6
JASON
I get back home after a tough afternoon at my dad’s house. I have the night off and so I called him to let him know I’d be stopping by.
I haven’t seen Alex for a week, since that night she showed up at the club. I was hoping that day that perhaps … But she’s avoiding me and I don’t blame her. Even if she lives right around the corner, I can’t go knock on her door. She doesn’t want me around, and she’s made that clear.
I almost killed her with my presence and I couldn’t do it again and I do owe her some kind of explanation. She’s never given me a chance to tell her how I feel, to be completely sincere. She turned her back and walked away and I let her go, because it was what she needed in that moment.
We were friends, we had our perfect relationship just as it was and I ruined everything just in order to kiss her. A little boy, a stupid little boy, who thought he had his best friend all for himself.
“You’re late.”
My father is talking to me from the kitchen. I join him and see that he’s at the stove. This is new. When we eat together, we usually order out.
“What are you doing?” I ask him, waiting at the door.
“Making dinner,” he responds without looking up, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, whereas for him, or rather for us, it isn’t.
“You mind setting the table?”
What the heck is this? We haven’t eaten sitting at a table since we’ve been alone, just the two of us. We have avoided almost everything that could remind us of our life with her.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask him harshly, ready to tell him to go to hell for the hundredth time.
He turns slowly and looks me in the eye with an expression of resignation.
“I should have done it a long time ago,” he begins, stopping me short.
“I’m sorry that I was a shitty father. I’m sorry, Jason, for everything.” His eyes are blurry and I can tell that he’s holding it back.
I go to turn and escape from this situation that is so unreal and intimate when he calls me and invites me to stay.
“Don’t do it, don’t push me away. I’ve made so many mistakes, but please, give me a chance to make things better.”
I stop at the door and, clenching my fists, ask myself not to break down.
“It’s just one mistake after another. I can’t go back, I can’t give you back what you’ve lost, but now I’m here. And I hope it’s not too late, for both of us.”
He pauses and I bite my lip so hard it draws blood.
I’ll do anything to avoid letting that bastard of a two-timing tear fall down my cheek.
“Stay, Jason. Stay with me. I know that you’re a man by now and you live on your own and that’s the way it should be, but now we’re here, me and you together. We can never have her back, but we’re still here. I was an absent father, a terrible one and I screwed up everything so terribly, but give me this possibility, the last one, and I promise you, you won’t regret it.”
His voice is low, faint and he’s just barely keeping it together. Maybe it’s time to let go of this pain, to let it all out and maybe we need to do this together.
I turn slowly and make my way towards the cabinets. I take out two napkins, place mats, plates and glasses and set them on the kitchen counter, drawing up two stools. I can feel his gaze on me, that he’s following my every move.
“What are we having?” I ask as if nothing he just said really came out of his mouth.
He smiles and brings a big pan over: rice with meat and vegetables, he tells me. Smells pretty good.
We sit down without adding anything else and start eating like a normal family, as if it were part of our usual routine.
Then suddenly, I break the silence.
“I miss her.” I let my breath out and the tension that goes with it and finally let all of the muscles in my body relax. “Years have gone by, I’m grown, I’m…I’m a man by now. But I miss her, like I was missing a part of myself, a very important part. He absence is something I’m not able to bear. I wish she could just smile at me again, talk to me, touch my face. Or that she’d tell me to cut my hair because she can’t see my eyes. I miss her. Every day, every damn hour. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.”
