CHAPTER 16 Amelia
Amelia
He hasn’t messaged me back.
My ‘can we talk’ text message has been sitting on ‘read’ for a day now, just staring accusingly at me, like it’s my fault for sending something so utterly offensive.
Why hasn’t he messaged me back?
“It’s not the best thing to send to a man after you ran away from him. After he laid out his heart to you.”
This is from Andrea, who is firmly on Team Jake and is very cross at me for every action I took after the minutes our lips met. I really shouldn’t have gone into that much detail with her.
“I just want to talk to him,” I whine, combing my hair in front of my face, preparing to cut my own bangs.
“Don’t do it!” Andrea snatches the scissors out of my hands and spins my chair around. It is past closing time at the salon and my idle hands are itching to do something drastic. To my hair, it seems. “Emotional bangs are not the answer.”
I spin myself back around and glare at my reflection. If I can’t do bangs, then what colour can I change my hair to? It’s been this shade of blonde for over two weeks now, so I’m one week overdue for a new colour.
“Pink?” I ask my boss, twirling a strand in between my fingers. “Too much?”
She shakes her head at me. “I think you’re distracting yourself with these trivial things, when really you need to be focussed on what you’re going to do about Jake.”
I know this. I just wish I knew the answer.
“It’s up to him now, Drea. He needs to write back.”
“You need to write something less scary.” She points the scissors in her hand menacingly at me. “No one wants to have ‘the talk’ with a potential love interest. He probably thinks you’re gearing up to reject him. Again.”
That’s what I’ve been fearing for the past twenty-four hours, clutching my phone and begging for a text message notification. Instead, it stayed so silent, I had to get Bella to text me, just to make sure my phone wasn’t broken.
“I know, I know,” I huff at her, pulling my hair up into a ponytail, leaving the colour change for another day. “It’s just that I’m scared too.”
Her smile is sympathetic. “I know this is uncharted territory for you.” I’d told her about my Love, Actually epiphany, after which she’d laugh hysterically. Rude. “But it’s time for you to be brave. To put your heart on the line and hope that he looks after it.”
Said heart hisses at the thought of it. It’s been so badly mishandled by so many men in the past. In its battered and bruised state, it’s begging for some care.
“He’s a good man,” I tell her, trying to convince us both that this is true. Though I guess it’s a futile activity where Andrea is concerned. She doesn’t think he’s a ‘good man’, she thinks he’s the ‘best man’. For me.
“He is, so just call him.”
No sooner have the words left her mouth when my phone pings, both of us lunging for it at the same time.
“Is it him?” Andrea asks, holding the phone away from her face and squinting at the screen. I keep telling her she needs glasses, to which she responds that this is how everyone over the age of 45 reads their telephones.
I grab the phone off her, my posture deflating when I see who the text message is from.
“It’s from Mike the electrician.”
Andrea makes a face, like she’s sucking a sour lemon, and goes back to closing up the salon. “What does he want?”
“He wants to go out again.” The man is determined. I’ll give him that.
“He’s really keen, hey?”
“It’s always the wrong ones who end up liking me the most.”
“Or the ones who are interested in you, who you keep scaring away.”
Touché. Andrea has a point.
I message Mike back, letting him know as gently as possible that I’m not interested in another date, and put my phone back down with another sigh. Only to pick it up again when it pings loudly.
“Is it him?”
I blink at the screen in front of me. It’s a message from Joe the firefighter, who I don’t remember giving my number to.
“Damn Bella.” I send my bestie a rapid-fire text, demanding answers.
“It’s not him,” I report to Andrea, tapping my foot anxiously while I wait for Bella’s response.
BELLA: Sorry! I gave it to him at the gala ball. When I’d THOUGHT you two had hit it off. My bad for not keeping up with the shenanigans of your love life.
Humph. That’s a reasonable answer, but still. I don’t want a message from Joe. Why am hearing from everyone I know except for Jake?
“This is getting ridiculous.” I type another rejection text message, this time to Joe, the innocent firefighter who had haplessly wandered into my drama-filled love life. “I hate my phone!”
Determined to put it and thoughts of Jake out of my mind, I collect my bag from my locker, tossing my phone inside, retrieving it instantly when it pings again. This has to be him.
“It’s not him.” I feel the blood rush from my face as I read the latest message, looking up to see Andrea watching me with concern.
“Who’s it from?”
I show her the screen, my hand shaking. “It’s a message from my dad.”
*****
”What does he want?”
It’s been two hours since I received the text message from my dad, out of the blue, while I’m at my most vulnerable. In true emotionally stunted fashion, I hadn’t replied, instead calling my friends over for an emergency therapy/drinking session.
“He wants to see me,” I tell them around the straw in my mouth. Lilly had turned up with ingredients to make strawberry daiquiris and had been keeping up my supply like a trooper.
“When was the last time you saw him?” Amy asks, taking my drink and replacing it with a glass of water. Which is a real grown-up move, given it’s a Tuesday night and we all have to work in the morning.
I think back, counting the months, realising it’s been years. “At least two years.”
My friends give me matching looks of sympathy, and I gulp at my water. Has it really been two years?
“I wonder why he’s reaching out now?” Bella asks in a soft voice.
“My mum told me his new wife is pregnant. Maybe he wants to share the news?”
Lilly frowns at this. “Do you really think so?”
Given that he hadn’t contacted me the last two times his wife was pregnant, this seems doubtful, but what else can it be?
“Maybe you should just call him? Put us out of our misery?” This comes from Amy, the only adult in the room, apparently.
“Call him?” I gape at her like she’s grown another head. “What are you? A Boomer?”
They laugh at my pain while I get up to hunt for some Tiny Teddies. Surely there’s an emergency packet hidden somewhere in my pantry.
“Well, at least text him,” Amy amends, her voice muffled as I dive deeper into the deep dark recesses of my cupboard.
Ah, success!I nab a packet that I’d tucked away for just such an occasion and happily tear into it. Chocolate chip, my favourite of all the Tiny Teddies.
“I don’t know guys. My relationship with my dad is as bad as my relationship with all men.”
“You have terrible relationships because of your relationship with your dad,” Amy corrects me with the truth. “Maybe if you work on that one, the others will fall into place.”
Huh, she may have a point. I look at my phone, where my message to Jake is still sitting there read and unanswered and wonder which relationship I should work on first.
“Is it a bit like the chicken and the egg?” I ask them, my three married friends who need to guide me through this. “Which one came first?”
“Your screwed-up relationship with your dad, of course. Everything after that has been a direct effect of what your dad did. And also, how your mum handled it.”
I know what Bella is saying is true, but I also know that I really don’t want to talk to my dad.
“I don’t know if I can see him, guys.” I’ve finished my cookies and I mourn the empty packet in my hand. No more Tiny Teddies.
“We know, Millie,” Bella says. “But it really may help.”
My emotional baggage, which I’ve been carrying around for so long, weighs heavily on me and I picture what my life would be like without it. Without the sadness of my dad abandoning me and my mum, moving on to a new family. A preferable family. A life without men who inevitably let me down. A life with someone like Jake. A life with Jake.
“OK,” I give in. “I’ll send him a text. See what he wants.”
They give me an encouraging cheer and I quickly write a message, pressing send before I can change my mind.
“Done.” I pick up my pink drink, having had my designated two glasses of water, wondering what happens next.
PING.
That was quick.
“Is it from your dad?” Lilly asks, the three of them scooting closer to me, offering comfort through their proximity.
I read the message through twice before handing the phone to Bella.
“He wants to meet you tomorrow morning, but gives no reason.” She looks at me. “Are you going to meet him?”
Unfortunately for me, I work the late shift on a Wednesday, starting at lunchtime and finishing after 8 p.m., so I have no legitimate reason to say no. Other than, I really want to.
“You should do it. Get it over and done with,” Amy says. “We can all be on standby for an SOS call, to get you out of there if you need.”
Lilly and Bella nod along and I feel better. Supported. I can do this.
“OK.” I send a quick message confirming the time and place for the next morning, stopping just short of inviting him to meet me at Love, Lilly café. “I’ll do it. Just to see what he has to say for himself.”
“At a minimum, you deserve an explanation for why he’s been such a crappy Dad,” Lilly says.
“And an apology as well,” adds Bella.
“Yes,” I nod, appearing confident while quivering with nerves on the inside. “It’s just one meeting, and then I can move on with my life.”
“Or,” Amy speaks up, “maybe you could have some sort of relationship with your dad. A healthy one.”
We all look at her. She needs to say more. To explain herself.
“It’s just that I’ve got such a close relationship with my dad,” she says, shifting in her seat. “As do you, Bella, and Lilly. And it’s such an important one. If there’s a chance to get it back on track, I think you should be open to it.”
It’s true, all three of my friends here with me tonight are close with their dads and maybe it’s not such a coincidence that these are my three married friends as well.
“Is it that simple? Have a good dad, find a good man?”
“Gosh, no!” Lilly pipes up. “I don’t think that’s what we’re saying at all.” The other two shake their heads emphatically. “I think we just don’t want you to miss out on that bond, if there’s a possibility of making it work.”
“You can totally be in a healthy, loving relationship and have a deadbeat dad,” Amy clarifies, her cheeks flushed. “One doesn’t dictate the other. But if there’s trauma associated with your dad, it may be worth sorting through. Especially since you’ve kind of pinpointed that it may be a sore point for you.”
She’s right. They all are. I need to clear the air with my dad, not for him, but for me. To have some clarity and perhaps some closure. And maybe after that, I can work on getting Jake to call me back. Because it’s my relationship with him I really, really want to work on.
“OK, you’ve convinced me. Pep talks over. Let’s have one more drink before I kick you guys out so I can get my beauty sleep. Big day for me tomorrow.”
They raise their half-finished drinks in the air and we toast. To being a grown-up and fixing relationships with people, even if they don’t deserve it.
*****
AMELIA: He’s late.
BELLA: It’s 10.01 a.m., give him some slack.
AMELIA: I’ve given him ten years.
BELLA: Fair. OK, give him ten more minutes, then bounce. Come to the café and I’ll feed you cake.
I’m smiling at this message and scrolling through to find a GIF of a pig devouring cake when a shadow over me grabs my attention.
“Amelia?”
The question in his voice, like he doesn’t completely recognise me, pierces my heart. He’s my dad. What’s with the question mark?
“Dad?”
I do it back to him, petty, but it puts us on equal footing. A better place to start.
His eyes race over me, taking in my carefully chosen outfit of a simple white t-shirt and boyfriend jeans (thank you, Bella, for the advice) and my white blonde hair with lavender tips. He looks baffled, like he’s meeting a stranger and I’m grateful that my hair is at least similar to its natural colour and not the hot pink I was going to dye it yesterday—otherwise, he wouldn’t have recognised me at all!
“You look great,” he says with unexpected sincerity.
My heart jumps at his praise. “Thanks.”
We stare at each other in a silence that is filled with so many unsaid words.
“Do you want to sit down?” I motion to the empty seat across from me, noticing that he too, has changed in the last two years. He looks older and…happier?
“What can I get you two?” I look up to see a server, pen and paper in hand, looking at us expectantly.
“Um,” my dad scans the menu. “I’ll just have a cup of tea.”
Do we have this one thing in common?
“I’ll have the same.” I smile at the server, handing over both of the menus, watching her leave with some trepidation. Now that the logistics are over, we’ll probably have to talk.
“So, how have you been?” my dad asks, his gaze still skirting over me.
“Since when?”
He winces at the hostility in my voice and I feel a little bad. Keep it cool, Amelia. You’re just here to hear him out, not to rake him over the coals. As good as that may feel.
“It has been a while.” He nervously runs his hand over his hair, which is thinning. Another sign of the many years of his life I’d missed. “I’m sorry for that.”
Another loaded silence follows his apology. How do I respond to it? What should come next?
“For what?”
He gestures widely with his hands. “For everything. I don’t know where to start.”
We pause as our tea cups are placed in front of us, and I use the time to gather my wits. Now’s not the time to fall apart. That will come later, with Bella…and cake.
“How about you start from the beginning?”
My dad nods, stirring a teaspoon of sugar into his tea before adding a splash of milk. One more thing we have in common.
“I’m sorry for all of it, Amelia. I know I let you down in so many ways, it’s hard to know how to move forward.”
“You could start with why you left me? Left us? Why you were never around growing up? And why you decided your new family was worth a better version of you than the one we ever got?” I’m panting by the end of this, my chest rising and falling rapidly. There’s too much pain here; we won’t ever be able to fix it.
My dad’s face takes on a greenish tinge and he moves his hand to take mine, only to stop himself, uncertainty radiating from all over him. “I was a terrible father to you and husband to your mother. I know that. And I know there’s no excuse for my behaviour.”
“No excuse, but I’d love an explanation.”
He grimaces. “Your mother and I got married young. I’d just turned twenty-one, your mother was only twenty. We were in love and impulsive and thought that life would just work out for us. That we wouldn’t need to put in any work for things to be OK.”
“You would have needed to be around to put in any work,” I point out, tucking my shaky hands safely under the table and out of sight. “You didn’t even try.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I tried in the beginning. When you were born, I was younger than you are now, a new dad who was terrified of being a parent. But I was also so in love with you.”
My breath catches at this, at the look on his face.
“You were the best thing that had ever happened to me, the perfect baby who grew into a little girl who captured the heart of everyone you met. And things were good with your mum, too. We were happy.”
He pauses, drawing in a deep breath. I wait.
“And then things like money and bills and real life started creeping in on us. Your mother wanted a bigger house, a newer car, she wanted to travel and have nice things for you. And I wanted to make that happen. So, I worked harder and travelled more for work. You probably don’t remember it, but the first five years of your life, I was home all the time. I worked a nine-to-five job. I was home for dinner and to put you to bed.”
I think back, trying to remember this. There are flashes of memories of him reading me a bedtime story, but I can’t know for sure that they’re real and not a figment of my imagination. Made up by someone so desperate to have a dad who loves them.
“And then what?”
“Then I got promoted. Your mother was thrilled. It meant more money, so she could be a stay-at-home mum. In that first year, I travelled once a month, trying to be home as much as possible and we made it work. But as with everything, the higher up you go in a company, the more you get paid, the more they own you. My job became more demanding. I needed to be in Sydney for two weeks out of the month. I didn’t want to commit to that. I even started looking for another job, but your mum convinced me to try it. To see if we could make it work.”
I don’t remember any of the specifics of this, but I do recall in the early days my mum being happy with my dad’s job, that she didn’t complain when he was away a lot. That came later. When he didn’t come home at all.
“How did it go from that to you leaving us completely?”
His eyes fill with tears and it’s like a gut punch. This is hard for him; why had I never considered that this hurt him too?
“Time can make any situation seem normal,” he explains. “At the start, it felt wrong to be away from you, from home so much. But then we all adjusted, and it became the new normal. It only developed into a problem when your mum stopped seeing the benefits and started seeing it for what it was. She had become almost like a single parent to you, and she was resenting it. Me, you, the whole situation.”
This sounds familiar. Many times, growing up, I’d heard my mum complain bitterly to anyone who would listen about how she was basically raising me alone. And I’d agreed, having spent less and less time with a father who’d make only sporadic appearances.
“So why didn’t you guys do anything to fix it?”
He shrugs, appearing deep in thought. “We were too far in it to find our way out. I was making a lot of money and this meant we lived a certain lifestyle, and though your mum complained, she didn’t want that to change. We fought about it a lot. Do you remember that?”
I nod. Their arguments are etched into most of my childhood memories.
“The longer it went on, the angrier your mother got, the more I dreaded coming home…”
“Until the day you decided to not come home.”
He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bouncing up and down. “To a sixteen-year-old, that must have looked like a simple decision. But it wasn’t. Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
My eyes sting. “It didn’t seem that way. Especially after you met Penelope and started a new family. That seemed to come pretty easy to you.”
“It may have appeared that way, but one thing did not equal the other. In your mind, my leaving and my marriage to Penny are linked, but it was two years after I left your mother that I started dating Penny. Two. Years. I was broken when I left.”
I stare at him, disbelieving. “Mum told me you left us to be with her.”
He gasps. “That’s just not true, Millie.” My heart squeezes at my nickname coming from him. “I sent you an invitation to the wedding. You know it was after you turned eighteen. You know how much I wanted you to be there, to be a part of our lives.”
My knee bounces under the table, anxiety sky-high. “That’s not how it happened.”
He shakes his head sadly. “It is. When I left your mother—not you, your mother—she asked me to give you space. She said you were angry and didn’t want to see me. So, I did what I thought was best. But I wanted to reach out. You have to believe me.”
Looking at him, at his gutted expression, I think I do. Had my mum been lying to me?
“So, you wanted to see me? To be a part of my life?”
“More than anything. I tried with the wedding invitation, but I never heard back. I thought maybe it was too soon, maybe you needed more time and space. But then when you ignored all my calls and the birth of your step-sister, Juliet, I resigned myself to the fact that you wanted nothing to do with me.”
Instinctively I reach over and take his hands in mine. “I never got your wedding invitation, and I think maybe mum intercepted some of your phone calls, because I don’t remember receiving any of them. All I knew was that you were married and had a new family. That you didn’t have any need for me.”
My voice trails off as tears fall down my dad’s cheeks, unchecked.
“Amelia, I’ve wanted you from the minute the stick turned blue and I knew I was going to be a dad. I should have tried harder to get in touch, to be a part of your life. I thought I was doing the right thing, staying away.”
Regret courses through me at these words. Almost a decade has passed where we had believed the worst in each other, when we could have had a proper relationship.
“Can you forgive me for not trying harder? For not being there when you needed me the most?”
My own tears fall in sync with his. “I still need you,” I whisper, because it’s true. I think I need him now more than ever.
“Good, because you’re not getting rid of me now.”
My laugh is watery and I squeeze his hands, which are still in mine. “I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to have a relationship with you. I guess I let Mum’s feelings about you colour my own.” And it’s true, he’s always been the villain in my story when I should have known that in real life, nothing is black and white. Nothing is just purely good versus bad.
“I don’t blame you, and I don’t even blame your mother. She was angry after I left and then she was terrified you’d leave her as well. She wanted to keep you close, I know that.”
He’s feeling more generous towards my mum than I am. The two of us are going to need to have a heart-to-heart, and soon, because this sort of behaviour needs to end now. I’m done with the toxicity.
“Can I ask why you reached out now? What made you ask for this meeting?”
He smiles, a sweet smile. “Penny’s been dying to get to know you and with another baby on the way, it just felt like it was time. You have two sisters who know all about you, who look at pictures of you on Instagram and already idolise you. I didn’t want to bring another child into the world knowing our relationship was so fractured. So, I messaged. And you replied. Thank you for that.”
Thinking back on the emotional toll it took just to agree to this meeting, I’m grateful that my friends pushed me to do it. To face this conversation and find the answers to so many of the questions that have plagued me for so long.
“I didn’t want to meet up with you,” I admit with a small smile. “But I realise that our relationship has coloured the way I’ve entered all my relationships with men. And I wanted to fix that.”
He looks stricken. “I did that?”
“It wasn’t just you,” I reassure him. “Mum played a big part. And I have to own my share of blame in it. All I know is that deep down I never felt worthy of anything real, because I thought that if my own father didn’t want me, then no one else would.”
My dad stands up so fast, his chair tips over behind him. People around us stare, but he ignores them all, reaching for me and pulling me to him. “I’m sorry I did that to you, that you ever felt for one minute that you aren’t worthy of love. You’ve been loved by me for every second of your life, even the seconds we were apart. I love you, Amelia.”
I hold on to him tightly, pressing my face against his chest, breathing in his long-forgotten scent, and my tears fall. The pressure loosens in my chest and I revel in letting go of all the pain, the rejection, the idea of not being good enough. My dad loves me, he’s always loved me. Now it’s just time to find our way forward.
“Thank you.” I sit back, wiping my face with the back of my hand.
“Thank you,” he repeats, picking up his chair and sitting down again.
I take a sip of my ice-cold tea—ugh—and smile at him. “So, what now?”
He returns my smile, looking younger than he had when he walked in thirty minutes ago. “Now? Would you like to come over for dinner? Meet Penny and your sisters?”
I thrill at the thought of it. The idea of his new family had always been a no-go zone for me, a place in my mind that I didn’t visit because it hurt too much, but now I can make it a reality. I can make them my family.
“First let me talk to Mum.” He makes a face that he can’t quite hide, and I chuckle. “She’s still my mum and I need to be careful with her feelings. But I want to meet them. And to get to know you better.”
He beams at me like my words are a gift and I feel lighter than I have in years. “Sounds good.”
“Yes.”
“So, you’ll call?”
I look into his hopeful face and take a mental snap-shot of it. After so many years of feeling like an afterthought, this new reality will take some getting used to. “I’ll call.”
He puts his hand out and we shake on it. And just like that, I have my dad back. And my outlook on life becomes just a bit rosier.
One broken relationship down. One more to go.
Jake won’t know what hit him.