Chapter 36
thirty-six
. . .
Expose
Present Day
desiree
Saturday, 5:00pm
“I stole his car,” I say as I shove past Melissa, into the Belle household where, like always, some dinner in progress is filling the air with scents of garlic and herbs and other deliciousness that normally I’d be all for, but right now I just feel like I could throw up.
She looks over my shoulder and widens her eyes at the car parked on her street. “Inferno! She still lives?”
I nod and race down the steps to her old room, still painted pink like when we were kids. Walls still lined with the cast of Twilight and Melissa’s personal heroes, Meryl Streep and Lin-Manuel Miranda. There’s even an old 8x10 football photo of my brother, and I love that I can still laugh at that, even with everything I’m feeling right now. I love that even with Melissa’s success, she still stays here in her childhood home when she’s in town to visit, and that it’s a time capsule of our best memories. It’s exactly what I need.
I flop myself on her bed and squeeze one of her pillows into my chest, feeling just as heartbroken as any sixteen-year-old girl might.
“So what happened?” she asks, standing above me with hands on her hips. “Did Evelyn show up? Demand you stay away from her man?”
“No,” I mumble through her pillow. I pull it back from my face. “Something worse. Some horrific lie spun by his mother , by Lynda , and Taven actually believes it.”
A divot forms between her brows. “Oh. I didn’t see that coming. What do you mean, what kind of lie?”
I go on to explain what Taven told me, and how sad I am that he actually believes my father could do something like that. But how even more fucked up it would be if we were to actually be together, and I’d be looking at trying to share my life with a man whose mother is hell-bent on ruining my father’s name. All because she’s always looked down on us and wanted some crazy way to cut ties with me and my family.
Melissa sits down next to me, lays down and curls her body around mine, spooning me gently while her hand rubs my arm. “Where would she come up with something like that?”
I fiddle with the rhinestones on her nails. “I bet Jacqui had a little innocent crush on my dad or something, and Lynda just ran with it.”
“And you don’t think it’s possible that it’s true?”
I freeze for a moment, then spin around and turn to face her. “My father ? And a teenaged girl?” I pull my head back. “Do I believe he ever stepped out on my mom? Sure. But with a girl still in high school?”
Melissa sighs and sits up, then pulls my hands into hers. “Sweetie, I think it’s worth considering that it could be true. Lynda didn’t just make it up.”
I stare up at her in disbelief, then sit up and tuck my feet beneath me. “Lynda is a fucking snob, Mel. She always has been, and you can’t trust people like that. They’ll do and say anything all for their own agenda because they look down on everyone around them.”
I study her eyes for some indication that she agrees, for a similar hatred toward Taven’s mother that I’m fueling by the minute as we speak.
But instead, her expression just looks sad. “But Dez.”
I wait a few beats. She is just staring at me, as if attempting to communicate with unspoken words.
“What? What are you trying to tell me?” I implore, my eyes stinging from not blinking.
She continues slowly. “Eleven years ago, when I was just nineteen years old…”
I sit motionless and wait for her to continue.
“Your father seduced me too.”
I’m in complete disbelief and shock, just stunned silent and listening with wide eyes when Melissa spills out her story.
The story of how my father had been in New York on business. Melissa was in some off-Broadway play. My father had reached out to her, joked he was sick of hearing me brag about her performance and he wanted to come see the star for himself. He wanted to support his daughter’s best friend while he was in town.
It wasn’t a big role that Melissa had. My father had brought along some work buddies, and she hoped they wouldn’t be disappointed, feeling mounting pressure. She had been struggling with insecurities, the director that she had been developing feelings for, only to sleep with him and then watch him drop her and move on to the next cast member. She questioned whether or not she even had any talent, or if she had gotten the part just because the guy wanted to fuck her.
They went back to his hotel and had some drinks in the lounge. She was hiccuping and realizing she really needed to go, the rest of the men had all left by then, and it was just the two of them. But he was being so nice to her, and she had been having such a hard time adjusting in New York, no longer the big fish in a small pond. Against her better judgment, she agreed to one more drink. Through the blur of extra alcohol, she knew stumbling back to her dorm room was not the smartest idea, so when my dad suggested they go up to his hotel room, she agreed.
She marveled over the view of the city, something she believed would never get old. He came up behind her. He stroked her cheek. He told her there was nothing as beautiful as she was. She turned around, surprised but also intrigued. It was when my parents were separated, she wouldn’t be considered a homewrecker, right? One night. She’d allow herself one night with a real man to quell her loneliness, and everything would be fine.
She spared me the details of what happened next, but she said when she woke up, she immediately went to the bathroom and threw up, disgusted and ashamed with herself. She ran out of there and back to her dorm room, then proceeded to fall into the arms of the next guy who paid the slightest bit of attention to her. He turned out to be another colossal mistake, emotionally abusive and horrifically possessive.
It’s why she stopped talking to me. She couldn’t face me, she could barely face herself in those days.
I stare at her as she says all this, wondering what my reaction should be. Mad? Nope, that’s not it. At my father, yes. But not her. Scared? That feels a bit closer. Of what exactly, I’m not sure. But there’s fear in my chest, I know that.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I ask. “I mean, it’s not even my business, but I would have understood.”
“Would you, though? Would you have believed me? That your dad fed me drinks and hooked his talons into me like that, and not that I asked for it somehow?”
I think about what she’s saying. And I realize with bitterness that at that time, no, I probably would not have understood. I probably would have blamed her.
Because that was when I was young, before snake guy, when I sat on a mighty high throne of self-righteousness. Before I had experienced a similar series of choices that ultimately led to me being taken advantage of. Something that wildly shifted my own views and understandings of the truths about scary things that previously sat in a comfortable box of lies I told myself, labeled That Would Never Happen to Me, with a subheading of (Because I’m Definitely Smarter Than That).
I feel a wave of shame as I realize that. Shame in the way na?veté had me living in a sheltered place of not believing certain things existed in the world. Not close to me, anyhow. I think about when I was younger, the number of times my immature mouth called someone a name behind their back, never even thinking about what that person was going through or had been through, passing judgment on them when I didn’t have a damn clue about anything and should have been shutting my mouth.
I think about Melissa and the boys she used to cycle through when we were in high school. So much outward confidence that landed her lots of guys, but how many insecurities was she really holding back then? It never occurred to me that Melissa was anything other than a cool, sexy hopeless romantic who liked to sleep around.
Oh, how I had envied her and that obvious confidence she exhibited when we were teenagers. Oh, how I wanted to hold boys in the palm of my hand like she did, wanted so badly to be a natural shiny star like she was. Yet looking at it with older and wiser eyes, I see the pain she must have had brewing beneath the surface.
After my sessions with Ruth, after my brief fling with Taven when I made the hardest decision in walking away, I reclaimed my sexuality with an adventurous attitude. I never got close to anyone, but enjoyed the luxury of casual sex, armed with a new knowledge of what I actually liked and how to ask for it. Sex was fun for me, finally. Might others judge me for that? Maybe.
Because no one knows what really goes on behind someone else’s closed doors. We love to judge as a fool hearted way of protecting ourselves, but it only limits our ability to truly have compassion.
I look back at Melissa. I hug her and tell her I’m sorry that my father is a scumbag. She tells me it’s alright, it’s not my fault. She says she feels better finally being able to get it off her chest.
I release her and push myself back to lean against her headboard. “Was it hard to see him again, when my mom was sick?” I think about how she dropped everything to come back to Ohio at the time. The way she lit up the room and made my mom laugh while lying on her hospital bed.
Melissa shrugs. “Oh, Frank Hatson is just a broken little boy that’s starved for love, I paid him no mind,” she says through a smile. But I see it. The truth in her eyes. That yes, it was hard. I can’t even imagine. But she came anyway. She did it for me.
“Thank you, Mel,” I say.
She nods. “Enough about me. What are you going to do now? Or are we just waiting for the police to show up to retrieve the stolen car out front?”
I scoot over to the side of the bed and rise to a stand. “I’m going to drive back to his house, use the time to sort through all the shit I’ve just learned about my father today, and then I’m going to continue my precious forty-eight hours with Taven.”
“Are you sure you’re feeling alright?” she asks. “I could drive you if you want.”
I shake my head no. I assure her I’m fine, and that the doctors just have to say these things to cover their asses.
She smiles at me. “Well then, way to take advantage of doctor’s orders. Now go fall madly in love with your man all over again.”
“I will. ”
“Although,” she says, pulling her lip between her teeth. “What about Evelyn?”
I shrug. “What about her? She’s no Dazzle to him.”
“Cocky bitch,” she mutters before smacking my ass and telling me to get out of here. She instructs me to call her when I arrive. I promise her I will as I walk over to the picture of my brother on the wall. “I’m taking this.”
She reaches over dramatically, trying to snatch it from my hands. “But no! I love that photo, I’m still holding out for hope!”
“Mel,” I say. “This was him in college. He went on to the NFL, remember?”
“And?”
“I’m getting you a new one. Signed.” I wink at her and walk out of her room.
And wonder bitterly if my dreams of having Melissa as my sister-in-law are over, since a different Hatson got to her first.