Bittersweet Always

by Ella Fields

  I didn’t know if he’d still be up for it. I didn’t know if I would be either, but a text message from my dad stating the time and place with way too many smiling emojis had me asking Toby.

  Who immediately said, “Of course.”

  I had no idea what sent me to his place yesterday. I felt it when he got up off the floor outside the door and walked away. It wasn’t that I felt guilty for standing my ground. I didn’t care what anyone’s issues were; no one had the right to hurt you the way he did me at that party.

  After he’d left and I’d continued pacing my room with Daisy watching my every move, I decided to follow.

  I was glad I did. Even if what I saw when I got to his place scared me out of my mind. The door was wide open, and his groans could be heard from the small foyer outside the living room. Quinn looked pained at the bottom of the stairs, unsure what to do. “He’s never done this before,” he whispered, expression stricken.

  “I’ve got him,” I told him. And the look of relief that passed over his face stayed etched in my mind as I climbed the stairs and stood in his doorway, horrified.

  He was writhing in the sheets, face down, as though he was in physical pain. I continued to stare until he started saying things. “Daddy,” scraped free of his throat as though the word was tearing at his vocal cords and bounced off the walls of his room, hitting me in the chest.

  When he started mumbling, “Shut up, shut up,” over and over, the tears flooded my eyes, and my heart cried out, desperate for something to do but not sure what I could do.

  It wasn’t until the mumbled words turned into growled shouts that I came unglued, and my fear for him drowned out the fear I had over the sight of him.

  I knew, pressing that cloth to his head as his blue eyes stared up at me, pleading, desperate, and defeated, that I was stuck. He might’ve been trapped inside his own head in a way that ruined him continuously, but I couldn’t stop loving him if I tried.

  Not because I felt bad, and not because my heart hurt in the worst way possible for him.

  But because he was Toby.

  It was like I’d finally seen it all, all of him, and it didn’t change a thing.

  Love wasn’t glorious. It was messy, unfair, and a burden at times.

  At times. Because the good outweighed the bad, and I knew his heart. And his knew mine on a level that transcended anything rational.

  It wasn’t a matter of putting up with it or enduring it. It was a matter of loving someone, and knowing he was a good man even when he felt like the worst.

  It was a matter of knowing. Period.

  “You okay?” I asked Toby as we left his car parked by the curb and approached the Bean Stream.

  “More than okay,” he said, bringing the back of my hand to his mouth.

  A shuddering breath slipped from me when I saw my dad’s truck.

  He had the same truck.

  Once new, but now old.

  I stopped walking two doors down from the café, and Toby stopped too. He glanced at where I was staring, then back at me, registering that something about it upset me.

  Tugging on my hand, he fitted me into a small alcove and his lips met mine, softly rubbing, pecking. Tiny pecks and little nips until my anxiety became a piece of lint, flying away on the gentle breeze. “It’ll be fine. Better than fine.”

  “Okay.” I nodded, trying to believe him. It was just coffee, and it wasn’t like I had to like her. I just had to be respectful, meet her, and keep it together.

  “I’m here. Squeeze my hand three times if you want to bail early.”

  We walked inside, and the purple and cream interior, and the scent of muffins and coffee relaxed me a little more.

  At first glance, I thought maybe they hadn’t come in yet, but then I saw them. Sitting in a booth in the far corner. My dad’s leg was jumping up and down beneath the table as he stared at the TV playing music on the far wall; Felicity stared down at her phone on the table, her chin on her hand.

  My mouth dried, my heart kicking forcefully.

  “That him?” Toby asked.

  I nodded, at least I think I nodded, and let him walk me over to the booth.

  The air changed, grew teeth and bit into my skin as Felicity looked up from her phone, a smile slowly shifting her lips.

  A smile that sagged heavily then fell to the floor when she looked at Toby.

  “Pippa,” my dad said, rising and pulling me into a hug that wrenched Toby’s hand from mine.

  “Hey.” I hugged him back, but I was only half in it. The other half of me was searching for Toby. For why this weird feeling gnawed at my skin. “This is Toby.” I pulled back, grabbing Toby’s hand, which was now clammy and stiff.

  “Toby,” my dad said, his voice a little clipped. “I’m Mitch.”

  “Is this some kind of a sick joke?” Felicity’s voice sliced through the frosted air, shattering it to fragments that rained down around us.

  “Um, what?” I laughed out nervously.

  “Mom?” Toby asked.

  My eyes swung frantically between Felicity’s drawn but pretty face and Toby’s dumbfounded expression.

  Then to my dad, who looked as confused as I felt. But only for a second.

  “How’d you know?” Felicity wailed at my dad, her hands shaking as she scooped up her phone and purse from the booth. “I know you haven’t been happy with me for some time, but this is low, Mitch.”

  Realization hit, thick and hard, slamming down on top of mine and my dad’s heads.

  His mom.

  Felicity was Toby’s mom.

  “I didn’t,” my dad said, his voice confident but wavering slightly as he stared at Toby in shock. “She said she might be bringing someone. I had no idea …” His head shook. “Wait, you have a son and never even mentioned him?”

  Toby squeezed my hand three times, and my eyes shot up to meet his.

  He wasn’t okay. He was far from okay.

  I followed him outside, the sweat between our palms slippery.

  “What the fuck,” he whisper-hissed, letting go of my hand and doubling over on the sidewalk.

  “I didn’t know. I promise.”

  “No, I know,” he wheezed. “I … I can’t …” breathe was what he didn’t say.

  My hands gripped his face, forcing him to straighten and stare down at me. “Just look at me. Breathe with me. Three times. Breathe in and out three times with me.”

  His head shook, and he went to step away.

  I tried again, my tone firm. “Three times. Now.”

  He blinked, then watched me inhale, doing the same before exhaling slowly with me.

  On the third breath, the door behind us opened and out came Felicity, blowing it all to shit as she stared at Toby, her gaze unreadable.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, then she was storming down the street, the breeze kicking up her pink skirt and her long brown hair.

  “She just …” Toby started, then stopped, his mouth snapping closed.

  My dad looked as though he’d been mugged. “Pip, I-I … don’t even know what to say.”

  “I have to go,” Toby said on a whisper. “Please.”

  Looking up at him, I studied his panicked eyes and the tightness of his jaw and shoulders. And I saw what he didn’t want to say. He wanted to be alone to process what the hell just happened.

  “She’s gone.” My dad stepped closer to Toby. “But I can try to—”

  “No,” Toby snapped, then rushed to say, “Sorry, I just … just need to go.”

  I watched him walk down the sidewalk, grateful that he bypassed his car. I didn’t much like the idea of him being alone right then, but I liked the idea of him driving after being sucker punched in the heart even less.

  “His mom, huh?” my dad said, watching as Toby disappeared around the corner. “I’m guessing, judging by the fact I had no idea she had a son, that he doesn’t speak to her.”

  “No,” I admitted. “She left when he was a kid. He hasn’t seen her sin
ce.”

  It made me feel a little slimy to give away bits of his personal life like that, but my dad already knew more than I ever thought he would.

  “Jesus. I feel a little sick,” I whispered.

  Dad took my elbow and gently led me back inside. It had to be a shock for him, finding out the person he’d spent his life with for over a year had been lying to him about something this huge. Yet he got me a coffee and water, sat me down, and laid a heavy hand on my shoulder as he sat beside me.

  I drank. First some water, then the coffee, as if it were something stronger that could help wipe the past ten minutes from my memory.

  “Are you okay?” I finally asked him. No matter what he’d done, or what he’d made me feel, he was my dad. He was here with me when he could’ve run after her.

  “I don’t know,” he said, grabbing the second water bottle he bought and uncapping it. “Jesus Christ. You think you know someone …” He laughed bitterly, taking a long pull from the bottle, causing the plastic to crinkle from the pressure.

  His features were tight with confusion, the lines around his eyes deeper until he let out a sigh. He looked older than the last time I saw him. Like he was finally catching up with his age. He still had a thick head of dark hair, though. And magnetic eyes that made me want to gain his approval whenever they fell on me.

  Some things didn’t change.

  “Yeah,” I said. What could you say?

  Having just found out my dad’s girlfriend was my boyfriend’s estranged mother kind of rendered one a bit stupefied.

  We sat in silence a long while until the urge to check on Toby had my insides twisting.

  Dad walked me back to campus, wrapping me in a hug that made my bones creak from his strength. “Love you, kiddo. You know that, right?”

  “Love you too. Are you going to go find Felicity?”

  He scratched at the stubble on his jaw, more silver mixed in with the dark brown than the last time I saw him. “She’ll probably be back at the apartment soon.”

  It hurt me to say it but say it I did. When you loved someone, deep down, you didn’t want them to be miserable. “Has this, um, caused trouble between you two?”

  His smile was unconvincing, but he scuffed my hair like I was ten again and pulled me to him to kiss my forehead. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about that boyfriend of yours. Toby, wasn’t it?”

  I bit my lip as I stepped back. “Yes.”

  His smile was real then. “I’ll give him the proper father shakedown next time. You know, when the poor guy hasn’t already been shaken up by the world’s mysterious, messed-up ways.”

  “Okay,” I said, fighting a smile.

  “I’ll call you tonight.” He jabbed a finger at me as he stepped backward. “Make sure you answer.”

  Heading straight for the townhouse with my heart sticking to the roof of my mouth, I was both relieved and worried when I saw that Toby’s car wasn’t in the driveway.

  Quinn was sitting in the kitchen, playing on his phone. “He’s upstairs. Daisy sent me home when you sent her the text.”

  Nodding, I kicked my shoes off and raced upstairs, finding Toby staring out the window of his bedroom.

  His back was to me, and the afternoon light painted his hair a rainbow of brown and highlighted the tense outline of his shoulder blades through his white Henley.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Walking over to him, I wrapped my arms around his waist from behind and rested my head against his back. “Hey.”

  His hands gripped mine at his stomach, linking our fingers. I didn’t know how long we stood like that, but I found comfort in the slowing sound of his heartbeat against my cheek.

  “The last memory I have of her is of her emptying a ton of shopping bags onto my parents’ bed and lying down among them, smiling wide at the ceiling as she clutched them all to her chest.” His voice lowered to a nostalgic whisper. “I was nine. She saw me watching her in the doorway, and when I asked her what she was so happy about, she told me that happiness wasn’t a question of what or when. It came, and it went. We need to grab it, grip it tight, and squeeze every last drop from it that we can. Because you never know when it’ll be back.”

  My throat bobbed, and my eyes shut to block the tears. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t … we had no idea.”

  “I know. Not your fault.” He turned, my arms moving to his back and his hands to my head, holding it to his chest. “She looked older yet still exactly the same.”

  “She’s beautiful,” I whispered. It was true. She wasn’t someone you stopped and immediately stared at, but if you happened to look twice, what you saw would fascinate you. Classically pretty, but with the aura of a spooked cat.

  “Are you going to …?” I didn’t quite know how to say it, a part of me scared of how he’d react.

  “Never be afraid to ask me something. And yes, I’ll probably tell my dad. Just not today.”

  “Fair enough. What can I do?”

  His hands dug deeper into my hair. “Just be you, here with me.”

  “I can do that.”

  “A pizza wouldn’t hurt either. We didn’t get to eat.”

  Laughing and brushing the tears from my eyes, I kissed his chest and called downstairs to Quinn.

  My dad called later that night. “She’s gone. Her stuff is gone.”

  “What?”

  His laugh was full of shock and disbelief. “That damn woman. Is Toby okay?”

  “He is.” Which I found surprising, but in a very good way. “But wait, so you guys broke up because of this?”

  “Pippa,” he said. “We’d had issues long before this. Why do you think I worked so damn much? And meeting you, she always brought up the fact you kids didn’t like her, that you never wanted to meet her.”

  “Shit cakes.”

  He thankfully didn’t comment on my colorful vocabulary. “She was getting restless, looking for a way out. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Still, I’m sorry it’s happened.”

  “Me too, but surprisingly, I don’t feel too bad. More shocked than anything.” He laughed. “That makes me messed up, right?”

  “No more messed up than the rest of us.” I tried to lighten the moment.

  He hummed. “Meeting someone in therapy, well, I guess it doesn’t always bode well. But she did well for a long while. Though she always seemed like she had some serious ghosts haunting her.” A long exhale left him. “Makes sense now.”

  A son and a husband she left behind would make for some bad emotional company. “She needs help.”

  “She does,” my dad agreed. “She’s been in and out of rehabs and doctors’ offices for years, though. She wants help until she doesn’t.”

  Until she doesn’t.

  Ignoring the alarm those words provoked, I thought about Felicity. The way she said sorry with the weight of a million apologies filling that one fleeting word. “She wants to feel guilty?”

  “Maybe. Who knows.” His sigh held years of regret. “What a mess.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked after the line went quiet for too long.

  Another sigh, this one lighter. “Nothing left to do but clean it all up.”

  “His mom?” Daisy choked out on a gasp.

  “Yup.” I tossed my mascara back into my makeup bag, pulling out some gloss. “And she just left.”

  “You’re kidding.” Daisy was on her knees on her bed, leaning forward with a look of horror on her face. “He saw his mom for the first time in however long, and she just bailed?”

  “Yup.” I put the gloss away and fluffed my hair.

  “This shit is bananas.”

  “Too fucking right.”

  “What are the odds? Seriously?”

  That was exactly what I thought, and looking back, yeah, it still seemed highly unlikely but not completely impossible. “It’s weird.”

  “Um, yes. Your boyfriend’s mom was screwing your dad.”

  Cringing, I threw her a glar
e. “Say it a little louder. I don’t think everyone on our floor quite heard you.”

  “Sorry,” Daisy muttered, waving a hand. “Anyway … and then what happened?”

  Sighing, I sat down beside her. “Not much. My dad seemed shell-shocked. He called me last night and said she’d up and left before he could even talk to her about it.”

  Daisy’s hands flew to her mouth. “Why would she do that?”

  Biting at my thumb nail, I shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe she didn’t expect her past to catch up with her and doesn’t want it to. That’s the only logical thing I can think of.”

  “Logical,” Daisy whispered with disbelief. “Right.”

  “I don’t know what to tell Toby. I haven’t told him that she’s gone.”

  Daisy crossed her legs. “Do you think you need to?”

  “He seemed okay. Too okay, considering.” Letting out a breath, I admitted, “It worries me.”

  She tugged my hand away from my mouth. “Don’t. You don’t need to question everything he does and every mood he’s in. You don’t want that.”

  I never wanted that. After watching what my mom went through, it was so easy to decide that I’d never put myself through the same. But when your heart isn’t in your control anymore, it wasn’t so easy to decide a damn thing.

  “I shouldn’t tell him?”

  “No. I think you should. Don’t be afraid; he loves you. And if you want this to work, you need to let go of the worry a little more.”

  “When did you become the insightful one?” I asked with a tiny amount of scorn.

  “When I made a mess of my life and heart. Sometimes, you’ve gotta go through the bad stuff to learn a thing or two.”

  “Fucking college. I swear, algebra exams are easier than trying to dodge heartbreak and drama.”

  Daisy laughed. “It’s so true, though.”

  Eyeing her up and down, I narrowed my eyes. “You didn’t stay at the townhouse last night.”

  “No.” She started gathering her sketch pad and bits of paper off the bed. “Came home.”

  “Aw, you must really love me.” I wrapped an arm around her, and we fell to the bed, her stuff falling to the floor.