Freddie #2
Keegan flashes a grateful smile my dad’s way and my stomach rolls. How long have they been talking? How many messages have they exchanged? What lies has he fed her?
“Keegan might have thought she was doing a nice thing, but there’s no way you did. Why are you here?”
My father bunches his lips, considering me. “I wanted to know what kind of man you’d become . . .” He glances to Keegan. “One that makes his fiancée cry, I see. Thought I taught you better than that.”
“You taught me nothing,” I say.
But that’s not true. There are a lot of things this man taught me—fear, apprehension, sadness, self-loathing, nervousness.
On a level that I can no longer function as a human being, like a dog in a cage wanting to be free but never knowing when or if that day might come.
I’m skipping and tripping in and out of my body as we speak. On edge, the way he likes it.
“Come now, Freddie.” My dad’s eyes dart to Keegan again. “You’re making me out to be some kind of monster.”
“You are.”
He sighs. “As I’ve told you, Keegan, Freddie’s mother and I had a turbulent relationship.
Lots of breaking up, getting back together.
Between you and me, I think she had some medical problems that hadn’t been diagnosed, maybe bipolar or something.
It made her irrational, unpredictable. Her mood swings were terrible at times, and I thought it best I leave. ”
That’s not it, that’s not it at all. But my tongue is tying itself in a knot, and I can’t think with him here. I can’t defend myself, or my mum. I’m a dog in a cage, and I can’t do anything complex. All I can do is snap.
“Fuck you.”
My dad carries on like I haven’t spoken.
“She wasn’t the easiest to get along with, and I’ll admit I left Freddie alone with her more than I should have.
” He’s talking about me to Keegan as if I’m not here.
“And maybe she painted a certain picture of me, but she wanted me at her funeral, which means I can’t have been all bad. ”
She had, she’d been adamant when she was dying that I track him down and make sure he was there.
My mum loved this man. This man whose mere presence makes my knees shake.
I want him to leave—need him to—but before I tell him to get out, he speaks first, more clearly and calmly, and we’ve played this game before with my mum.
The way he made me sound hysterical to turn her against me.
“Now, son, Keegan has prepared a lovely three course dinner, and I suggest you man up and come sit with us.” He curls his finger in a come-here gesture, not to me but to Keegan, who goes to him while wiping her face.
She passes him to get to the stove where she lifts the lid of a pan. “It’s a tomato soup for starters.”
My dad takes in a deep breath through his nose and tucks his legs beneath the table. “It smells incredible. My son’s lucky to end up with a girl like you, not only beautiful but talented in the kitchen too.”
“It’s light,” Keegan says without looking at me. “It shouldn’t upset your stomach.”
“What’s wrong with your stomach?” my dad asks.
I don’t answer. This doesn’t feel real. I’m a puppet on taut strings, held hostage in a nightmare. “Keegan mentioned those so-called best friends of yours declined to be part of your wedding. What were their names again? Riley and Lenny?”
“Ryker and Liam,” Keegan answers.
“They were always up themselves, those boys, thinking they’re better than everyone. I didn’t like you staying over their place when you were younger, always thought you might come home and tell me you woke up with their hands in your pants.”
Keegan makes a noise. It sounds like a smirk, and my dad grows in confidence.
He’s still sitting on my chair, still physically the same, but something about him swells.
He rests his elbow on the table and props his chin up on his hand.
It’s too casual, too comfortable, and it reminds me of when he’d come back after months away when I was a kid and reassert his hold not only over my mum, but our house too.
It’s his—everything is his—and with dawning horror I realise Keegan is becoming his too.
He’s winning her over with their mutual dislike of my best friends.
“I never did like them,” my dad says, then he runs his tongue against his two front teeth waiting for me to defend them. “Strange boys.”
“They’ve never liked me,” Keegan says. “Never wanted me to come along to their meet-ups, always tried to keep Freddie away from me.”
It’s not true. The same way I don’t assert myself into her friendships, she wasn’t in mine. It wasn’t segregation, we didn’t leave her out, I just never invited her in the first place. But I didn’t realise it bothered her, and even now, she’s telling my dad and not me.
“Is that so?” my dad says. “You should’ve cut them off a lot sooner if they were disrespecting your girlfriend like that.”
I finally unstick my lips. “They weren’t.”
“They were,” Keegan says. “Ryker constantly calls you ‘babe’ in his messages.”
My dad shudders. “That’ll be it, then.” He shakes his head. “They’re jealous of you, Keegan, want what they can’t have. Freddie needs to learn to stand on his two feet. He’s not sixteen anymore, he can’t use the two gay guys on the street as his bodyguards, not without consequences.”
“Consequences?” I ask.
He looks me up and down. “People will talk. People will wonder.”
“Let them talk. Let them wonder. I don’t care what people think.”
My dad sighs and flashes a commiserating look towards Keegan. “See, this is what he doesn’t get. He’s never got it. The world doesn’t revolve around you, Freddie. Maybe you don’t care what people think, but your fiancée does. You’ve got to learn to put others first.”
“Fuck you.”
I resort back to those two words, and yet again, my dad ignores them.
“Get over here and sit down.”
“I’m not . . . I’m not sitting at the table with you.”