Page 27 of Swallow Your Sorries

I don’t give a fuck what she posts.

The buzzing dies, then starts up again.

I rip the phone from my pocket, ready to cut it off when I see the wordfatherrolling across the screen. I let out a breath and shut my eyes to ward off the impending migraine before answering it.

Here we fucking go.

“You bought a fucking club?” my father’s deep voice booms from the speaker. When I was younger, it was strong enough to create a whirlwind of fear within me. It hasn’t lost any of that strength, but I’m able to compartmentalise it now.

“I didn’t touchyourmoney.”

“I don’t care if it’s your inheritance from that cunt.”

I flinch, biting my lip so hard that my mouth fills with blood.

“I don’t even care that you spent it. I care where and how you spend it. For fuck’s sake, you invest in a club, of all things, and withthatboy of all people?”

Instinctively, I hit the volume button, not wanting my father’s words to carry on the wind and assault Hale’s ears. They’re sensitive enough. My ears are already used to my father’s uncensored words. Well, except when it comes to my mother. Two years later and I’m still not used to his colourful adjectives for her, though he rarely spoke of thetraitorat all.

“Why didn’t you come to me first?”

When have I ever been able to come to you?

I couldn’t come to you when I got the lead role in a play because you demeaned ballet and forced me to quit it for lacrosse.

I couldn’t come to you about Mum’s death because, according to you, she was a worthless whore who shamed the Auclair name. And I was just a worthless bystander who watched it happen.

I couldn’t come to you when I had those vivid, skin-crawling nightmares you’d induced.

I couldn’t come to you and explain why I can’t touch anyone’s flesh if it’s cold and wet.

Or why I can only travel in big, commercial vehicles.

Because you already knew.

You knew all of those things, and you didn’t care.

You still don’t.

My mother was a lot of things, but she wasn’t an angel. Still, she was my saviour. Not when she was the judgemental Prima Ballerina Pelletier, nor as Mrs Bart Auclair’s bourgeois and emotionally abandoned wife, but when she was just my mother, and it was just the two of us. She was my haven, my happiness, and she took it with her when she left.

She tookeverything.

Outside the parlour, the club’s walls rattle with the music’s deep base and lively patrons. So much life is buzzing outside these four walls, and all around me, and yet the distance between us feels impenetrable, leaving me numb. My father’s fury should stir upsomethingwithin me, but it doesn’t. It’s like I’ve dissociated entirely.

Unlike what the boys think, I’ve been trying to fight my illness. My affliction. My feelings about that cunt that I can’t get out of my system.

Distractions, therapies, sex, they aren’t working.

I couldn’t even get off on others’ excitement like Hale’s when I’d signed the document, and he’d gotten the keys. I thought I could be an emotional vampire. I thought I could feed off everyone else, but I’m starving. I’m ravenous and nothing eases it.

“Why didn’t you come to me, Gant?” Bart repeats impatiently as if I hadn’t heard him the first time.

Because I don’t want your advice.I don’t want anything from you unless it involves findingher.

That’s not a secret either. I know he notices it. It’s the only time we speak with equal amounts of enthusiasm. But my distance only benefits him and his forever full schedule.

Less than a second goes by before he’s already answering his own question.

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