by Brenda Ford
“What are you doing here, Dad?” I ask while taking my seat. “How did you find me?”
“Anyone is easy to find if you look hard enough.”
“But why are you trying so hard to find me now? It isn’t like you spent the rest of my life looking for me, is it? In fact, you have always been running in the other direction. So, why now?”
“You don’t think that maybe I want to be a parent to you knowing your mom has died?”
I shake my head instantly. “No way. That isn’t the truth. There is no way in hell I’m buying that.”
He narrows his eyes at me, staring at me like I’m acting like a bitch for no good reason. But then he tosses his head back and laughs. “Yeah, I don’t know if I was ever cut out to be a father, to be honest.”
“And that’s funny to you?” I fold my arms defensively across my chest. “That you suck as a father?”
“Oh, lighten the fuck up, Ellie. That scowl must be permanently etched on your face. I heard about your mother dying and I wanted to seek you guys out to check that you are okay.”
“Well, as you see, we’re doing fine, so your duty is done. You don’t need to worry. You can go if you want.”
“Oh no,” He shakes his head hard. “I’m not going anywhere. Not until I have my piece.”
“Your piece? Your piece of what?” Finally, we’re getting down to what he wants.
“My piece of the inheritance, of course. I know that you got some money, and I believe that should be mine. As your father, that cash should come to me. I mean, it’s only right, isn’t it?”
Wow… I know that he’s low, but this is a new level of it. I can’t believe he just admitted that he’s only here for the money. Money that definitely doesn’t belong to him, no matter what he says…
Chapter 33 - Oliver
Rosie’s words still scream in my ears as I walk back home. She’s definitely dead against me and Ellie ever having anything which sucks. Her arguments didn’t even make much sense in the end, I just know that her feelings would be really hurt if I ever went for it, that our friendship wouldn’t survive, but I honestly don’t know if I can keep away from her. Even as Rosie yelled at me so loudly and Amelia ended up getting involved, I didn’t think that I could do what she wanted. I can’t resist her, she’s deep under my skin now and I want her.
I’m pretty sure that Amelia has figured out what’s going on now too. She is smart enough to read between the lines and to know that I crossed every barrier. She probably hates me now too.
Without thinking much about it, I try to call Ellie as I go, but the call clicks through to voice mail. It’s probably for the best. I don’t really know what I’m going to say to her. I just know that I want to see her.
“Woah.” I push the front door open and I find myself faced with one of my other younger brothers, Wesley, who I haven’t seen too much of recently. “Hey, I didn’t know that you were here. What’s going on?”
For one horrible moment, I’m afraid that it might be one of those interventions things and Brad has collected everyone together to tell me that I’m a complete and utter idiot. But his smile suggests otherwise.
“Me and Angelo are here for a poker night. You in? It feels like forever since we got together.”
It isn’t all of us, but we’re all so busy with our lives now that getting the six of us together is impossible. Four is probably the best that we can get. So much as I would like to spend the night thinking things through, I have done enough of that recently and I would much rather forget it all and have some fun.
“Hell yeah, I’m in.” I nod eagerly. “Sounds good. But I will kick your asses, all of you. I’m the poker king.”
Angelo sits in the kitchen with Brad, surrounded by beers, which is a welcome sight. They are both smiling and laughing, not stressing over their own life issues, which means I don’t need to as well. I can trust Brad not to tell anyone what is happening as well, which is awesome, because I just don’t want to get in to it.
“Hey, Angelo. Wesley just told me that you’ve come here to lose all your money to me.”
“That confident, huh?” Angelo hands me a beer. “Well, get ready to get your ass kicked.”
The laughter, the banter, the joy filling the house is exactly what I need right now. This will help me to shut down all the negativity around me and give me the boost that I want. Thank God for my brothers!
“Bro, I am not backing down,” Wesley drunkenly insists. “You might have sent Brad to bed because you bled him dry and caused Angelo to puke – although actually that might have been the booze – but I am still here. You will not defeat me. I have an awesome hand here so you might as well fold.”
Seeing Wesley drunk is funny. It doesn’t often happen, he normally keeps complete control of himself, but a bit of booze tips him over the edge and he becomes nuts. I love that side of him. It makes me want to hang out with him more. Maybe once we have a bit less going on, we can make that happen.
“Well, I have an awesome hand as well, so unless you want to lose more…”
We do a little more betting until it’s time for one of us to reveal our hands. The competition is fierce, but to be honest I don’t really care if I win or lose by this point. I’m just having such a good time. Plus, I can’t really see the cards, my vision is blurry from the booze, so I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
“Fuck!” Wesley yells. “You win again. What the fuck is your luck at the moment?”
“Huh, my poker luck, sure,” I shoot back. “But everything else is all kinds of fucked up.”
“I got that impression actually.” Wesley sips his beer and stares me down. “When Brad said that Rosie wouldn’t come for poker night. I thought it might be nice to invite her since she’s been a couple of times…”
“Yeah.” The pain steam rolls over me. “She’s mad at me at the moment.”
“You want to talk about why?” Wesley offers. “You don’t have to. But I’m here if you want.”
The thing with Wesley is he’s a better listener than he initially seems. He gives good advice and he’s very helpful. Also, he’s a complete whiz with technology, but I don’t know if that will assist me!
“Er, I don’t know. It’s a bit of a long story. We could just play another round of poker if you want.”
“Sure.” Wesley nods in an easy going manner. “Whatever you want. I’m okay with anything.”
I sigh loudly and nod. I do want to talk to him and hear his advice as well, especially since I’m pretty tipsy now. “I have had a thing with Rosie’s cousin, which is why Rosie is mad at me.”
“Wait… Rosie has a cousin? How did I not know any of this? Where have I been?” Wesley laughs.
“She moved in after her mom died.” Urgh, this part is going to suck. “She and her little brother had to live with an adult for a short while because she hadn’t yet turned eighteen years old.” I expect Wesley to have an opinion on this, but he doesn’t. He remains as silent and stoic as he was before, just listening in. “I didn’t know that she was so young when we started fooling around. I thought that she was just a little younger than me, otherwise I never would have started it. I also didn’t know that I would upset Rosie.”
“Because of her age or because this girl is her cousin?” Wesley interrupts, reminding me that I am not anywhere near the end of my complicated little story yet.
“Because Rosie broke up with Tristan – he cheated on her again – and she decided that she likes me. She said that she wanted to be with me. I mean, she changed her mind afterwards and decided that it was all because of her break up and that she just wants to be friends. But she still doesn’t want me going near Ellie.”
I don’t know how much sense I’m making. This is all confusing enough to me when I’m sober, and I’m living through it, so I have no idea how much Wesley is getting, but he doesn’t look too confused.
“What has Brad said about all of this? I’m guessing that you told him?”
�
��He told me to follow my heart. Life is short. All of that, but I can’t hurt anyone.”
“Of course you can’t.” My brother shrugs. “Because you are a people pleaser. You always have been. You don’t want to hurt anyone which is why you would never trample over anyone. Not like me.” He laughs and I join in, although I’m a little confused about his perception of me. Is that really what I am? A people pleaser? That makes me sound boring which is troubling. “I’m an asshole and you are a good guy.”
“Good? Nice? A people pleaser? You’re making it sound like I should give up on life now.”
“No, no, I’m not saying it like these are bad qualities. I mean you don’t put yourself first. You always worry about how you are going to affect other people. But by doing that, you are probably hurting this girl you love.”
“I don’t know… I don’t know about love,” I stammer. “It hasn’t really been long enough.”
“It doesn’t need to be a long time for you to know. If you feel it, it’s there. And if you do feel it, then you should go for it. Now, you know me, Oliver. I’m not going to give you a bunch of clichés like Brad, but I do want you to find happiness just like he does. I know you’re worried about Rosie, but tell me honestly, was she worrying about you when she was rubbing what she had with Tristan in your face? She must have known that you liked her, and it didn’t stop her.” Hmmm, he’s right about that. She did admit that she always knew. “And now she’s making it worse by flip flopping between her emotions, saying she likes you just when she knows that you are moving on, then changing her mind but declaring you can’t be with Ellie… it’s like a bad joke. Now, you know that I like Rosie, I haven’t ever had anything against her, but it feels like she’s playing you.”
“Oh no.” Immediately I jump to Rosie’s defense. “She wouldn’t…”
But I trail off when it hits me that maybe he’s right. I don’t believe that is something that she would do intentionally, but there are times when these things just happen. She’s played me before when she took me to that party, and I acted like I was her boyfriend. Perhaps she knew then how much she hurt me, and she didn’t stop.
“Shall I call Ellie?” I ask him curiously. “Talk to her about things?”
“Oh yeah, one hundred percent. Have a conversation with her. If you’re in love, then you owe it to yourself and her to give it a try. I’m not going to guarantee that it will work out, but you need to find out for yourself.”
“And if it doesn’t work out?” I plead. “What then? Because that will hurt as well.”
“Not as much as a ‘what if?’ that’s for sure. Regrets are much more agonizing than something not working.”
He slides my cell phone across the table to me and I grab it eagerly, knowing that I should at least call her. The night has been a pretty noisy one anyway, so she might have called back at some point and I didn’t hear…
“Right, I’m going to call her,” I inform Wesley as I stand up from the dining slash poker table. “I’ll be back.”
“Don’t worry. I’m shattered and going to bed now anyway; I don’t want to lose anymore from you.” He smirks. “Let’s hope that luck follows you. If it does, you will probably be on the phone for half the night anyway.”
God, I like that idea, so I race to my room stumbling on the stairs only one time and I crash in to my room. I dial Ellie’s number instantly and wait impatiently with the receiver pressed up against my ear.
“Oh, voice mail,” I murmur sadly as she doesn’t answer again. I hope that she isn’t ignoring me because we didn’t talk about seeing one another again after having sex. I decide that the best course of action is to leave a message, just in case. “Hey, Ellie, it’s Oliver. Sorry to catch you when you are busy, I just wondered if you wanted to talk. Or maybe hang out some time. I know that things are difficult because of Rosie but when you lo…” I stop myself just in time. “When you feel strongly for someone, you don’t want to have regrets, do you? We should give me and you a try, shouldn’t we? Like, a real try. Even more than we were before. Give me a call back when you get a chance and let me know what you think about things… that would be awesome.”
I hope she says yes. I need her to say yes. I desperately want to see if we have a shot.
Chapter 34 - Ellie
“Mom left the money to me,” I bark angrily, no longer even trying to keep my emotions locked away inside. He’s revealed himself now, shown himself to be a real piece of work, just as I knew that he would, and I am fuming. “If Mom wanted you to have anything, then she would have left you something.”
“Oh, she probably wrote the will when she was in the middle of one of her hissy fits. She would want me to have the cash. I mean, she always let me back in, didn’t she? However long I left for.”
“Because you kept stringing her along!” I throw my hands in the air in frustration. “She wised up to you in the end, didn’t she? She didn’t let you back in when me and Seth got older.”
“Oh, did she?” He chuckles the most evil sound ever. “You really don’t have a fucking clue, do you? She was letting me back in right until the end. Even if I left it for a few years, she would eventually open up the door and part her thighs for me. She couldn’t resist me. You might not have known about it, but there are lots of things about your precious mother that you don’t know. Just because she’s dead, doesn’t make her a saint.”
He tugs out a packet of a terrifying looking white powder and slams it on the table in front of me. I blanche, refusing to really look at it because I dread to think what it is. With my dad, it could be anything.
“You don’t even want to know what this is, precious little Ellie? Or do you already know?” I can’t see him because I still refuse to look at him, but I can hear him tipping some of it out all over the table where me and Seth eat. “Yeah, you probably do because you are a lot like your mother, aren’t you? All prissy and bitchy on the outside, but wild underneath. Happy to do some cocaine and run wild. You know, we always used to have the most crazy sexy when we were both high. Your mom was an absolute freak which kept me coming back.”
“Stop,” I bark while shoving my hands over my ears. This isn’t the most normal conversation to have anyway – fathers don’t usually speak to their daughters about their sex lives – but that isn’t truly what’s bothering me. “I don’t know if what you are saying about Mom is true, but she isn’t here to defend herself, so just stop.”
“Why? Does it change your opinion of her? Does it make her less of a fucking angel? Because I think it’s best that children know who their parents really are. Especially now that you have grown up. I mean, you have always known who I am because I’m an honest asshole, but your mom…” He waves his finger, basically pointing it at me. “Your mother does shitty stuff like this. Leaving me out of her will.”
The air is thick, the silence painful. I can’t believe what he’s saying! He is something else. I almost wish that I was recording this just to have proof that this is actually happening because it feels like a nightmare.
“Do you think that maybe she wanted to give anything to her children?” I finally spit back. “Since we were going to be left with nothing? If you don’t have anything, then that is your fault, but we have no choice.”
“Looks like you’ve landed on your feet with this place.” He glances around like it’s a palace rather than an apartment. “You can keep this. I don’t want to leave you and Seth with nothing. I just want what’s mine.”
“Don’t you care about me and Seth at all?” I cry back. “Are you really so selfish that you would rather have the money for yourself to put behind a bar so you can continue to drink yourself to death than let us live?”
He steps closer to me, his whole face darkening, and I’m suddenly transported back to being a small child. A young girl cowering in the kitchen while Dad yells in Mom’s face, screaming at her because she won’t give him beer money because she doesn’t have it. He didn’t even care that I was there, that I coul
d see him become this terrifying monster. I clearly recall in a way that I haven’t before, probably because I have done everything that I can to block it out, him swinging his fist back and connecting it with her face with a sickening crunch.
She fell to the floor, blood flew from her mouth, for one terrifying moment I thought that she was dead. Then she mouthed the word ‘run’ and me and encouraged me to head to my room, which like a coward, I did. I don’t know what happened next, I could only hear it, but it doesn’t take a genius to imagine.
Now that fist is swinging back once more. Only this time it’s coming for my face. Dad is actually about to smack me about the same way that he did her. She didn’t fight back, she never would because she thought it was for the best, but I might have to. I can’t take it lying down like she did.
The smash comes and I expect pain to shatter through me at the same time, but it doesn’t come right away. Shock and adrenaline must have me stunned. I can’t move at all… but then bits of plaster crumble over my head and I realize that my face escaped. For some reason, Dad showed me mercy, and took his rage out on one of the lovely walls in my nice apartment instead. I’m glad my face escaped, but I’m pissed off about my home.
“What the fuck, Dad?” I bark, not even worried that might have been a warning shot. “Get out of here now!”
“Oh, there is one way to easily get rid of me.” He rubs his scratched up fists. It looks like he has been in a lot of fights. I wonder how many of them were with women. “Give me what I owe.”
“You have what you’re owed. Nothing. Now get out of here. I don’t want you in my home ever again. You can come here and try to scare me, but I don’t want you anywhere near Seth. Do you hear me?”
“Didn’t you hear Seth?” He smirks. “My boy wants me to stay.”
“Only because he hasn’t got to know you yet,” I growl angrily. “And I don’t want him to. He doesn’t need to know that you are absolute scum. I’d rather him have no memories of you.”