by J. Daniels
“Please,” I beg, reaching up and wiping the tear that has dropped to my cheek.
The worst part is, I don’t think he ever thought about me like this. Constant. Unprovoked. Not even when we were together. But for me? This is how it’s always been. Time didn’t soften his voice in my head. The pain I feel at the very thought of him doesn’t prevent memories from resurfacing. The hate I have for him doesn’t touch the part of me that loved him.
And I’m afraid it never will.
The sound of my cell phone ringing startles me out of my sleep. I’m grateful for the disturbance, even though I’m immediately annoyed. I was in the middle of a dream I shouldn’t have been having anyway. The same recurring Tessa dream that has me waking up with my hand fisting my cock. But luckily this time, I was interrupted before I slid my tongue between her tits.
Rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands, I blink to focus on the red numbers on my alarm clock. 1:13 a.m.
Fucking perfect.
After turning on the lamp, I grab my phone, seeing the familiar number flashing on my screen. Even though I don’t have the number programmed, I know exactly who’s calling me. It’s the only number that calls me in the middle of the night, besides when Tessa would call me last year, whispering to me through the phone about how badly she wanted to ride my…
Stop thinking about her.
“Yeah?” I answer, clearing that unwanted image from my head and swinging my legs out of bed. So much for not waking up with a hard-on. I grab the shorts I discarded hours ago and step into them, palming my cock through my boxers to calm it the fuck down.
“Hey, Luke, it’s Ray. I’m sorry to call you this late, man, but I got your dad here.”
“You serve him?” I ask, pulling my shorts up and slipping my T-shirt over my head. I step into my tennis shoes and grab my keys, making my way out of my bedroom.
“No, man, of course not. My bartenders know not to give him anything. But you know how he is. Shit’s getting out of hand really fast. He’s already threatened to punch a couple of people, and if he does that, or starts wrecking my bar, I’m going to have to actually call the cops.”
I should fucking arrest him myself, but going to jail again wouldn’t do shit. That’s as useless as rehab. My dad isn’t the kind of guy who learns from his mistakes, or who wants help. Maybe he used to be, but he’s definitely not anymore. And the two stints he’s had in the county lock-up haven’t taught him shit.
I step outside, locking the door behind me. “Yeah, I’m on my way.”
***
I park in front of Lucky’s Tavern and make my way inside the dimly lit bar. I don’t hear the commotion I’m expecting, only the typical Friday night crowd noise that’s blending in with the sound of the music blaring overhead. Scanning the room, I spot Ray behind the bar, and he motions me over, empathetic frown in place.
“What the fuck? Where is he?” I ask when I reach the wooden countertop.
“Sorry, man. I tried to keep him here but once he heard you were coming, he bolted.”
Of course. This is the shit I need right now.
I exhale roughly through my nose, shaking my head. “God fucking damn it. Do you have any idea where he went? Did he say anything?”
He proceeds to wipe the counter in front of him with a rag. “I’d try the liquor store a few blocks from here. It’s the closest place for him to get booze.” He looks up at me, his hand stilling on the counter. “Have you tried talking to him about maybe checking into rehab? I know a few recovering alcoholics I could set you up with. I’m sure they’d be interested in helping you get him set up somewhere.”
I glare at him. “You’re a fucking bartender, Ray, not a therapist. Don’t try to give me advice on shit I don’t care about.”
“Whatever, man,” he says in a clipped tone, flipping the rag onto his shoulder and straightening up. “He could get help. That’s all I’m saying.”
I don’t give him a response because I’m not in the mood to hash it out with Ray right now. And if I continue talking to him, I might knock his ass out, which would piss me off further because I really like the guy. So I leave, pushing my way back through the crowd and out into the muggy air.
I get in my truck and proceed down Taylor Avenue to the liquor store close by. But I don’t make it there, because slumped on a curb a block away, with a bottle in his hand, is the reason I’ve been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night.
I’d rather be dragged out of bed to rub my cock over those perfect…
God, I’m fucking pathetic.
I pull over and put my truck in park beneath the light post that’s illuminating the dark street. As soon as I slam my door, he startles. His body jolts violently, causing the bottle to slip in his hand. He recaptures it before it hits the ground, and slowly lifts his eyes to me.
“Get outta here, kid. I’m not going anywhere.” He tips the already half-empty bottle back, gulping four times before lowering it and wiping the back of his mouth with his hand. He looks dirty, as if he’s been on a week-long drinking bender and living with the homeless who rotate through the abandoned buildings in town. His long, blond hair is matted and hanging in his face that he keeps turned down, avoiding my judgmental stare.
I step up behind him, grabbing underneath one bicep and hauling him to his feet. “Get up. I’m taking you home.”
He rips his arm out of my grip, pushing his hair back to glare at me over his shoulder. “Off! What’d I say?”
I step into him and he stumbles, staggering forward and bracing himself with a hand on the sidewalk. Some of his liquor spills and he curses before righting himself and his precious bottle. “See what you did? What you always do! Get the hell outta here.”
My patience just ran out. I knock the bottle out of his hand, sending it crashing to the pavement. Glass and amber liquid stain the cement, and I grab him by his shirt with both my hands, bringing his face an inch away from mine.
“You think she’d be proud of you right now? Of the man you turned out to be?”
“Don’t talk to me about her,” he snarls as he tries to evade my grip. If he weren’t piss drunk, he wouldn’t have a problem. Not with the twenty pounds of muscle he has on me. My dad’s a big guy; he always has been. But the only time I see him now is when he’s fucked up like this, incapable of standing too long without falling over, and no longer a match for me. For the past twelve years, this is the only version of my father I’ve known.
“Why? ’Cause you know she’d be ashamed of you? Because I am. I’m fucking done with this shit.” I drag him to the truck, shoving him in the passenger seat with more force than necessary since he’s not fighting me. But I don’t care. He deserves worse.
“You don’t know… You’ll never know what this feels like,” he says, head hanging down as I pull away from the curb. His body tremors as the sound of his sobs fills the car.
The only thing I hate worse than a drunk is a sad drunk.
I grip the wheel so hard the muscles in my forearm begin to burn. “You really believe that, don’t you? You think you’re the only one who lost her. Why the fuck would her dying affect me? Right?”
“She was my wife.”
“She was my mother!” I yell, so loud he leans away from me and slouches against the window. “And I didn’t just fucking lose her that day! Did I? Fuck you! It should’ve been you!” My body throbs with blinding rage as I try and focus on the road. I’ve never said that out loud before. I’ve thought it, hundreds of times, but I’ve never spoken those words to anybody. Not even myself.
His soft cries settle me down and I look over as he bends practically in half to put his head into his hands. “I loved her. Oh, God, I miss her so much.”
I drive faster, turning up the radio to drown him out. I don’t want to listen to this; his excuse for the way he’s been the past twelve years. It isn’t worth dick to me. Not when he acted like I died right along with her. I was only fifteen years old and I stopped existing to him.
My father became a stranger; no longer resembling the man I looked up to, and becoming the version of himself he worked so hard to get away from. He wasn’t the only one who lost her, but I sure as hell felt alone while he drank enough to forget both of us.
And now he wants my sympathy? Fuck that. If I had any compassion to give, I sure as hell wouldn’t offer it to him.
I loop his arm around my neck, grabbing his wrist with one hand and holding onto his waist with the other as I maneuver him into his house. He grumbles incoherently as I deposit him on the bed, his voice muffled by the pillow before his body goes lax.
I’m never in this house except for nights like this; when darkness and dead silence surround me. It might as well be vacant it’s so eerily quiet. We moved here when I was five years old, and after my mom died, I thought my dad would sell it and we’d go somewhere else. Just him and me. But he couldn’t leave her. He couldn’t leave the house she fell in love with and all the memories of her it held. And I think that makes him worse, because every time he looks around, he sees her. Standing at the stove cooking a meal, or sitting in her favorite chair and working on the blanket she had been trying to finish for years. He never changes anything about this place, either. It still looks exactly how it did when she was alive, down to the smallest detail. Even the bedroom they shared remains the same. Her clothes are still hanging in the closest, her favorite book is still on the nightstand, and I know seeing that shit every day drives him to drink. He’s weak; he can’t even handle the memory of my mom without letting it pull him under.
My dad hasn’t been living here. He’s been slowly dying here.
I open the door to my old bedroom and step inside, flipping on the light. I took most of my stuff with me when I moved out nine years ago, except for the twin bed I was too tall for and a few things I didn’t want. I grab the guitar case that’s leaning against the wall in one of the corners and set it on the bed. Turning around, I open the bottom drawer of my old dresser and take out the Mason jar full of guitar picks I’ve always kept in there. I rattle it around a bit, seeing some of the old ones my dad gave me from when he used to play, before tucking the jar under my arm and picking up the guitar case. After leaving with the only two items left in the house that mean something to me, I lock up and head home.
***
I drop the case on my bed and stick the Mason jar on my nightstand with my phone and keys. The case is covered in Pearl Jam stickers, some faded to the point of being almost unrecognizable, while others are peeling and frayed at the ends. I was obsessed with them when I started playing, learning almost all of their songs and idolizing Eddie Vedder. I could play them pretty good, but I always sang for shit. That used to be my dad’s role.
A familiar nudge against the back of my leg nearly knocks me over as I’m pulling my shirt off.
I turn and reach down, brushing my hand through the fur. “Where you been, huh? You fall asleep in the bathroom again?”
Max, my Golden Retriever, sits and lifts one paw, thudding it against me and scratching down my leg with it.
I knock his paw away, rubbing my knee. “Stop, that shit hurts. You need to go out or something?”
He runs out of the room, answering my question with his abrupt exit. I walk down the hallway, descend the stairs, and open the back door, letting him dart outside into the yard. After smelling every goddamned blade of grass out there, he finishes up and runs back in, brushing past me.
I walk back into my bedroom and find him sniffing my guitar case.
“Watch out, Max.” I pop the four locks and open it up, dropping the lid back and causing him to startle. He moves to the edge of the bed and lies down, the hair on his back standing straight up. I can’t help but laugh. “Christ, is there anything that doesn’t scare you?” I rub his head, as his big eyes stay glued to the case.
I doubt there is anything he isn’t afraid of. I ended up with the biggest chicken shit of a dog when I rescued him four years ago. He’s scared of everything—lawnmowers, garbage trucks, basically any noise. Thunder sends him running for the bathroom and hiding in my tub until the storm passes. If someone ever had the balls to break in here, he’d be no help. I’d put money on him hiding under my bed until I handled things. Which I would. If anyone makes that mistake, it’ll be the last thing they ever do.
I stare down at the guitar, a gift from my parents on my fifteenth birthday. The last thing either one of them ever gave me. I lived and breathed this thing, playing it every day for seven months until my fingertips calloused over to the point of being numb. My dad taught me how to play on his old Gibson several months before I was gifted this. We’d spend hours in the basement together, going over chords and listening to music that inspired him. He’d tell me stories about playing on the road with his band and some of the crazy shit they’d get into. It was always a hobby for him, but he talked about it like he was born to do it. And his passion for it fascinated me. He told me about the time my mom came to watch him play and he saw her in the crowd, and how he’d been staring at her ever since. He treated that guitar like it was a part of his soul, and I wanted that. And when I finally got mine, it absorbed me completely, quickly becoming my entire world.
Then it was always us playing together, no longer just me watching him in complete awe. He taught me things I didn’t know, and I showed him a few things I picked up on my own. For those seven months, we were closer than we ever were. He wasn’t just my dad. He was my best friend.
I haven’t touched this thing in twelve years. I couldn’t even look at it right after she died. It stayed locked up, hidden in my closest or under my bed. A couple of months later, I got it out and asked my dad if he wanted to play like we always used to. I was suffering just as much as he was, and I needed him. I needed a fucking parent to help me deal, and he always told me music could heal a person. I thought we could get through it together. So I stood there, shaking—I was so fucking nervous to hear his voice. The voice that hadn’t said one word to me since before the funeral. And he looked up at me like I was the guy who shot my mom, and not the son he shared with her. Like I was the reason for his sadness. It was the first time he had acknowledged my existence in two months, and the first time I wished it were me who died instead of her. There was nothing but hatred in his stare, pure revulsion directed solely at me before he grabbed his old Gibson from where it was perched against the chair, swung it behind him, and smashed it against the wall.
That was the last time I asked my dad for anything, and the last time I held this guitar.
I had no desire to play it again after that day. I don’t really know if I’ll ever play it again, but if I’m leaving Ruxton, I want to take it with me. Because once I’m gone, I’m fucking gone. I’m not coming back here. I know what coming back here will do to me. Being in the same town as Tessa Kelly is slowly killing me, and I won’t be my father. I won’t let the memory of someone consume me.
At least not any more than it already has.
“No. No. No. Oh, God. What in the hell is this?”
I hold up the strange-looking top I must’ve purchased drunk off my ass. That’s the only reasonable explanation for owning such a hideous looking piece of fabric. It’s suede, with a very unfortunate amount of beading work. Who the fuck buys suede? Tossing it behind me, I continue rummaging through my closet for the hottest bonfire-appropriate outfit I can put together.
I need to look slamming tonight, rendering Tyler and every other man at this thing speechless. Because let’s be real; if he turns out to be a gerbil-loving freak like SteveMD, I’m dropping all standards, grabbing the nearest willing male, and fucking out my frustrations. Especially since I’m going to have to endure the Luke and Leah show, which has me on serious edge right now. My stomach is twisted in knots, and I know my nervousness will only amplify the closer it gets to 6:00 p.m. I really want to like this guy, and I’m praying his weird phone behavior yesterday was just some testosterone-driven I have a penis, so therefore, I’m a dumbass moment.
>
I swear. Men can be such idiots sometimes. If they weren’t so stellar in the pussy-loving department, I’d take up celibacy and worship something else besides cock.
Other than his desire to push me toward other men, there’s really no reason why I shouldn’t like him. We have great phone chemistry, he seems to know exactly how to make me come, and he’s got everything going for him in the looks department. So, I’m trying to be optimistic about tonight, even though I’m one strike away from deleting my Ignite account.
First show me your titties guy, then gerbil lover. Seriously? There should be a disclaimer on that website.
My phone alerts me of a text as I hold a floral tank top against my body. I lay it on the bed next to the jean skirt I picked out and grab my phone from my nightstand, rolling my eyes at the name of the sender.
Tyler: How was the date last night?
I sit down on the edge of the bed and type my snarky response.
Me: Fan-fucking-tastic. We’re moving in together and I’m already picking out wedding venues. Thanks for suggesting I date other men.
My phone immediately starts ringing, which I half expected. I wait until it almost goes to voicemail before I answer.
“Yeah?” I ask, lying back on my bed and trying to sound as uninterested as possible.
He laughs. “You’re mad at me.”
“Why would I be mad? You tell me to go out with another guy, as if I need your permission, when I’m clearly interested in you. It was fucking weird.”
“The date? Or the fact that I suggested it to help ease your anxiety over meeting up with a stranger you met online?”
“Both.”
He exhales heavily in my ear. “All right. I’ll admit I was a little nervous suggesting you go out on a blind date. I knew there was no way in hell he wouldn’t like you, so believe me when I say I paced my fucking apartment last night.”