“No.” Her head comes alive, shaking this way and that.
She’s gonna make herself dizzy.
“Carmen?” Carter presses again. “We’ll figure something out.”
Her eyeballs look like two fragile balls of glass that could shatter at any given moment.
Isn’t Carmen supposed to be the kind of woman that fights, not flights? Isn’t she supposed to use the fear as ammunition, not let it consume her?
I watch all of the blood drain from her face, the life disappear from her eyes.
And now I feel cold too.
“Carmen?” Carter tries again, this time with a hand on her arm. “Don’t panic, we’re going to figure something out. Conrad’s not going to hurt?—”
“Don’t touch me.” She swats Carter away and shoots to her feet. “I have to get home. This was all such a terrible idea.”
I lock my hand around her wrist before she can take off.
I stare into her terrified eyes until my mind finally catches up to me. What am I doing? It’d be easier to let her go. To let Conrad take her.
With her gone, we’d be able to get back to the way things were before.
Normality is much easier to cope with.
“Believe it or not, humans use their mouths to communicate. Crazy, right? That you can use it to talk, as well as to drink whiskey?”
My father looks up at me with woozy eyes from the bottle of booze he’s just necked. “Stop being a sarcastic smart-ass,” he slurs. “You get that from your mother.”
“You were never gonna tell me about the divorce, were you?” I grab the papers that were kindly left out for me on the counter this afternoon, and shove them in his face. “Thanks for plantingthese in the kitchen for me to discover. Nothing beats coming home from a hard day at school to find out that your own parents have decided to file for a divorce.”
The worst part is that I never saw it coming. There were no obvious signs. We always ate as a family every evening. Mom always used to cook; Dad always used to return from work and plant a chaste kiss to my mom’s temple.
I thought I was the lucky one, living the American dream with parents that were always going to be in love.
I chew on my lip trying to contain my anger. It was my eighteenth birthday two days ago. I found the divorce papers placed next to my birthday cards.
Nothing screams happy birthday quite like a surprise divorce.
“So, what? You had a big argument and decided to end your marriage? What the fuck is wrong with you?” I take the empty bottle of whiskey from my dad’s hands, the warm glass an indicator of how long he’s been holding onto it.
“What’s the plan moving forward? You become an alcoholic, and Mom has to spend the rest of her life picking up the pieces because as an ex, you’re no longer inclined to pick them up for her anymore?”
My dad takes one big sigh and turns around to face me. “A bottle of whiskey is the least I deserve to celebrate the eighteen-year-long act I’ve been keeping up.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s time to take off the rose-tinted glasses, son. None of this is real.”
“Thanks for lying to me my whole life.”
My father looks at me like I’m a man, not the son he raised. “Marriage is duty. It has nothing to do with love.”
Is he taking the piss?
“What about Mom? Did the two of you set up an eighteen-year contract before I was born? You’re telling me this was all fake? I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to believe me now, but one day you’ll understand. We’re animals. It’s in our biology to reproduce. I wanted to settle down and have a child. Now that I’ve succeeded in doing that, my job here is done.”
