicted, and I need a place.’’
“You can’t stay here.’’ I rushed and shook my head.
“Not me. I need to keep something here, that’s all.’’
“What is it?’’ My guts twisted.
“What do you think? Coke. Heroin. Marijuana. Hell, some pills too.’’
“You’re shitting me.’’
“I’m in a bind, alright?’’
“And you thought that coming here after years to ask me to keep your stuff was a good idea? Get out of here.’’
He jumped to his feet then and pointed at my face, coming closer until his whiskey-scented breath hit my nose and I saw his dilated pupils. Could be from anger, alcohol or even drugs. Could be anything really, but it didn’t scare me. It drove me mad.
“Get out of my face,’’ I blurted and pushed him away, but he barely budged. He was still as sharp as he used to under the appearance of a weakened man. Or maybe I was the weak one, unable to push away his fucked up genitor.
He grabbed the neck of my shirt and pulled until it ripped and we were nose to nose. His breath made me squint, and the lingering stale smoke on his clothes had me cringing. But I didn’t pull away. I let him maneuver me once again, heart beating wildly and limbs limp.
“I raised you for eight years, son. You will help me.’’
“You fucked me up for eight years.’’
His eyes narrowed, and it drew my attention to his deep crow’s feet. “Is that how you want to play it?’’ He nodded and jerked on the collar of my ruined shirt. The fabric protested again with a ripping sound that told me the damn thing would hang off my shoulders, only good for the trash. “Think of your adorable adoptive parents and that little sister of yours. Ava. Isn’t that her name?’’
“Leave her out of this!’’ I bared my teeth then.
“And what about that whore that visited your place every day for a little while?’’
My arms moved before I uttered a word and I pushed him hard enough that it caused him to take two steps back. He barely caught himself before he landed on the armchair with a thud. His malicious look and that damn smirk made another appearance. My blood boiled.
“Don’t talk about her. In fact, don’t talk about any of them.’’
“You’ll do what I ask then?’’
“Or what, uh? My adoptive father is a cop. With just a text he’d drag your ass to jail.’’
He laughed then and sat on the armchair as if everything was fine. As if I played right into his hands.
“Remember your friend Tim?’’
Just like that, I shut my mouth and realized the kind of crap I was in. I trusted my cop father and I wouldn’t have any qualms about getting my bio dad in jail. It’d probably help me sleep better, but the fact remained. I was aware that he knew people, some of which he probably owed to and acknowledging what kind of scumbag he was, he told them everything about me and the people I was close to. What better way than that to ensure I’d help him?
“Don’t pull that face, Wyatt. It looks like you need money and I’m sure we can work something out.’’
I glared at him and found him holding my list of part-time jobs. He had me with my family and Marissa’s safety at risk, and he had me because now he knew I was in a tight place too.
I was a prisoner to my father. Again.
And again, I was too much of a coward to do something about it.