And so when my dad left the room after a while, I ran to be with her. She was sitting on the bed, her shoulders hunched and her head bowed. I tried consoling her, asking her what was wrong, but she never told me.
All she said was that everything was fine.
I was five; of course I believed her.
But my mother was lying that day.
Because over the years, I watched. I watched it all with my own eyes, how my father broke her heart over and over. How he cheated on her, neglected her until he needed something from her. How his attentions were short and wandering.
So much so that one night I saw him fucking the nanny.
In his office chair no less, the one that he had custom made. And he was doing that when she was supposed to be taking care of my sister.
Back when Pest was little, there was a time when she used to have nightmares. Since her room was right across from mine, I’d always wake up when she did and I’d try to put her to sleep. It had gotten so bad that we had to see the doctors. And so Mom had specifically hired a nanny to take care of Pest at night.
But when I woke up that night, I went to her room and found the nanny gone.
I shushed my sister and put her back to sleep before I went in search of her.
The fucking nanny.
I was only eight but I was raging. I was furious that she wasn’t there to take care of my sister. And then, I heard noises coming out of my dad’s study and there she was. The nanny.
Instead of taking care of my sister, she was taking care of my father. I had her fired the following day; I planted Mom’s jewelry in her room and made it look like she’d stolen it.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that my father is a douchebag and by the time I was eight, I’d decided something.
I decided that I hated him.
That I loathed him for making my mother miserable. I loathed him for never giving any attention to my sister. And I loathed him because even then he thought he could control me.
So when I was eight, I decided to do everything in my power not to. Not to be controlled by him. Or not to be his devoted little son.
If he wanted to show me off to his business partners when I was a kid, the future CEO of the company, or show me the ropes of how it’s all done, I made sure to make myself scarce. I made sure to stay busy, stay lost in the town, stay drunk at the party he’d thrown where he wanted to show me off.
If he hated that I was wasting my time on soccer and that my coaches thought that I had some real talent, I made sure to play harder. I made sure to run away to that soccer summer camp he hadn’t wanted me to go to. If he asked me to quit the team, I decided to get a fucking scholarship.
I decided to go pro, get a million-dollar contract and throw it in his face.
Not that I could do it now because you know, I don’t play anymore, but it was a nice little wish to have, that kept me going while I was growing up.
So my father and I, we’re at war.
We’vebeenat war ever since I was a kid.
Every war has collateral damage, doesn’t it, though?
The collateral damage ofoursis her.
The girl I saw spinning on the playground when I was nine. The little blonde ballerina. The one who dances like a fairy and who stole my car when I broke her heart to hurt me.
She didn’t know what she was getting herself into. At the timeIdidn’t know either. I was high on my win, on the fact that I’d done the exact opposite of what my father wanted, of what my father had asked the previous night.
Yeah, I broke her innocent little heart in the process. But what do you expect of a villain anyway?
Not to mention, I defied him in style.
