CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
The amusement was wiped from her face, and her lips pressed into a soft line as she gave me her full attention. Instantly, I felt on the spot and so, so stupid for my silly confession. Anxiety fueled my need to explain further, to make me seem less like the child she saw me as.
“You know, my dad … my real dad, I mean—”
“I know what you meant,” she interrupted gently, her voice barely above a whisper.
I gave a curt nod as I continued, “He was a piece of shit.
I mean, obviously, but even before … before everything happened.
And I don't just mean the way he treated us. Like, he hurt my mom, he hurt me, but it was more than that.” I glanced at her, met her eyes, and said, “I don't know how much you know about him.”
She offered an apologetic quirk of her lips and said, “Honestly, not much, apart from what happened that night.”
“Okay,” I said, bobbing my head. “He, uh … God, where do I even start? He was bad, and honestly, I don't even know the extent of how bad he was. None of us do. We don't know everything he got up to. But I know he was a drug dealer. I know he hurt a lot of people. Killed people.”
I winced, thinking about that house. Tommy. That boy. I wouldn't mention it to Meg—I had no intentions of mentioning it to anyone ever—but I couldn't help but think about it. I couldn't help but think about it all the time.
“He killed people?” Then, quickly, she corrected herself by saying, “I mean, I know he tried. But I didn't know he actually—”
“He murdered Soldier's mom,” I told her, feeling weird calling Dad by his first name when I hadn't in years. “And … I don't know for sure, but we assume he killed others.”
Meg's lips parted with a silent gasp, but she didn't look at all surprised. The emotion in her eyes wasn't one of shock but sadness, and I turned away to gaze at the floor.
“He stole from people. He … he raped people,” I uttered in a harsh whisper before clenching my jaw and seething at the memory of finding Mom. Naked. Shaking. Crying. Bleeding.
I could only imagine the moment in which I had been conceived, and at that thought, I squeezed my eyes shut, begging my body to hold on to the croissant I'd eaten.
“Noah,” Meg whispered through the onslaught of bad memories and survivor's guilt, “I'm so—”
“Don't tell me you're sorry,” I interjected.
“Well, I am.”
“You know what sorry is?” I asked her, turning my face back to hers. “It's bullshit. It's phony. It's a filler to throw in when there's nothing else to say when, honestly, it'd be better sometimes if people said nothing at all.”
“It's just empathy,” Meg replied.
I screwed my face with disgust as I shook my head.
“No, it's not. People say sorry and carry on with their day like that person hasn't had their world turned upside fucking down.
There's no compassion. There's no help. It's just … thoughts and prayers and move the fuck on to the next tragedy without giving a second fucking glance at the last guy.”
She blinked rapidly, looking away as she swallowed and said, “Wow. I, um … I guess I never thought of it—”
“It's nobody's fault,” I pressed. “Honestly, I don't think the majority of people are supposed to care so much about everybody all the fucking time.
God, every damn day, you get on social media, and you're bombarded with every terrible fucking thing that's happening in every single part of the world.
It isn't healthy to have all of that bad shit put on you every single second of every single day.
We're not meant to handle so much. We can't. But that's also why it's phony.
The sorries, the … the … the crusades people go on all the time, the causes they latch on to for a moment until they're bored and move on. They claim to care about all of them, but they do nothing about any of them. They just sorry you to death and expect someone else to help, and I hate it.”
Poor Meg. She was stunned. At some point in my tirade, her eyes had widened, and her lips had parted. Something like wonder and shock coalesced in the depths of her blue, blue, blue eyes, and when I was finished, she exhaled.
“Wow, okay, so … that's why you'd be Batman?”
It sounded silly, so I laughed and said, “That's why, instead of saying sorry, I want to do something.”
“In what way?”
I shrugged. “I guess … I guess I wanna stop the bad guys.”
“You want to be a cop?”
“Or a detective or … something,” I said with a nod. “But … I dunno. I also look at myself and who I am and I think—”
“Wait, what do you mean, who you are?”
Immediately disheartened, I lifted my shoulders in a deep shrug and said, “You know, I'm my father's son.”
“And you think being a terrible person is genetic?”
“You don't know that it's not,” I challenged, pinning her with my glare.
“I know that a terrible person wouldn't have given me the spiel you just did,” she countered gently, lifting her lips in a smile. “A terrible person wouldn't want to be Batman.”
“I mean, Batman isn't exactly a good person either. He's egotistical and arrogant,” I offered, smirking as I picked at a loose thread on the cot’s edge.
“Oh, so another thing you have in common.”
I turned, shocked by her teasing tone. “You think I'm arrogant?”
“There's nothing small about me,” she mocked, a playful glint in her eyes. “Oh, no, nothing arrogant about that at all.”
“Babe, that's not arrogance,” I said. “That's the truth.”
“Uh-huh,” she murmured. “And, by the way, I'm not your babe.”
“I call all my friends babe,” I lied.
“Oh, I'm sure you do,” she retorted, rising to her feet and stretching her arms overhead.
The movement shifted her shirt, raising it an inch and revealing a strip of skin above her waistband. I bit my lip to keep my mouth from watering, and I quickly diverted my eyes to hers.
“You leaving?” I asked, hoping to keep the disappointment in my tone hidden.
“Well, we need to eat dinner, don't we?”
“Brunch and dinner? Wow. What did I do to get so lucky?” I asked, grinning.
She pulled her tote bag onto her shoulder, and her eyes lingered on mine for a beat longer than expected.
My mouth dried, and my pulse fluttered as I wondered what it might be that I was seeing within those lakes of blue until I started to wonder if I was only convincing myself I'd seen anything at all.
Then she lifted the corner of her mouth and said, “I guess maybe I decided to actually do something instead of just being sorry.”