Page 19 of Infatuated as They Come
“My girlfriend? Yeah. I am.”
“You’re gonna be back here in a week wishing you never sold all that shit, because I’m not letting you back in this place.”
“I don’t wanna come back. I told you: there’s nothing keeping me here anymore. School is over, Brodie’s leaving, and Holly’s coming with me. That’s it. It’s done. I’m done too.”
“That girl out there?” He pointed behind me. “That girl is gonna wake up one day and realize you don’t mean a fucking thing. You’re not important, son, and you never have been. Not to me, not to your mother who fucking left you the second she got the chance, and not to that girl.”
He wasn’t even drunk. I knew what that voice sounded like. All grungy and slurred and loud. It was the same voice that used to scare me when I was a kid, when I was too small to fight back and before I learned how to do it. It wasn’t the alcohol taking a toll on him. Every single word he was saying was coming straight from the heart.
“… Is there anything else you wanna say to me?” I finally asked.
“Your mother should have taken you with her when she had the chance,” he barked out. “Too fucking bad she didn’t want to deal with your ass, huh? Too bad I got fucking stuck with you. You know what? I’m glad you’re leaving.”
“Yeah, me too.” I nodded, turning on my heels and moving into the hallway. My eyes found the bluebells on the floor, the petals all crushed and flattened, and the sight cut right through me for some reason.
I quickly grabbed Brodie’s bags from his room—he had been packed and ready to go for weeks now—and whatever clothes he had lying around. Then I grabbed my stuff. Giving my room one last, lingering look, I moved back into the living room. My dad was leaning up against the counter, huffing deeply as I threw the bags to the floor.
“You’ll be back before the month is over,” he said. “I’m not letting you back inside this place, not if you leave. You leave, I’m fucking done with you forever.”
Digging my hand into the pocket of my jeans, I took the keys to the trailer out and threw them to the counter. “You were done with me a long timeago.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Earl was meant to pick up the keys in a few days. I’m sure you can talk him into signing a new lease.”
“And what if I can’t? You gonna help me find some place to stay? Or do you not give a single fuck about what happens to me?”
“He’s not gonna say no. Just ask Earl to give you some time to—”
“You’re just gonna fucking leave?” he asked, storming up to me in what felt like a second flat. “That’s it? You’re going? Just like that?”
“Yeah,” I said simply.
“You’re not gonna make her happy.”
Pushing a hand through my hair roughly, I felt his words pierce at me more than I cared to admit. “I can’t give her everything. I know that already. People keep reminding me like I’m a fucking idiot, but I know, okay? I don’t think I can give her the world. I wish I could, but even though I can’t, I’m still gonna do everything I can to look after her and make her happy. That’s all I wanna do.”
For a long while, he kept quiet. He just stared at me, eyes lighting up, like he was enjoying being in the middle of an argument with me. “Do you know why your mom left?” he finally asked.
“Because she hated me?” I offered. “Yeah, you told me a thousand times.”
“She left because of the same reason that girl is gonna leave.”
My head shook. “I’d never treat Holly the way you treated Mom. I’d never lay a finger on her. Ever.”
“She took off because she wasn’t happy with this life. She wasn’t happy with me, with you, with everything. The woman was fussy as hell. Probably still is.”
“She left because you couldn’t go a fucking day without putting your hands on her.”
He stepped closer to me. “You wanna know what her last words to me were?”
“Whatever they were, you deserved them.”
“There’s no future with a poor man. That’s what she said to me.”
My eyes narrowed. “No, she didn’t.”
“Oh, yes, she fucking did,” he said with a harsh laugh. “And guess what? That girl’s gonna say the same thing to you.”
