I storm past her, feeling out of my mind, pacing around.
“Just pity? How about a cup of coffee?”
Fuck.
“Yes. Of course,” I tell her, heading into the kitchen. I take the moment to keep my back to her and take in a deep breath through my nose. I feel like I’m about to have a heart attack. I can barely breathe.
Keep it fucking together, I tell myself.
My hand shakes as I pour her a cup of coffee.
I bring it over to her and now she’s sitting on the sofa, her coat beside her.
She looks awful.
She’s just bones underneath her thin sweater, the lines on her neck deep and freckled. The more I look at her, the more she starts to look like a monster, and more like…me. Or the version of myself I could have so easily become.
There’s no doubt she’s still using meth, she has it written all over her, from her teeth, to her weight, to the dark circles under her eyes that almost look like sockets on a skull. She’s spent her whole life, or at least from the time she had me, like this and to be honest, I’m surprised she’s still alive.
But when she takes the coffee from me, her movements are spry and there’s a sharpness to her gaze, that tells me even if she’s a drunk and a drug addict, she’s sober enough now.
“Aren’t you going to ask me how I am?” she asks, taking a sip of the coffee. She makes a face. “Rather weak, isn’t it?”
“The less I know about you, the better.”
She shakes her head. “Still ungrateful.”
“Ungrateful!?” I explode. “What the fuck should I be grateful for!?”
“I made mistakes when I was younger, Lachlan. Why are you punishing me for something I did when I was lost and couldn’t afford you?”
“You gave up on me! You gave me away!”
“I did what was best for you and you know it. Stop trying to blame me for everything that went wrong in your life. If anything, I saved you. Had you stayed with me, you may have never become what you have. You should be thanking me.”
I shake my head, my fists clenching. “All I wanted was love. You never gave me that, even before you sent me away.”
“I didn’t want a child, Lachlan,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me, as if it’s my fucking fault that I was born. “You were an accident and I had you in hopes that your father stayed around, he didn’t. So what was I supposed to do? Fake it?”
“Yes!” I yell at her. “Fake it! At least pretend that you love your kid. Do you know how fucked up you made me?”
“Yes,” she says, taking a sip of her coffee and looking away. “I know.”
“And do you even care?” Now my voice is cracking and I feel that crack spreading throughout me, my soul the epicenter.
She brings her eyes to mine and they look so damn empty it’s like looking at a zombie. “I need money.”
I blink at her. Stare. I feel like the bottom dropped out. “What?” I manage to say.
“I said I need money. I know you have money, lots of it.”
I shake my head. I can’t even believe this is happening again.
“You needed money last time,” I tell her. I point my finger at her and it’s trembling. “I gave you money. A lot of it. It was money to make you go away. Do you realize what you did to us before the wedding? After? You promised that it wasn’t money that you needed, that you’d show up to the wedding. You made me believe in you and then you never showed. No, you left town. That’s all you wanted from me, nothing else!”
She finishes her coffee and studies me. “You would have thought with the upbringing you had, growing up in a home for boys, that you would have some sense of generosity.”
“Generosity? Where did the fucking ten grand I gave you go?”
“Life is expensive!” she yells at me throwing the coffee cup on the rug, the remains of it spilling, staining. “I’m a woman in need, I gave birth to you, and this is how you repay me?”
“Fuck you,” I snarl at her, pointing to the door. “You can get out now.”
“Lachlan!”
“I should have known better than to have let you in, should have known better than to believe you would have showed up on my birthday for selfless reasons. I should have known. Kayla knew. She knew.”
“Your wife is just as selfish as you. Nothing but a whore that uses you for money too.”
“Get out,” I grind out through my teeth, trying so fucking hard not to punch her right in the face and knock the rest of her teeth out. “Get the fuck out right now or I’m calling the cops.”
She stares at me for a moment, hatred flashing in her eyes, then she puts on her coat and heads to the door.
Opens it.
Looks over her shoulder at me.
“Hope you find what you’re looking for Lachlan,” she says. “Because if it’s love, you’re never going to find it in me.”
Then she leaves, shuts the door.
I stand there for a moment, feeling all the tender, brittle parts of me break, that black hole in my chest opening wider and wider, threatening to swallow me. Consume me. Until all that’s left, all that I am…is nothing.
Then I lose it.
I pick up the coffee table, throwing it.
I kick over the lamp.
I scoop up her coffee cup and launch it into the wall until it breaks into a thousand pieces.
Then I scream.
Loud and long, a roar that’s ripped from my guts, all the hurt and the pain and the love
