Jess
Iheld the phone in my hand.
I needed to make the call.
I had to.
But fuck... I was so fucking angry!
Why did he immediately act like a bratty teenager? Why did he not say a word to me when he left?
Why had I expected anything more than I should have from a fucking biker?
I just...
I guess sex hadn’t just made me crazy for Phoenix. It had made me fucking crazy, period.
But now that I’d gotten home and had all day to fume, now that I’d had all day to think about how Phoenix was nothing more than a repeat of my history with men who took me for a ride and nothing more... well, I was both a little bit more clearheaded and a little bit more pissed off as a result.
Had I ever had a good relationship with any man in this world? Of any kind? Besides regular bartending customers who tipped me to be nice to them?
I didn’t want to know the answer to that. It probably would have depressed me to no fucking end.
Which was why I held the phone in my hand.
To make things right?
Not between the person I wanted to call and me. I didn’t think that that was possible.
But between myself and I... maybe.
It was a fucking long shot of long shots, but what did I have to lose? There were no more secrets, no more big reveals between me and the world. The world of Ashton and northern Los Angeles as a whole knew I was going bye-bye. Might as well just vomit everything out.
I called. Maybe if my fingers moved faster than my emotions, I could get something out of this before I went completely insane. The dial tone rang once. Then twice.
And then the pickup came.
“Jess?”
“Dad.”
I didn’t have anything else that I had planned to say. I just... well, a part of me thought that maybe if I made things better with my father, somehow, that would mean I’d stop going for these guys who were macho bros who thought bikes, muscles, and facial hair made them sexy. Maybe I’d go for men who just wanted to be a fucking good human being.
“Jess!” my father said. “What’s going on? Are you slinging drinks and having great dates? The fruit, I mean.”
Ah, yes, Father. The one who makes jokes so he doesn’t have to have a real conversation. Maybe it’s what I need.
“Always, Dad,” I said with an eye roll, but I wasn’t feeling particularly jokey. I was still tense—I had to imagine my blood pressure readings right now would get a normal person sent to the hospital. “I mean, I’m not eating dates, but I’m slinging drinks.”
“You know, dates are really healthy for you, they’re—”
“Dad!”
I yelled. Yes, I yelled.
Because as my dad continued to crack joke after joke, utterly oblivious to the fact that I was in massive need of help and deeply hurt, I could no longer fucking take it. I could no longer just pretend that everything was all good because he’d stopped drinking. Him stopping a bad habit didn’t let him off the hook for not replacing it with good ones.
“I can’t fucking keep doing this, I fucking can’t!”
