Patch Up (16 page)

“Did he say something to make you cry?” My father’s voice is a weird contrast after the soft inclination of my mother’s.

Using the menu as a shield is obviously useless. I put it down, still open in front of me. “Yes.”

“Oh, honey,” my mother says with sadness in her voice, reaching for one of my hands, but I recoil in my chair. She frowns at my movement and I bite my tongue to help me gather enough control to not break down in front of my parents in a restaurant full of life and excitement. “If he thought he needed to meet new girls, he clearly doesn’t deserve you.”

I smile at her, amused to see this perfect mom talk. I don’t think I deserved to be in an abusive relationship, but I don’t think I deserve anything else either since I didn’t and still don’t do anything to stop it. I even followed him to Seattle, damn it!

“What happened, Skye? Because I don’t want to pretend I see nothing anymore.” His hands on the red table cloth are shaking slightly, something I never saw before today.

I look back at him, my eyes bulging out and my hand shaking too over the top of the table. I shake my head. “What do you mean?”

He clenches his big hand and doesn’t leave my eyes even to blink, but tension is radiating from him. “When you were in high school you had red eyes every day and you changed a lot. Before we thought it was because you were growing up, all those teenage things, but you’re still crying because of Sean and now I need answers.”

“Michael—”

“No, Tessa! I don’t want to see this look on my daughter anymore.”

Silence falls around us, a bubble of uneasiness in the middle of a restaurant where good mood seems to be a requirement. I lower my eyes and think again of Duke. Pain shoots through me and a tear falls from my right eye. I don’t brush it away. My mother sees it and I hear her fighting against her own tears. She’s incredibly emotional. My father doesn’t move, but his face softens immediately. He hates it when I cry. When I was a kid and I cried for some ridiculous reason, he was always trying to cheer me up.

I look around us, at all these people more or less enjoying their night out. I want this, too so why should I lament and bask in all these shitty things without taking my life back in my own hands? I look back at my father, fear clawing at my insides—making me almost choke on my breath—and I hold his eyes. “Sean used to tell me that I’m an idiot, a nobody and boring among other things. He hit me, too.”

My mother breaks in sobs, shaking her head wildly. My father tenses and clenches his jaw. His greyish-blue eyes showing a blind rage I’ve never seen before. But what is really killing me is to see the pain in my parents’ eyes. I shake my head and stand up, the menu falling on the ground. I can’t see anything through the tears about to fall from my eyes. I can barely hear the people talking loudly and laughing through the loud beats of my heart pounding in my ears. I don’t really know if I’m walking or running, but it’s like I breathe for the first time in hours once the fresh air hits me. In this part of Seattle, restaurants are full but the streets have few people wandering at this hour. However, there
are
people looking at me gasping for air as more tears fall from my eyes. I don’t care, though. I don’t care if my light make-up is ruined. I don’t care if I look like I’m about to crumble on the ground because I am.

I lean against the wall next to the restaurant’s door and ignore the bite of the wind or that the patrons inside can probably see me. Behind my eyelids I can still see them at my words and it’s even harder than I expected. I take a deep breath, trying to calm down and make the dizziness I feel from nearly hyperventilating disappear. I’m shaking, but I grit my teeth. I made it through everything and I know I can make it through this, too. I have to.

The restaurant’s door opens and my parents step outside. My mother is still crying, her sobs muffled by her thin hands over her mouth. She is leaning against my father, her anchor. My father’s arm is tight around my mother’s shoulders, but his shoulders are not straight and strong looking anymore. He looks at a loss, but his eyes are blazing with anger and sadness. I’ve never seen him so on the edge of losing it.

“How long?” His voice is barely audible with the passing cars and cabs.

I dry my face with my long sleeves under the scrutiny of my father. “It started three months after I began dating him.” And yet I stayed with him. At this point it’s not because I was naïve. I was just weak and a coward. “He’s not a good guy and he’s still trying to break me. He needs to have power over me; he needs to think that I have nothing and nobody in my life.” I don’t know where this strength is coming from or why I’m still willing to talk. Maybe I’ve had enough, or maybe Duke woke me up, but now it’s in the open. The most important people in my life know everything, they know the truth. Even if it’s killing me inside to see the pain and the guilt on their faces and in their eyes, it feels easier to face what happened to me, to acknowledge it and maybe even accept that I am indeed a victim even if I don’t like the thought.

My father looks at the sky, the stars invisible with the lights of the city. Only the moon is clear and big between two buildings, but I know he’s not really seeing it. “You never said anything. We never saw anything,” my father mumbles more to himself than for me or my mother who is crying quietly. She can’t say a word, nor can she really see me through her teary eyes.

“That’s why I really became friends with Duke. He saw something in me and forced me to tell him what happened.” When I say Duke’s name, the hole in my heart opens up, more invasive than ever because I know I said things that I’ll never be able to take back. I broke our friendship apart. I hug myself tightly but it doesn’t bring any comfort.

“You told your friend before us?” He shakes his head. I never saw my father so broken before, not even when he has lost soldiers he respected. It is obvious he is fighting his own tears. “We could have helped you. We should have.”

I sigh and a wave of calm settles over me, helping me to breathe with more ease and giving me enough strength to stop the tears falling without a break. I never realized I needed to talk to my parents about all of this. It doesn’t wash away the pain of losing Duke because of my own idiocy, but this talk has helped. “I know, but I was afraid. I didn’t know what to tell you or how to explain it. It was just too complicated in my head.”

A horn in the distance makes my mother jump.

“Where is he?”

I frown and give my mother a tissue to dry her face, the flow of her tears now under control. My father puts a heavy arm around her shaking shoulders. “I need to deal with it by myself.”

“No, Skye. This piece of shit needs to be taught a lesson and I need to do something.”

I bring my hands to my face and inhale deeply before looking back at my father’s determined face. “No, Dad,” I say forcefully. I’m stubborn, too. Deep down I know that I need to do this on my own if I ever want to put the pieces of myself back together. Dealing with Sean is something that I need to do at my own pace and on my own. I’m a grown up, a responsible girl and it’s time I prove it to myself. “I’ll go and talk to the president of his frat. Believe me, now I know I can do something.” And that’s the truth. A couple of hours earlier when I was lying on my bed, alone in the dark I didn’t know. I still didn’t know it when Duke asked me to open my eyes or even when I walked in the restaurant to have dinner with my parents, but now that I have opened up to them and can see the love they feel for me and the protectiveness they have toward me, it gives me the strength I so desperately needed to fight for myself.

“But—”

“No, Mom.” I take a step closer to the restaurant’s door, ready to eat and put this talk behind me. Now I just need some normality. “I’ll be fine. Have faith in me.”

She nods slowly, reluctantly, but she nods. My father is not as compliant as my mother is, but it’s no surprise. “I’ll call the dean of the college tomorrow.”

It’s the best I can hope for. I guess it’s already a huge concession on his part. Just as I open the door and am assaulted by laughter from the different tables scattered around the room, I remember something and cringe. “Don’t call Sean’s parents.”

“Why? They should know their son is a monster!” my mother hisses at me, her frown so deep it’s a wonder she can still see straight.

“Because his father beats his mother and used to beat him sometimes when he was a kid.” I ignore my mother’s intake of breath and the curses of my father. “It’s no excuse for his behavior and his need of power over me, but it won’t be any good for Sean’s mother if you tell his father.”

They both nod and exchange a long look, the kind of look long time married couples have to communicate without words. I’m not sure they’ll listen to me or if they’ll do something to help Sean’s mother—knowing them they’ll probably do exactly that—but I’m sure this is far from being the last talk about what happened between me and Sean.

*  *  *

“Duke is not with you?” my mother asks, looking around my room as if the tall and muscular Duke could be hiding somewhere in here. I’d find it quite comical if I was still on speaking terms with him.

“No. He has tons of work between his classes and being a TA,” I reply, not wanting to break their little bubble where they think Duke will still be here to protect me.

My father nods appreciatively at the portrait of a driven student. “He’s a serious young man, that’s good,” my father approves, adjusting his khaki bag over his shoulder and taking my mother’s luggage in his free hand.

“Honey, please think about what we talked about. Therapy would be a good thing for you,” my mother says for the third time already.

Ironically, I really don’t want to go see a shrink. It’s funny considering that’s exactly what I want to do as a job, but the idea of being “shrinked” is weirding me out, more so now that I know more about Psychology since I began college.

“Leave her alone, Tessa. We have to go to the airport or we’re going to miss our flight. And I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time on the phone to convince her to see a shrink,” my father says ruefully, giving me a fierce hug and kissing the top of my head.

My mother hugs me, too; her thin body shaking against mine. She’s trying to hide her tear filled eyes, but I know that as soon as they’re out of my room, she’s going to break down and my father won’t be any better.

“Call me when you’re back home,” I say, already feeling all nostalgic.

They wave and walk out of my room. I close the door behind them and lean against it. My breathing is shallow. It’s harder to let them leave than I thought it would be now that they know everything.

We talked about Sean, what I felt and still feel, and it was good to be able to share all of this with them, to reconnect. It was hard, too, but necessary. I have to thank Duke for this, he really pushed me to do it, but I can’t just go to his place and say thank you. I said awful things to him even though I think he feels guilty for the death of his girlfriend and helping me is softening that guilt. The thing is, I don’t understand why he feels guilty about Juliet’s death. She died in a car accident, it’s not like he could have prevented it.

I take a real good look at the empty room—Kate is at a study group—and take in my cold and empty side. It reflects what I felt and what is still lingering within me, but warmth is slowly taking more of a hold. I just hope I’ll be able to heal and not be so broken. And I guess it’ll be without Duke. This sole thought annihilates the warmth.

*  *  *

“You’re not going to your Psychology class?” Kate asks me with fake nonchalance and it makes me smile, the first smile since my parents left Saturday night.

“Everybody needs a break from time to time. I haven’t missed a class since the beginning of the year,” I reply and shrug. It’s hard though because I never miss classes if I’m not really ill, but today it’s just impossible for me to summon any kind of strength to go to my Monday class and see Duke. Even seeing him from afar would be too damn difficult right now.

“Everybody but you.” Kate rummages through the mess on her desk and grabs the work she spent all of Sunday finishing.

“Maybe I’m acting more like everybody else then.” I snuggle more comfortably on my bed and sigh.

She walks to the door, her high heels clicking at each of her energetic steps, and turns around abruptly, her face set with resolve. “Are you planning to call the president of that asshole’s frat?”

It was too easy. I was expecting her to call me on it this morning as soon as she was out of her zombie-like state, but nothing came. I thought I was off her radar. Wishful thinking on my part.

I grab the romance novel about the rocker on my bedside table—the same novel Kate loaned me weeks ago—and open it. “I’ll call him.”

She crosses her arms over her generous chest hidden under her red coat. “I know you won’t call him. You just said that to reassure your parents.”

“Seriously, Kate, you know he won’t listen. In a frat they all side together.” I’ve heard enough things to know it’s the truth. Many of them already give me a hard time when we cross paths, so if I called it’d be worse and I can’t take worse.

“Don’t fall for that cliché. I have a cousin who is in a frat and he told me how serious they take it when there is any kind of trouble with a member of the frat.”

“And what if he doesn’t believe me?” I voice my real fear. It’s awful to disclose all my fears like this, but I need to do this if I want to get better and if I want to give my growing friendship with Kate a real shot. She is an awesome girl, much more sensible than I thought.