Page 48 of Mostly My Girlfriend
My father had not been an easy man to get along with. My mother had adored him, but he had no buddies that I knew of. No male friends he would take camping trips with or anything like that. So this outpouring of people, it wasn’t out of love for my father. Respect, maybe.
More likely, it was in hopes of securing some continued patronage from his son.
I cracked my neck again and the release of the pressure allowed me to take a deep breath.
“What are you doing with your neck?” Jules whispered.
“Take. My. Mother. Home.”
It was a tone I don’t think I’d ever used with her. A command so definitive even the fearless Julia Whitford would not challenge it.
She nodded. I saw her whisper to Daniel.
I turned to my mother, who was nearly a zombie at this point, and bent down to kiss her cheek then whisper in her ear.
“Jules is going to take you back to the apartment, Mom. I’ll stay and accept condolences.”
“I should stay…they’ll want to talk to me.”
“They’ll understand,” I said. I would make them understand. That a three-hour memorial service was simply too much to bear for a woman who had suddenly lost her husband.
“He would have liked it, I think,” she said through watery, glazed eyes. “Or maybe not. He hated when people made a fuss over things.”
I swallowed. He did. It was one of the reasons he hated my outbursts so much. They were loud and angry and uncontrollable. To the point he’d decided medication was the only solution.
My father had expressed the importance of being in control from a very early age. So much so that it had driven me away for years.
That was time I was never going to get back. And I couldn’t even say that I regretted it. Leaving back then had been my only option.
But I was older now, and in some ways, I could see what my father had been trying to do with the drugs wasn’t just about controlling me. It was about helping me keep control over myself.
Like I was doing now when really all I wanted to do was scream at the top of my lungs.
Jules took my mother’s hand and Daniel carried the urn down the aisle behind both of them.
I watched Jules walk away. Watched as she carefully took each step with my mother, who I could see was still shaky on her legs. My mother had been a fit, healthy woman in her early sixties.
Now she looked like she needed a cane to walk.
I waited for them to leave. Then I walked to the podium and thanked everyone for coming and the kind words that had been said. I apologized for my mother, but as everyone could see with their own eyes, she was suffering deeply from my father’s passing.
Then I stood to the side and waited as person after person came up to tell me how sorry they were. I cracked my neck again and again. When that stopped working, I used my old breathing techniques to try to quell the rage building inside me.
And three hours later, during the drive to the apartment I knew what I needed. Knew the only thing I could take that would keep me from going on a rampage and destroying the apartment, old-school Ethan style.
One place where I could pour my hurt, my grief, my rage, and every other emotion I’d held in check through sheer willpower since I’d stopped taking the damn pills.
She’d promised me anything I needed.
I needed Julia.
* * *
Ethan
I opened the door to the apartment and immediately Jules came from the living room to greet me.
“Oh my God, Ethan. Were you really there another three hours? Are you hungry? Can I make you something?”
