Too Late

by C. Hoover

  I didn’t even have to hear his name confirmed to know it was him. A son doesn’t forget his father.

  No matter how easy it was for that father to forget his son.

  I turn my back to him and wipe the blood from my hand onto the leg of my jeans. I pull my phone out and do a quick Google search. After a few minutes of scrolling through the results and glancing back and forth from him to my phone, I finally find what I’m looking for.

  The motherfucker was paroled last year.

  I slide my phone into my pocket and walk over to the empty seat across from him. I’ve never been this tense, but it isn’t because I’m scared of what he’ll do to me anymore. I’m tense because I’m scared of what I want to do to him. I lay down my bet and try not to make it obvious that I’m staring, but he isn’t paying me any attention. He’s focused on the dealer.

  His hair is so thin, he might even be considered bald if it weren’t for the last few strands he’s pathetically holding on to. I run my hand through my hair. It feels as thick as it always has.

  Maybe he lost his hair because of stress and it isn’t hereditary. God I hope nothing about this man is hereditary; he looks like a fucking waste of space.

  I remember my father being much taller. Much broader. Much more intimidating. I’m a little disappointed.

  Actually, I’m a lot disappointed. I’ve always hated the motherfucker, but the memories I have of him made me think he was invincible. Which made me feel like maybe I got a little of that from him. But seeing how he’s turned out really puts a fucking wrinkle in my pride.

  “Hey, kid,” he says, snapping his bony fingers. “You got a smoke?”

  My eyes meet his and he’s staring at me, trying to bum a cigarette off of his only fucking child, and he doesn’t even recognize me. Not even a little bit.

  “I don’t fucking smoke, asshole.”

  He chuckles and holds up a hand, palm out. “Whoa, there, buddy. Bad day?”

  He thinks that was me having an attitude? I turn a chip over in my fingers and lean forward. “You could say that.”

  He shakes his head and we’re silent for the next round of bets. An older chick with tits more wrinkled than my old man’s knuckles sidles up next to him and puts her arm around him. “I’m ready to go,” she whines.

  He sticks his elbow out to shove her off of him and says, “I’m not. I told you I’d find you when I’m ready.”

  She whines some more until he pulls a twenty out of his pocket and tells her to go play some penny slots. When she’s gone, I nudge my head in her direction. “That your wife?”

  He chuckles again. “No. Fuck no.”

  I flip my first card over. It’s a ten of hearts. “You ever been married?” I ask him.

  He brings his hand up to his neck and pops it, but doesn’t look at me. “Once. Didn’t last long.”

  Yeah, I know. I was there.

  “Was she a whore?” I ask him. “Is that why you aren’t married to her anymore?”

  He laughs and makes eye contact with me again. “Yeah. Yeah, she was.”

  I blow out a slow breath, then flip over my second card. An ace of clubs.

  Blackjack.

  “I’m getting married,” I say. “But she’s not a whore.”

  I don’t think I’m making any sense to him, because he tilts his head and his eyes narrow a little. Then he leans forward and taps the edge of the table. “Let me give you a piece of advice, son.”

  “Don’t call me son.”

  He pauses for a second and I recognize a flash of the condescending look he used to give. Then he says, “They’re all whores. You’re young, don’t settle down. Enjoy your life.”

  “I do fucking enjoy my life. I enjoy it a whole fucking bunch.”

  He shakes his head and then mutters, “You’re the angriest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”

  He’s right. I am.

  I’ve never been angrier than I am in this moment.

  I want to climb across this table and shove my cards down his throat, despite the fact that it’s a winning hand.

  The dealer pushes my winnings in front of me, but I stand up and walk away before I do something stupid inside a building full of security cameras and security guards.

  “Sir!” The dealer calls after me. “You can’t walk away from your chips!”

  “Keep the fucking chips!”

  I walk as fast as I can from one side of the casino to the other. I finally find Jon, flanked by the two lot lizards at a fucking pussy-ass Wheel of Fortune game.

  “Go find Dalton and Kevin. We’re leaving.”

  I walk toward the exit and as soon as I shove open the doors, I bend forward, gasping for breath.

  I’m not like him.

  I’m nothing like him.

  He’s pathetic. He’s weak. He’s fucking bald, for Christ’s sake!

  My hands are shaking.

  “Hey!” I get the attention of a man who just exited. “Can I bum one of those?”

  He puts his cigarette in his mouth to reach into his pocket for another one. He hands it to me, then offers me a lighter. I light it and mutter thanks, then inhale a long drag of it. I’m still pacing when the guys finally make it outside.

  But not far behind them, I see him, the wrinkled-tit lot lizard flanked to his arm. They’re making their way toward the exit.

  “Let’s go,” Jon says, once they’re all outside.

  I shake my head and don’t take my eyes off my father. “We’ll leave in a second.”

  I continue staring at them as they walk toward the exit. Once they push through the doors and are outside, his eyes land on me. He notices the cigarette in my mouth as he passes me.

  “I thought you said you didn’t smoke.”

  “I don’t,” I say, blowing smoke toward him. “This is my first.”

  Again with the condescending looks. They’re the same condescending looks he used to give me when I was a kid, only this time they aren’t served up with a beating.

  From his end, anyway.

  They keep walking, and when they’re about five feet away, I say, “You have a lovely afternoon, Paul Jackson.”

  My father stops walking, waiting a few seconds before turning around. When he finally does, I see it. The recognition. He cocks his head and says, “I never told you my name.”

  I shrug and then drop my cigarette to the concrete, snuffing it out with the heel of my shoe. “My bad. Guess I should have said Dad.”

  There’s no second-guessing whether that’s recognition on his face now. “Asa?” He takes a step forward, but that was his second mistake.

  His first was not remembering me to begin with.

  I stride over to him and come down on him with both fists. The pathetic fuck hits the ground before I even follow through with a full swing. I can feel one of the guys trying to pull me off of him. The bitch is screaming in my ear, scratching at my face, trying to get me off of him.

  I punch him again. I punch him for every year he left me alone. I punch him for every time he called my mother a whore. I punch him for every piece of fucked up advice he ever gave me. I keep punching him until my fists are covered in blood and I can no longer see my father’s face. There’s so much blood, I’m pretty sure I even mistake the concrete for his head, because that punch hurts the worst.

  When the guys finally pull me off him and start dragging me toward the car, I feel the wet shit on my face. The shit my father told me is what makes the difference between men and pussies.

  Yes, I’m talking about tears. I can feel them and I can’t fucking stop them and I’ve never felt so powerful and so weak in my whole fucking life.

  I have no idea how I make it to the passenger seat, or who even put me here, but I’m fucking beating the dashboard, punching it so hard it cracks. Kevin is peeling out of the parking lot, I’m sure trying to beat security before they find the bloody mess I left at their front entry.

  Jon reaches around my seat and tries to pull my arms behind me, but
he’s stupider than I thought if he thinks he can hold me back. I tear my arms from his grip and start punching the dash again. I’ll punch it until my hands are numb or this shit stops coming out of my fucking eyes.

  I’m not turning into him. I’m not fucking turning into that pathetic bastard.

  I don’t want to feel this anymore.

  “Somebody fucking give me something!” I yell.

  It feels like my bones are trying to tear through my skin. I pull at my hair, I punch the fucking window. “I can’t fucking breathe!”

  Kevin rolls down the window, but it doesn’t help.

  “Give me something!” I yell again. I turn around and try to grab Jon, but he leans back and lifts his fucking leg up like that’ll protect him from me. “Now!”

  “It’s in the trunk!” Jon yells. “Christ, Kevin! Pull over so we can calm him the fuck down!”

  I turn around and punch at the dash again. Several punches later, Jon returns to the back seat. “Give me two seconds,” he says.

  He’s a fucking liar, because it’s more like ten seconds before he hands me the needle. I pull the cap off with my teeth and shove it in my arm.

  I lean back in my seat.

  “Go,” I say to Kevin.

  I close my eyes and feel the car begin to move.

  I am nothing like him.

  And they are not all whores. Sloan is not a whore.

  “She’s heroin,” I whisper. “Heroin is nice.”

  “What are you hungry for?” I ask her.

  She wanted me to drive back, so I’ve been looking for a restaurant for the last five miles.

  “I don’t care,” she says. “Anything but Greek.”

  “You don’t like Greek food?”

  She shrugs. “It’s okay. There’s just not a Greek restaurant until the next town and I’m hungry. If you wanted Greek, I’d have to wait too long to eat.”

  I laugh. She’s so goddamn adorable. I reach over to take her hand, but receive an incoming text. I normally wouldn’t text and drive, especially with Sloan in the car, but Dalton said he’d warn me if they decided to come back early.

  And sure enough, the text is from Dalton.

  Dalton: Time for you to head back. Asa’s not in good shape.

  Oh, shit. Did my death wish curse him earlier?

  Me: Were you guys in a car wreck?

  Dalton: No. He just beat the shit out of his father and he’s having a major fucking breakdown.

  Dalton: He keeps rambling about how Sloan better be there by the time he gets back. Never seen him like this, man.

  I delete the texts and then set my phone back in the cup holder. I grip the steering wheel. “Sorry, but we can’t stop and eat. Dalton says Asa had a breakdown and they’re on their way back.”

  “A breakdown?” Sloan says.

  “Yeah, something about his father? Apparently he beat him up at the casino.”

  Sloan looks out the window. “His father is alive?”

  I glance over at her. She doesn’t know about his father being charged for murder? I guess it makes sense that Asa wouldn’t tell her. That’s not really something you would want your girlfriend to know.

  “He doesn’t know you’re with me. We don’t have to get back before them. I’m hungry,” she says.

  I hate that I’m forcing her to go back home when she needs to stay the hell away from there. “Dalton says he’s adamant that you be there. Apparently he’s in pretty bad shape.”

  She sighs. “That’s not my problem. Why does Dalton know you’re with me, anyway? I don’t trust Dalton. Or Jon. Or Kevin.”

  “Don’t worry. I trust Dalton with my life.” I reach over and take her hand, pulling it onto my lap. “I’ll park at my car and then come over later tonight. I think there should be some distance between you getting home and me showing up.”

  She nods, but she doesn’t say anything else on the drive home. We’re both dreading the inevitable, which is coming face-to-face with an unstable Asa Jackson. He’s bad enough when he’s in a good mood. I don’t even want to think of how he’s going to treat Sloan tonight.

  When we reach my car, I look around to make sure I don’t see anyone. I parked a couple miles from her house and then walked the rest of the way this morning.

  Before I get out of the car, I pull her to me and kiss her. She kisses me back with a sigh and it’s kind of sad. Like she’s tired of saying goodbye like this.

  “How come it seems every time we take a step forward, we’re forced to take ten steps back?” she asks.

  I push a strand of hair off her forehead. “We’ll just have to start taking bigger steps forward.”

  She forces a smile and then says, “I hate that I won’t get to talk to you when you come over tonight. Or touch you.”

  I kiss her forehead. “Me, too,” I say. “We should have a sign we can use in place of being able to talk tonight. Something subtle that only we’ll notice.”

  “Like what?”

  I lift my hand and rub my thumb across my bottom lip. “That’s mine,” I tell her.

  She crinkles up her nose while she tries to think of one.

  “You should twirl a strand of hair around your finger,” I suggest. “I like it when you do that.”

  She smiles. “Okay. If you see me doing that it means I wish I could be alone with you.” She pulls at a strand of her hair and twirls it around her finger.

  I lean forward and kiss her, then force myself out of her car. I wait until she drives away before texting Dalton again.

  Me: Don’t let him alone with her before I get there. I’m scared of what he might do.

  Dalton: Noted. Not sure what’s going on with him. He shot up, slept for ten minutes, now he’s talking incessantly. He keeps saying he wants spaghetti and that his hair is really thick. He’s not making any sense. He even made Kevin run his hand through his hair.

  Fuck. He’s already unpredictable. This isn’t good.

  Me: Let me know as soon as you all get back. I’ll wait an hour and then head that way.

  Dalton: Good idea. BTW, he just looked at me and said you were LSD. What do you think that means?

  Me: No fucking clue.

  Dalton: He said, “Carter causes the worst hallucinations and he’s hard to fucking locate. He’s LSD.”

  Me: He’s out of his fucking mind.

  My phone is ringing as soon as I walk through the front door. I glance down at the screen and see that it’s Asa.

  Great.

  I slide my thumb across the screen to answer it. “Hey.”

  “Hey, baby,” he says. He sounds like he just woke up, but I can tell he’s still in a car. “Are you home?”

  “Yep. Just walked in the door. Are you still at the casino?”

  “Nope,” he says. “On our way back.”

  So I heard.

  “We’re hungry. We want spaghetti. Can you cook some?”

  “I have a lot of homework to do. Wasn’t really planning on cooking tonight.”

  He sighs and says, “Yeah, well, I wasn’t really planning on craving spaghetti.”

  “Sounds like we have a dilemma,” I say, uninterested.

  “Not to me. Make some fucking spaghetti, Sloan. Please. I’m having kind of a bad day, here.”

  I close my eyes and fall onto the couch. This is going to be a long night. I might as well make it as easy on myself as possible. “Okay. I’ll make you spaghetti. Would you like meatballs with that, dear?”

  “I would love meatballs. We want meatballs, right, guys?”

  I hear a couple of the guys in the car mutter, “Sure.”

  I kick my legs up on the arm of the couch and put the phone on speaker, resting it on my chest. “Why are you having a bad day?”

  It’s quiet for a minute, and then Asa says, “Have I ever told you about my father, Sloan?”

  “No.”

  He sighs. “Exactly. There’s nothing to fucking tell.”

  Jesus. What in the hell did that man do to him? I rub
my fingers against my temples. “When will you be back?”

  Asa doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he says, “Is Carter there?”

  I immediately sit up on the couch. Blame the paranoia, but my voice grows a little weaker. I try to hide it when I say, “No, Asa. He’s with you.”

  There’s a short pause. “No, Sloan. He isn’t.”

  The phone grows even quieter, and when I look down at it, I realize he hung up. I press the phone to my forehead. What does he know?

  An hour later, they all walk through the front door. I’m not finished with the spaghetti yet because I had to go to the store to get the damn noodles. Asa walks into the kitchen, and I gasp when I look up at him. His shirt is covered in blood and his fist is almost unrecognizable. I immediately rush to the first aid kit in the pantry. “Come here,” I tell him, directing him to the sink.

  I run water over his hand, trying to find where the blood is coming from, but it seems like it’s coming from everywhere. His whole fist looks like raw flesh. My stomach turns, but I force myself to finish cleaning it so I can bandage it up and not have to look at it.

  “What in the hell did you do, Asa?”

  He winces and looks down at his hand. Then he shrugs. “Not enough.”

  I put ointment all over his hand and then wrap it, but that’s hardly going to help. He probably needs stitches. Several stitches.

  I feel his hand clamp tightly around mine, and my eyes dart up to his.

  “Where’s your fucking ring?”

  Shit.

  “On the dresser. I didn’t want to get it dirty while I cooked.”

  He stands up and yanks my arm, pulling me toward the stairs. I can feel the pull all the way up to my neck. “Asa, stop!”

  He doesn’t let go of me, and when he drags me behind him, through the living room, Dalton stands up. “Asa,” he says.

  Asa still doesn’t stop. I have to run just to keep up with him as he takes the stairs two at a time, so I don’t fall down. He swings the bedroom door open and grabs my ring off the dresser, pulling my left hand up between us. “You keep your fucking ring on your hand. That’s why I bought it for you, so people would know they can’t mess with you.”