I couldn’t trust him.
I wanted to cry. My heart was beating so fast, my stomach turning over and over. The tears just wouldn’t come.
Deciding to hell with it, I picked up my phone. I just needed to hear Alfie’s voice for a moment. I wouldn’t tell him what had happened, I didn’t want to worry him, I just needed to hear his voice.
He answered on the second ring. I could hear voices in the background, important official voices that told me he was at an event, probably wearing a tux worth more than my salary.
“I’m missing you,” he said immediately.
I melted into a chair. I closed my eyes, basking in the sound of his voice. “Me too. How’s work?”
“Boring. Tell me about your day, I don’t want to talk about mine.”
“Oh, my day was fine. Um…Sid and I started on the elephant today. We finally got the rest of our shipment in…so we could start it. It’s going really well.”
He was quiet for a moment. “What’s wrong?”
I’m fine. Say you’re fine. Don’t make him worry. Don’t ruin his trip.
“Nothing. I just miss you.”
There was another pause that seemed like it lasted forever. “Please don’t lie to me, Lola.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and told him the truth. “I need you.”
“I’ll be there by morning.”
Thirteen
Alfie beat the dawn.
He’d stayed on the phone with me for an hour while I told him everything through my tears. He’d soothed me until I fell asleep. Then I woke to him sliding into my sob-stained sheets beside me, the moon still clinging to the sky.
I curled into his chest and began to cry all over again. I didn’t want to. My head hurt, my skin stung from the salt of my tears, but the crying came anyway. Grief purged itself from my body without asking me if I minded.
I wished my father had never come back. The ache of abandonment was dense, deep into the pit of my stomach. I cried until I ran out of tears, snot smeared on the duvet and I hiccuped painful sobs.
Eventually it subsided enough for me to get up. I was a mess and I headed into the bathroom to clean up. I washed my face, then looked at my reflection. I looked hideous. My face was swollen and as red as my hair which stuck up all over the place. My eyes were bloodshot. Alfie watched me from the doorway. I wanted to hide myself. It was hard being with someone as beautiful as him sometimes.
His mouth was set in a firm line, arms folded over his bare chest.
“You look angry,” I told him.
“No. Yes. Yes, I’m angry. I don’t know how to fix this.” Alfie hated a problem he couldn’t solve. Hated it more when that problem affected me.
“You can’t fix it. Some stuff you just have to cry through.” I blew my nose again and leaned against the counter top. My whole body hurt. I felt like I’d fallen out of the Daddy Issues tree and hit every broken branch on the way down.
“I wish he’d been a bastard,” I confessed quietly. “I wish he’d been horrible to me. When I was giving him a hard time I wished he’d done it back.”
“You wish he’d given you a reason to still be angry with him?” Alfie asked. I nodded. “You don’t need permission to be angry with him. He deserves that anger whether he’s sorry or not.”
“Feels pointless if he’s sorry.”
My fathers’ humility had taken all the wind out of my sails. It gave me nothing to rail against and I hated him for it. Over the years, I’d imagined thousands of times what I would do if I ever saw him again. How I’d yell at him, the things I’d say. As with everything though, reality didn’t match up to day dreams. Anti-climactic. That was the word for it.
“Are you going to see him again?” There was an edge to Alfie’s voice. A biting disapproval at the very idea of it.
“You don’t think I should?”
