Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
I was getting to know that. In small slices. On rainy days.
My need for him hadn’t dimmed. Not even a little.
I couldn’t bring myself to even drunkenly make out with the many frat boys Sariah had pushed into my arms. I wished I could because that would be some juvenile way of punishing him. But the whole point was to have him stop seeing me as a child.
Those thoughts were swirling in my mind, along with a mild hangover and stress about an assignment due at midnight tonight, as I walked across campus.
I didn’t even notice him until he was standing in my path. I almost bumped into him. I didn’t recognize him at first, and I reacted on instinct, my hackles going up, alarm bells ringing in my head to get away from this man. He didn’t fit in with even the scruffiest of the hipsters. He was out of place here, everyone giving him a wide berth, but I’d been too caught up in my own head.
“Sorry,” I muttered, glancing up, intending on walking quickly away.
But then I focused a little more on him.
“Dad?” I stuttered. The word came out on instinct, even though I’d sworn black and blue to anyone who would listen that he wasn’t that to me anymore. Well, I didn’t talk about my father, so I didn’t swear to everyone, but I reassured my mother every time she brought him up that I was done with him, and I didn’t want to talk about it. I knew it bothered her. Knew that she carried a lot of guilt for something that wasn’t hers to carry. I knew she worried about me endlessly, which was why I was still playing the part. I was still Violet, her sensible, well-mannered daughter with radical ideas to be sure, but not to be worried about.
Certainly not the Violet who did drugs, got abortions and became infatuated with bikers almost twice her age. It saddened me, the lies I told my mother to protect her. That the reality of experiencing adult type things—the things I had been so anxious to experience—had created a distance I never could’ve imagined having with my mother.
But the biggest lies I told her were when I spoke about my father.
When I said my biological father was dead to me.
All talk. Big talk. Confident talk. Talk that I had believed, to the very core of me, was the truth.
My father was a monster.
But he was also my father.
He was the man who’d cheered me on from the sidelines at soccer games. Who had pulled me into his arms every night when he came home from work, smelling of expensive cologne. He had read me bedtime stories. Put Band-Aids on scraped knees.
That couldn’t be erased. No matter how much I wanted it to be.
Especially seeing the man he was now.
He didn’t look like my father.
My entire life, my dad was always put together. In expensive suits, ties, loafers. And when he wasn’t in those, it was pressed polos, shorts, immaculate sneakers. Not a hair out of place. Not a wrinkle or stain to be seen.
But he was in a tee shirt. A wrinkled tee shirt. There was a red splotch below the collar that looked like ketchup. His chin was covered in stubble. His eyes were bloodshot, hair mussed and much too long.
His sneakers were scuffed and dirty. And he’d lost at least twenty pounds. His arms were scrawny and pale.
The effect of seeing my father like that hit me square in the chest. Seeing him at all would’ve rocked my world, but seeing him like this filled me with concern. Pity. He looked so small and weak. Except he wasn’t weak. Not when he’d used his power, influence and strength against my mother. Hate bubbled up in my throat, battling with love, regret, horror, disgust, pity, heartbreak.
“Vi,” he greeted, his voice raspier than normal. Something about it was lacking. Cold.
I stepped backward when he moved as if he was going to embrace me. Even from the distance I’d created, I could discern that he didn’t smell like expensive cologne. He smelled of sweat and cigarettes.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
He winced at my tone and the way I recoiled from him.
It hit me somewhere deep. Someplace inside me that hadn’t been hardened by the truth of who my father was. Something inside of me that was soft, innocent … a little girl who missed her Daddy.
He rubbed the back of his neck, looking downward in shame. “I-uh, I just wanted to see my precious Violet.” His voice was uncertain as he looked up at me.
Rage burned hot and low in my belly. I folded my arms. “Oh, how sweet of you,” I replied with a bite. “What would you like to do? See my house? Meet my roommates? Go out for dinner? Catch up on old times?” Sarcasm dripped from my tone. “And by ‘old times’ I mean my entire childhood that my mother spent hiding bruises and injuries from the piece of shit husband who beat her!” I shouted.