18. Hudson
Chapter 18
Hudson
S hutting Giselle’s door behind me, I hightail it to the staff room.
Finding it empty, thank fuck, I sit down and pull out my phone from the pocket of my running shorts, quickly double checking the arrival of my next client.
With twenty spare minutes under my belt, I slouch down further, tapping my contact’s list icon in the bottom right-hand corner of my mobile and scrolling until I find the number I’m looking for.
“You alright, Hudson?” My dad picks up the phone within the second ring.
“Not really,” I answer truthfully.
I thought I’d done a pretty good job of hiding how scared and confused I felt about everything after leaving Giselle’s apartment on the morning of my birthday.
Grey hadn’t seemed like he noticed anything was afoot as we boarded the train home together, although I did catch his girlfriend, Delilah, staring at me once or twice as I took my seat quietly and flicked my eyes to the fast-moving scenery outside – the smog filled streets of hustling and bustling London becoming open country fields, rolling hills of plush jade greenery, as far as the eye could see.
Nobody questioned my lack of sarcasm or the way I couldn’t bring myself to joke around. Maybe they just thought it was a case of the birthday blues, seeing as how I was now firmly in my mid-twenties, closer to being thirty than I was to being eighteen again.
I mustered up a smile for the photo Mum snapped of us, her four boys as she so lovingly called us, my birthday cake, candles still lit and flickering sitting in front of me, waiting to be wished on.
But I couldn’t keep the fake smile on my face for much longer than the couple of seconds it took her to hit the button.
It was only when Dad pulled me aside, two crystal tumblers carefully grasped in his hand, each with a perfect sphere of ice inside and surrounded by two fingerfuls of amber coloured whisky, and walked me to his office, just us two Millen men, that it all came spilling out.
There wasn’t much I could hide from my dad as a young boy, although I will admit I got a little bit better at the art of secrecy when I was a teenager, but I seem to have lost all of my tact now that I’m an adult.
“You’ve not been yourself all day, Son,” he’d said, pinching the top of his trousers and sitting down on his mahogany chesterfield leather sofa. “What’s wrong?”
With a mouthful of whisky to warm my stomach and give me a dose of courage, I spilled my guts out to my dad, knowing I could trust him wholeheartedly.
“Hudson?” His voice crackles down the phone. “Son? You still there?”
“Yeah. I’m still here.” Biting my lip, I stare down at the coffee stains ingrained into the pine table sitting in the staff room, from years upon years of daily use. “We—we talked…|
My dad hums. “That’s good.”
“I told her how I felt, she told me how she felt and… she wants some space to think about everything. I’m just so scared of fucking things up between us again, I like her so much Dad and—”
“I remember feeling the same way about your mother, Hudson. But—”
“What happens if I fall in love with her and then she’s almost taken away from me, like Mum was with you?”
There.
The only card I haven’t dealt yet, the only strand of truth I haven’t yet spilt to my dad, lays itself out between us, heavy and fit to bursting.
“I don’t know if I could bear it the way you did.”
For a heartbeat, my dad stays silent, but I know he’s still there. I can hear his breathing, steady and resilient, just like he’s always been.
Invincible, unbreakable.
Or at least I thought he was.
Until I caught him sobbing on the bottom step of our staircase, our Christmas tree only half decorated, only half of our stockings hung on the mantlepiece because Mum had been rushed into hospital before she could finish decorating.
It was then I first realised my dad wasn’t unbreakable at all.
In fact, he was rather fragile.
Just like most humans.
“How long have you felt like this, Hudson?”
“A while,” I answer truthfully, swallowing back the thickness in my throat.
“How long is a while?” Dad asks, slowly, as if he’s choosing his words carefully.
“For as long as I can remember.”
The watery sounding sigh my dad releases on the other end of the phone makes my chest constrict painfully. “Hudson. Son. I-I remember one day in March; I know it was March because the first signs of spring were beginning to sprout, and I’d asked the nurse if I could take your mum out to the gardens beside the hospital. Do you remember them?”
“Mhm.” I can’t speak. My throat too constricted with emotion.
“I bundled her up, even at the sound of her protest and we ventured out and for a moment it felt like the world did before her diagnosis, before she got poorly. It was like we were just out on date, just the two of us while you boys were at school. She sat in her wheelchair, and I was perched on the edge of the bench, both of us watching the swans glide over the pond and I remember so clearly her taking my hand and saying to me ‘I couldn’t get through this without the love of you and the boys. I just couldn’t do it. I’m only able to fight because your love keeps me going.’ I’ll never forget her saying those words to me. I’ll never forget it as long as I live… What happened to your mum was terrible, Hudson and if I could have taken her place, I would have in a heartbeat. But she fought because of the love she felt around her, we kept her going, we kept her fighting.
“Your love for your mother kept her world turning. It’s the thing that keeps most of the world still turning because it can’t be destroyed. Taken away perhaps, but… life is tough, Hudson.” He swallows thickly. “No matter which way you look at it, being a human isn’t easy. It throws stuff at us when we least expect it, putting obstacles in our path and somehow, somehow , we have to find the strength to push through. Doing it alone is possible, but it’s a lonely road, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.” I cough to clear my throat, wishing I hadn’t left my bottle of water hidden in the depths of my gym bag. My legs feel too much like jelly to even attempt to stand.
“You’re a good man, Hudson, with a good heart and I know you’ll follow it and allow it to lead you to the right place. Wherever that is for you…”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“No need to thank me, Son.” He sighs again, a weary sound I hate. “Hudson?”
“Yeah?”
“What would you think about reaching out to a professional to discuss how you feel?”
“A professional? Like, a therapist?”
“Mhm.”
“Dad, I don’t—”
“Let me finish.” His voice crackles through the phoneline. “I don’t want this to keep impacting your life, Hudson. As a father, I—” He swallows thickly. “There’s nothing wrong with reaching out to a professional for help. It doesn’t matter who you are, if you need help or a little bit of extra support, then you ask for it. You were so young when your mother took ill and… it’s okay to admit that it stole a portion of your childhood, no matter how hard I tried to keep it as normal as possible. It doesn’t mean I’ve failed; it just means I’m human too and sometimes I make mistakes and I didn’t always pick up on emotional cues to tell me you were struggling. But don’t you think I got to that conclusion on my own, I was seeing two different specialists while your mother was in the hospital, to help me cope and I owe them a huge deal. I’m not pressurising you to go seek help if you’re not comfortable, Son, but I’m just asking you to think about it.”
Pressing my lips together tightly, I mull over what my dad is saying.
I’m not going to lie, I feel uncomfortable, my skin hot and tight, my knee bouncing beneath the pine wood table.
It would be so much easier to run.
But how far has running gotten me?
“Just think on what I’ve said, Hudson.”
Swallowing down the uncomfortable lump in my throat, I promise my dad I will.
A ttempting to concentrate for the rest of the day is pointless. It’s not going to happen. I have too much going on inside my head, the weight of my dad’s words sitting heavy on my conscious.
Giselle dominates most of thoughts; the story of her shitty ex, Adam, and her choice to become celibate after the way he’d made her feel, used and only worthy because of her body – the way he made her feel as if her body didn’t even belong to her – taking centre stage.
Anger surges through me at the sheer thought of someone having enough persuasive power over Gee to make her feel that way. To make her not feel good enough, to make her only feel loved and worthy because of her body.
Guilt layers on top of my anger at the thought I made her feel the same way.
I already felt like enough of a dickhead for ignoring her while I sorted through my own shit, my own fears.
But knowing what I know now?
It only serves to make me feel more guilty; even if I know that wasn’t Giselle’s intention.
If that wasn’t enough, my dad’s words float around the edges of my subconscious too. Reaching out to a professional for help sound terrifying, but then so does carrying on the way I am – emotionally unavailable, and afraid to fall in love.
Blowing out a breath, I crouch down beside my client, Mitch, urging him to grit through the ache I’m sure is radiating through his calves. “Give me two more reps and then we can be done for the day.”
With a grunt, Mitch completes his last two dead lifts, blinking back the sweat dripping into his eyes.
“Good work today,” I praise. “Same time next week?”
Mitch agrees with a satisfied, but tired, smile, lumbering off to hit the showers as per my advice.
I grab the weights we’d been using, placing them back onto the rack, before spraying a bunch of sanitiser onto the barbell and giving it a quick wipe down.
With my last client of the day gone, I would usually be snatching my earphone from my locker, hitting play on my music, and starting my own workout.
But I haven’t felt up to it recently, and tonight is no different.
I take a step forward, thinking of just grabbing my gym back and catching the tube to my apartment where I can sit and wallow in peace, when a large hand cups my shoulder.
“No workout tonight?” Rex, asks, over the sound of pop music blaring through the gym speakers
“Nah.” I shake my head.
Rex furrows his brow, bending to look a little further into my eyes. “You okay, Hudson mate? You look a bit stressed.”
I wouldn’t even know where to start to explain to Rex about why I looked stressed. It would mean having to explain the situation between Giselle and I, including her choice to abstain from sex, and I don’t think it’s my place to tell him something so personal.
So instead, I fall back onto my default – staying quiet.
“When you’re ready to talk,” Rex pats me on the back in an older brother manner. “I’ll be here. Us men have got to talk it out too, you know, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that, mate. Nothing wrong at all.”
And with that, he stalks off, leaving me alone with my thoughts again.