I only have one wish after all of this is over.
Please don’t hate me Adam.
A few minutes later, at seven forty five pm, we arrive at my parents’ house. Their house wasn’t too far from Adam’s, hence the drive wasn’t that long, or maybe it was just me. Maybe I didn’t notice how long we were in my car since I was too occupied with my own thoughts. Worry kept itching at the back of my head, as well as nervousness. Even after we reached our destination, they both haven’t eased yet ignited even more, and I have no idea if they are highly present, for my shakiness to my upcoming presence in the same room with my parents or for my new profound fear of watching Adam’s eyes reflect the surprise or maybe even hurt as a reaction to my future selfish action. All I know is that I want these disturbing emotions to abandon me.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Adam’s voice breaks me out of my trance.
My eyes avert from the house, which my dark irises have lately become unaccustomed to seeing, to Adam before I give him a small nod. “I can’t avoid them forever.”
“Okay, let’s go,” Lexi says.
After Adam turns off the ignition, the three of us exit my car, which Adam parked a little bit further from the house so as not to draw immediate attention to ourselves, and we shut the car doors behind us. Taking the lead, with Adam and Lexi trailing behind, I take my time as I walk to the front door of the two-story high house with a golden rough-textured ‘welcome home’ mat placed right in front of it. Even though it should’ve made me feel at least welcomed, it didn’t.
It’s strange to stand in front of the house you’ve grown accustomed to living in and feel like it’s no longer welcoming you. I feel like I suddenly don’t belong here; I feel like I’m a new neighbour who’s about to intrude on a bunch of strangers, and I feel like I’m a guest about to sabotage the comfort of the owners’ privacy by just knocking, but I do so anyways. ‘You cannot back out now,’ I remind myself. With the reminder registering inside, I take a long deep breath, clench my right hand into a fist and knock.
Holding in my breath, I lightly close my eyes as I try to imagine some sorts of perfect scenarios of what might happen once we’re inside, even though I know they’re not possible. I force all of these ridiculous imaginations inside my head because at this instant, I’m willing to think of anything. Anything that will distract me from my rapidly increasing heart beats, which I’m hearing clearly louder than the silence, translating to me what I really want right now- to run away.
There’s a great difference between what we want and what we need so even if dealing with my parents is the last thing I want to do, it’s the most thing I need to get over with.
Silence is the only resonance in the darkness, but, like we all know, nothing lasts forever. After a few minutes of my first and last knock, the brown wooden door is suddenly pulled open, and I’m met with my brother’s confused golden-specked blue irises darting from me to Adam to Lexi and back to me.
“Evangeline?” My brother’s confusion morphs into evident surprise when he asks with his eyebrows raised in disbelief. “What are you doing here?”
Forcefully, I swallow back the lump that was stuck in the middle of my throat, put aside my hurt, and pull the ends of my mouth into a sarcastic smile as I respond, “Well, it’s been a while you know? Am I still allowed inside, or will we continue this conversation out here?”
His eyes shift to Adam and Lexi, and he clenches his jaw before offering a small stiff nod. Taking a few steps back, he pulls the door open even more, giving us further space to enter. Just as my feet hit the parquet of the floor, a loud voice echoes in the house.
“Trevor, hurry up! Dinner’s getting cold, and I’m not heating the food again. What’s taking you so long?” My mother asks, taking a few several steps from the dining room to the door.
She appears in my line of sight with a horrified expression on her face once she spots me. “Evangeline?”
“Hey, mom.” I give her a curt nod.
She calls out my dad’s name to ‘hurry up and look who’s here’ before slowly striding forward with her arms open. Even though I didn’t return back her hug, I didn’t have it in me to shrug her arms off of me which made me realise how much I really missed her.
“We missed you, honey.” She releases me, eyeing me softly.
Before I was about to unconsciously reply to her that I missed them too, dad’s voice rang out in disbelief, saving me from displaying to them that I was thinking about them a lot when I wasn’t here with them.
“Evangeline? What are you doing here?”
I roll my eyes, annoyed that that’s all they’ve got to tell me. My dad’s eyes travel away from my figure to Adam’s and Lexi’s figures, and they turn a darker shade with a glint of fury swirling in them.
“What the hell are you doing here?” He yells at Adam, looking him with such a burning rage as if he’s the one wrong mistake that’s blocking my father’s success before turning to Lexi accusingly. “And you? How dare you show up at my house after what you did?”
Rage starts pulsing through my veins at how wrongly rude my father is to the people who matter to me
