Well, maybe he got held up at work,I told myself as I laid in bed, peeking out the window in my room every five minutes to see if his car magically appeared in the driveway.
It didn’t.
It didn’t on Wednesday night either. Or Thursday. Or Friday.
By Saturday, I kind of gave up hope.
By Sunday, my Grandma Tillie came to get my sister and me. Mom was sick, or so I thought, and couldn’t get out of bed. We stayed with my grandparents for over a week. At the time, it was fun. I was mostly able to keep my mind off the fact that my dad vanished, seemingly into thin air, and my mom must have had a pretty bad case of the flu. Or maybe, I wondered at the time, if she possibly got food poisoning from IHOP like I did the year before.
We didn’t go to school that week, but we did go to the skate rink, the park, and a baseball game. It was a fun week, but by the time we came home, that spot where Dad used to park was still empty, as were my mom’s eyes. Her light was gone.
And it stayed gone for many years following that week.
Everything changed after that Tuesday morning, when Dad went to work but never made it home. I thought he was dead until I was nine, when we were at the grocery store and my mom ran into his mom. I remember feeling excited that we saw her because I hadn’t for quite some time. I pretended to read the label on the back of some soup cans while they talked. Mom asked how Logan was doing.
Logan was my dad.
That was the day I learned my dad wasn’t dead after all. No, he wasn’t dead. He just didn’t want to be my dad anymore. It confused me, but more than that, it hurt. An ache formed in my chest that no amount of rubbing away would fix. It grew, it strengthened, and with it came a river of emotions, streaming out of my eyes and down my cheeks that night when I went to sleep.
As I got older, I thought maybe he was like those adults you see on TV who drink too much or who do the drugs parents and teachers tell you to say no too. Maybe he left because he was unwell, not because he didn’t love me.
It’s a lie I’ve held on to for years.
Until this very moment.
Because sitting in the bleachers, a court separating us, is a man with my same nose and my same blond hair, in a suit that looks more expensive than my whole wardrobe. He’s sitting beside a pretty blonde woman with a cheerful toddler on her lap, who has bouncy blonde curls and dimples, and my same nose too.
It becomes abundantly clear that the dad who left my house that Tuesday morning for work and never came home didn’t die. He didn’t drink too much. He wasn’t addicted to the drugs they warn you about in school.
No… that man was alive, and he was well, and he was sitting across the room with his new family, while his old family sat discarded just a glance away.
My chest tightens, my ribs constricting, threatening to squeeze my heart until it explodes. Air doesn’t want to go into my lungs. The room spins.
It’s hot.
So hot.
I glance over at Elliot to see if he thinks it’s hot, but he’s not even paying me any attention. He’s cool as a cucumber. Understandably so, since his world isn’t being rocked right now.
Bile churns in my gut, the taste rising in the back of my throat.
I need to get out of here, because I might pass out or barf, or worse, cross the basketball court and demand to know why he left me. Demand to know, once and for all, why I wasn’t good enough, lovable enough, to stay.
The walls are closing in. I can’t breathe.
I think I tell Elliot I’m leaving, but I can’t be sure. My brain has short-circuited. By the time I burst through the double doors, down the hallway lined with red and black lockers, and out the main door, the chilly late fall air smacks me in the face, and it’s like the floodgates burst open. I drop to my knees on the sidewalk, hands planting on my thighs as I stare at the concrete, vision blurry as moisture falls hot down my face.
I don’t make a sound. Don’t let a single whimper leave my lips. The tears come and come until there’s nothing more left. Until my sockets have dried up.
Then, and only then, do I pull out my phone, shooting off a text to Jesse that I’m ready to meet up with him.
Tonight is about forgetting. Tonight is about forcing my mind to get so hazy, I don’t care about what I saw.
And tomorrow… well, that’s future Travis’s problem.
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TRAVIS
