I had to pack my bags in secret when he was at a friend’s house and then blocked his number, aware once he got home, his rage would be like nothing else. Levi drove us both to university and helped me move into the dorm when I turned down his offer of being roommates.
As I walk through my dorm room’s door, my hand floats up to my cheek, the ghostly memory of my father making my lungs compress.
This is why I didn’t want to be around Levi tonight. I anticipated the spiral, and being alone would be safer. While he wouldn’t judge me, revisiting my trauma isn’t something he’d love to know about either. He’d encourage me to think about the fact that my father is going away.
Levi’s like that. He’s perfect, not fucked up like me, and his family has none of the same drama mine does. He’s the heir to an empire, and I’m…me.
Since the moment we met, my betraying heart decided to have a crush, but I hated him because of his type. He fell in with a certain crowd who never hid their dislike of me, so no matter his pretty boy looks, I was forced to accept he was one of them—a devil with a handsome face, my high school nemesis who never left me alone. A pretentious asshole whose family ensured he didn’t need to work at all, so his only job was to piss me off.
His friends hated me since grade school, and it carried into high school. All because I was the weird kid who didn’t come from the right side of the tracks and had virtually no friends. I wasn’t like the girls they hung out with. My nails didn’t get done every few weeks. My clothing was cheap rather than expensive brands. I didn’t drive at all, let alone own an overprice car.
Yet, my stupid teenage heart had a crush on Levi, the new kid at the time. Something about his dark, unearthly eyes and flop of sun-kissed hair that matched his naturally tanned skin got to me. He wore the best shoes, the expensive brands. He was the epitome of the golden boy while I was shrouded in hatred and black clothing. We couldn’t have been more different.
Until it changed, and we became different people together. Except certain facts remain and will never change: there’s ‘other side of the tracks different’—then, there’s us.
He’s a Westwood. He’s the heir to an empire, completing a degree to have something to hang on his office wall one day. Once the degree gets hung, his parents will toss a wife his way with the expectation of creating the next generation.
While I’m the emotion-hiding, abused-by-her-father girl from the underprivileged side of town, who works to fund her life. His parents despise our friendship, believing I’m not good enough to be around him.
One day, I’ll be the person who doesn’t have a firm place in his world. Our friendship will fall apart with time until, eventually, we’re strangers occasionally passing in social media posts.
Until then, my desperation and attachment issues cling to him. Life has been very shitty, but Levi is my something good, and I’ll hold on to him until he forces me to let go.
Even now, I use Levi’s positivity in an attempt to make the fake pain in my cheek fade.
Dad isn’t here to harm me anymore.
When the throbbing continues, it clearly doesn’t work. Instead, another kind of pain slips in. The kind that initiated all of this.
“You texted?” I call, walking through my father’s front door.
There’s no plausible reason for me to be here. When moving away for university, I promised myself and Levi I’dgo no-contact with Dad, since it’d be easier and quicker than filing any charges against him—something Levi encouraged. Chances are, the courts won’t believe me or care, so this saves the disappointment.
No-contact turned into semi-contact. I try to block his number but find myself unblocking it to check on him when the guilt that he’s living alone gets too much. It’s a toxic cycle I recognize and yet can’t get myself off of.
Hence, coming here after he asked for my help with something.
“Living room,” his voice grates from down the hallway.Great, he’s drunk.It’s something he spends most of his time being these days.
Drunk Dad is…weird. Creepy.
The prickle in the back of my neck demands I leave and return tomorrow, to not keep walking down the hallway, stepping over discarded clothing and the odd beer bottle that never made it to the kitchen. A dent in the wall by the base of the stairs is in the exact shape of his body, so I can only assume he stumbled into it.
I turn into the living room but immediately stop. Where Dad is normally sprawled drunk in his chair, this time, it’s empty.
The itch returns, raising the fine hairs all over my body just as a thud comes from behind me. I turn, catching the flash of his body before he stumbles into me and shoves me against the nearest wall, crowding me. Stale beer and cigarettes fill my nose, making bile fill my throat. Hands flat to the wall, I shove backwards while trying to jab an elbow into his gut.
“Dad, what the hell?”
My head is ripped backwards as his other hand slides beneath my shirt. “You fuckin’ owe me, girl.”
I scream.
And I scream now.
As the past rushes back for the millionth time this week, my legs give out. The wall meets my back, the floor my ass. My knees draw up as my head lowers into my lap, and I yell, trying to muffle the sound from reaching my neighbours.
I kick off my shoes and then yank off my dress, mussing my hair in the process. Tears of frustration fill my eyes as I rub my skin until it’s red and raw andmineagain. Flashes of that evening bombard me until no amount of rubbing makes it fade.