The sadness. The damning sadness with no end in sight.
Nothing makes sense anymore and I’m waiting for a change that won’t happen. An end that won’t come.
Every day, I come to the firm and stare at his closed office door, and sometimes, I just sneak in there and take a nap on his sofa. The same sofa where he fucked me and whispered dirty words to me.
The same sofa that he told me to sit on and behave so I wouldn’t distract him, but I ended up being a brat anyway.
That’s where I’m lying right now. On his sofa, hugging my knees to my chest and breathing him in, because I don’t have much of his smell left. It’s been disappearing over time and soon enough, it’ll vanish just like he did.
Soon, I’ll go back to that hollowing emptiness with no change in sight.
The door clicks open and I jump to a sitting position, thinking it’s Dad. I could swear he saw me come out of here the other day, but he didn’t comment on it. Maybe that was a one-time thing and he won’t let it slide this time.
I really don’t want to fight with him. We barely talk at home and that’s painful enough as it is.
But it’s not him who walks inside. It’s Aspen.
My mother, Aspen. I still can’t wrap my mind around it, so I don’t. It’ll just go away with time, or that’s what I’d like to believe.
Every time she sees me, she tries to talk to me, but I just bolt or hide because I can’t face her. Because I hated her, was jealous of her for very illogical reasons.
And now that I’ve learned about our biological relations, it’s even harder to come to terms with my previous feelings for her.
Despite knowing her reasons and that she didn’t really abandon me, that she was so young when she had me, I’m unable to beat those facts into my brain.
So I opt to run again, avoid her again. Maybe Dad was right and I can pretend she didn’t happen.
But that’s a lie, isn’t it?
She was always there, at the back of my mind, and during every birthday where I cried because she didn’t want me.
Turns out, that was never the case.
I mourned you. She said. Every year, I mourned you.
She appears flawless in her dark blue pantsuit with her red hair falling to her shoulders. As always. She’s the most elegant, classy woman I’ve ever seen.
“Please don’t go.” She stops a safe distance away, not attempting to take a seat. “I just…want to talk to you.”
“We never talked in the past. You hated me and I hated you.”
“I never hated you. I just…hate your father, and you were an extension of him, in a way, but not anymore. You’re an extension of me, too.”
“No, I’m not. I told you, I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“I know and I understand, but I just want a chance, no matter how small, just one chance to prove that I care, that I always have. A few months ago, I got drunk while visiting the grave that I thought was my daughter’s, but now, I know it isn’t, and I’m so thankful for just being able to watch from afar and making sure you’re well. That’s all I ask for. But if you still can’t give me that, it’s fine. I understand. I just want to tell you I’m sorry.”
The stupid feelings that I can’t stop flood my insides and I start clinking my nails. “For what?”
“For not being there all these years. I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I still lost you for twenty years. You still felt abandoned and cried on your birthdays like I got drunk on them.”
“You mourned me for twenty years?”
“I did.”
“I think I mourned you, too, even thinking you abandoned me, I still mourned you.”
“I’m sorry. So, so sorry.”
Clearing my throat, I try not to let the tears loose and lift a shoulder. “I had Dad. Though he can be too much sometimes.”
“I’m sorry your father is giving you a hard time about Nate. He’s a jerk.”
I jump to a standing position. “Do you…know where Nate is?”
Dad has been insinuating that Nate and Aspen have always had a thing going on, and I know what he’s doing. He’s trying to make me feel as if Nate would choose her over me because she’d fit him better.
He knew I harbored such thoughts myself and in a typical Kingsley Shaw lawyer move, he played on them to make me give up. And he almost succeeded.
However, Aspen didn’t leave with Nate. She stayed, and I think that’s partly because of me. And anyway, Nate would never hurt me that way, and she wouldn’t either. I felt her words just now. The pain in them is so relatable to mine that I can sense it slashing my chest.