Chapter 30 #2
I hated this feeling, the primitive drive to defend, to possess. I hated how easy it was to slip into that role, even after all these years. Maybe I hadn’t changed at all, maybe I was still the same asshole I always was, only now I knew it and hated myself for it.
Deep down, I knew he still wanted Amelia, and I fucking hated him for it. But I hated myself more, because I knew Amelia could find happiness in Dante, who would treat her as if she were his queen.
Dante was the kind of man that got the girl.
I was the kind of man who ruined the girl.
Despite that realization, I wanted her to myself, because I was a selfish asshole.
Dante drained his glass, then eyed me with a careful calculation. “So, are you sticking around, or is this just a hit-and-run?”
My mouth felt sour. “I’m staying a bit. Amelia has to sort out her mom’s stuff, and I said I’d help her out.” I almost said protect, but bit it back.
Dante would hear the truth under the words anyway.
"If you don't mind, could I have Amelia's number? I'd like to offer my condolences." He grabbed a napkin from the counter and a pen from his pocket. "Here's my number; just text it to me, and I'll send you mine."
I didn’t want to give him her number. I didn’t want to give them a reason to talk. But how could I refuse when Dante had done so many generous things for me?
Picking my phone out of my pocket, I typed his number in and texted Amelia’s number to his phone. My heart sank as I sent it.
“Thanks, Caiden. It’ll be nice to chat with her again.”
I looked at him, the endearing expression in his eyes, and realized we never truly grow up, and we don’t ever truly change from who we truly are, and what we desire.
We sat in the bar for a long time, neither of us saying much.
Every so often, Dante would try to steer the conversation towards the old days—picking fights in the parking lot, the time we almost set the library on fire, the endless chain of stupid pranks and even stupider punishments that filled our years.
I let him talk, let the easy nostalgia paper over what was really eating at both of us, and let the whiskey work its way into my nerves.
Outside, it had started to rain. A slow, gray drizzle that turned the world blurry through the warped glass.
Eventually, we staggered out into the wet street. Dante’s truck was parked across from the bar. He offered me a ride back, since I drank way more than him, but I told him that I was fine.
He looked at me, his face shadowed and unreadable in the dusky glow. “You know,” he said, “I’m not going to call her. Not unless she wants me to.” His tone was even, but underneath it, I heard the same old challenge. “I just wanted to know how she was.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I get it.”
He started to climb into his car, then paused. “Don’t fuck her up, Caiden,” he said softly. “Not all the way. I don’t think either of you could take it.”
He drove off with a roar, leaving me standing there, drunk and soaked through, staring at the empty street.
I didn’t go back to the motel. In my drunken state, I forgot about the fact that I told Amelia I would pick her up at the end of the day.
I walked. Just kept my head down and my hands in my pockets, cutting through the town like a phantom.
My skin prickled with the cold, every step a dare to the universe to hit me harder. The streets were tight with memories, every gutter and mailbox a signpost to the parts of me I’d tried to sand down.
By the time I reached the edge of my old neighborhood, my legs were numb, and my head was full of gravel. I kept walking, turning into the subdivision where every yard was either dead or dying.
The houses sagged into themselves, shingles missing like rotten teeth, paint peeling to the bone. It was exactly as I remembered, which was to say. Hopeless.
My childhood house stood at the end of the row, an island of decay, yellow porch light clinging on like a fever. I stood by the mailbox and stared. The last time I was here, I left a hole in the drywall and a promise I’d never come back.
Turns out, I was a liar.
The walk up the drive was a funeral march. The front door still stuck on the same warped spot, and when I shoved it open, the whole frame rattled. I was greeted by the sour smell of old cigarettes and sadness.
For a second, I thought I saw a shape in the living room. A grease shadow where my father used to sit, a permanent dent in the couch, surrounded by empty cans and unpaid bills.
The house appeared empty. Though my father had been dead for almost seven years, it was a cemetery of sin and sorrow, a place where nobody wanted to live.
My hand was on the light switch, but I didn’t need it.
I could walk through this house blind. The carpet still bore the thick, grimy stains from where I’d spilled a whole bottle of grape soda one summer day, a mortal sin for which I was beaten, then forced to scrub until my knuckles bled.
The hole I left in the drywall was still patched with a flat, tan square of plywood.
My dad’s trophies were gone from the mantle, replaced by a ring of dust silhouettes. I remembered the morning I boxed them up, tossing the old bastard’s Little League medals into a garbage bag. I’d wanted to piss on them, but there was a line even I wouldn’t cross.
I wandered through the rooms, half-expecting him to materialize behind me, reeking of vodka and cheap aftershave, the blue veins in his neck bulging as he spat threats. The most famous one was I’ll kill you.
He never did, though.
The bedroom was worse than I remembered. The twin mattress where I spent years curled up defensively was still there. Same ratty navy blanket, same peeling sticker on the headboard.
I knelt next to the bed and pressed my forehead to the frame, the metal cold against my skin.
I heard the echo of my father’s voice ricocheting off the walls: “Don’t slam the goddamn door, Caiden, you think you own this house?”
Most of the furniture was gone, just a skeleton of a home, but the stains on the wallpaper remained. The blood-brown streak above the thermostat, where he’d thrown a bottle at my head and missed.
I made my way to the kitchen. The fridge was unplugged and gaping. Someone had raided the pantry, but not before the mice got to it. The empty space vibrated with memory.
I sat at the table, or what used to be a table. My father’s seat was to my left, where he could see everything, a general on the battlefield of his own tiny kingdom.
Sometimes, on the rare nights he’d had a halfway decent day at the mill, he would let me stay up and eat with him. Those were the nights I lived for, the nights I convinced myself he was just a regular dad and not the monster under the bed.
I poured myself a drink from the flask I kept in my jacket.
It was easy to hate him for what he did to me.
It was harder to hate him for what he did to himself.
The way he’d slouch, even when he was standing, as if gravity hit him harder than other people.
The way his hands shook after a long binge was so bad he couldn’t even hold a glass unless he braced it with both fists.
The slow collapse of a man who, for all his anger, never learned how to fight for anything but pain.
He was the definition of ruin and terror.
Half of my life was lived in fear, and I would never forgive him for that.
My thoughts went to Amelia, her intoxicating sweetness, how I ruined it because of how my father ruined mine.
It wasn’t fair, that’s what I told myself all those years ago. Why did she get to keep her sweetness while mine rotted in the dark?
If I could turn back time, I would do it differently. I would be sure that she never lost it.
It took a while, but the anger began to surface, a slow, tepid boil. It started as a twist in my guts, the familiar ache of helplessness, then climbed higher, infecting my chest, pressing on my throat.
The ghosts here weren’t just memories; they were living things. You could feel them leeching into you, rewriting your bones.
I stared at the greasy ring where his elbow used to rest, and the urge to smash the table was so real my hands shook.
I’d been twelve the first time I got drunk. My father poured out two glasses and told me to “drink up, be a man.”
He’d watched me gag and cough with a smile so thin it could slice you. “It gets easier,” he said, “if you’re not a pussy.”
And maybe he was right, because by fifteen I could outdrink him, and by sixteen the only language we shared was the kind that came in a bottle.
I didn’t remember when I started to cry. I just heard the sound, guttural and high, and realized it was coming from my own mouth. The noise disgusted me, but I couldn’t clamp it down, not here, not in this empty mausoleum with its hunger for confession.
I sobbed like a goddamn child, fists pressed to my eyes, and for a second—
I wanted him back.
I wanted the old bastard alive again, because at least when he was around, the world made more sense. The rules were simple. Don’t flinch. Don’t talk back. Don’t expect mercy.
When he was alive, it was easier to hate her, to feel like I was doing the right thing. I didn’t have to deal with this fucking guilt, shame, and regret.
When he was alive, it was simple.
Spend my days hating Amelia Langston, shoving my affection so far deep that I thought it disappeared completely.
Now, it was all fucked up.
The bottle was almost empty. I gripped it and stood, unsteady, and staggered to the living room. The couch was gone, but the groove in the carpet was still visible, blue worn to a dirty gray.
I stood over it, swaying, and tried to imagine him there, the way he’d holler at the TV, the way he’d turn his rage outward, always looking for a place to stick it.
The memory came on suddenly, a flood behind my eyes: me, maybe fifteen, maybe sixteen, running down this hallway with blood streaming from my nose, the slam of his footsteps behind me.
I’d locked myself in the bathroom, palms pressed flat to the cheap hollow door, listening to his threats dissolve into wheezing, then sobbing, then silence.