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I stare up at the sky for a moment. Taking my time to enjoy the beauty of it. You will be surprised at the number of things you don’t take the time to acknowledge in your everyday life. It isn’t until you’re at death’s door that you stop to smell the roses.
“What demons are you running from?” His voice breaks through my calm, bringing me out of my somber thoughts.
“Have we gotten to that part of our date? The part where we start revealing intimate details?” I joke, but it is met with the same silence as earlier.
Glancing over to him, I notice one thick brow is lifted and a frown turns his full lips down.
I sigh, sitting up in my seat, I tuck my legs to my chest and cover them with the oversized hoodie.
“Do you remember when you asked me who I knew that died?”
He dips his chin but doesn’t speak.
“It was my dad.”
That seemed to be enough of an answer for him. However, if this is going to be my last night on this earth I might as well share my truth with someone.
“I was a daddy’s girl. Family and friends all said that I was his shadow. Wherever Terence Jones went his mini-me followed.”
I laugh reminiscing on my good times as a child. Despite how much of a fuck up I am now, I did have a fairly normal childhood up until about six years old.
“I looked just like him too. He, like me, was what the old folks called high ‘yella’. We even have the same freckles,” I say pointing to the smattering of brown spots across my face.
My smile from earlier falls as I think about how things turned out. “I was about six when I first noticed something wasn’t right with him. I tried to talk to mama about it, but she kept telling me it was nothing. She told to me to stay in a child’s place.”
“You see, daddy would have moments where he would be so high on life and funny, that he’d seem like he was floating. He would pull me out of school on those days just to get ice cream or go for a walk. Then there were the days when he couldn’t get out of bed. At first mama tried to explain it away as his artist’s soul. My father was a painter.”
I look over to Gabriel and although his gaze is bouncing around the area on high alert, I know he’s listening to everything I’m saying. So, I push forward.
“I was seven years old when I first learned of his bipolar disorder 1 diagnosis. The doctor put him on pills to keep him levelheaded. But, he often complained that the pills affected his creative mind.” I pause at this point in my story because it all goes downhill from here.
Gabriel’s warm rough hand wraps around mine, squeezing it gently. I stare at the way his large palm swallows my hand. I don’t pull away and neither does he. I allow the comfort of his touch to give me the strength to keep going.
“By the time that day happened, it had gotten bad in our house. We moved out on my eighth birthday. Daddy nearly burned the house down with all of us in it trying to make me a cake. That day mama found out daddy wasn’t taking his meds anymore. As the weeks went by, he’d gotten worse. He was going through phases of hypomania.”
I let out a deep breath, fighting down the tears and the memories. “That day, we went by to check on him and to get some mail. The house was a mess, and he had paint everywhere. He wanted us to stay. Even begged my mother to sit with him for a while, but she refused. But I was a daddy’s girl, so I asked to stay with him. She didn’t even argue,” I say with a chuckle even though it isn’t funny.
“I often think back on that day. I wonder if Raina had asked to stay, would my mother had said yes.”
That thought has always stayed with me. Why did she care so little about me to allow me to stay. She knew he was dangerous. She even admitted once that she figured he would take his life soon. Yet, it never crossed her mind to keep me away from him.
“What happened that night, Summer?” Gabriel asks, pulling me from my last thought.
Leaning my head back on the bench, I once again look up at the sky.
“He wouldn’t sit still. He kept talking and pacing. He repeated over and over that someone was coming, and we had to run. Eventually, I got him to calm down and try to sleep. I woke up from my bed in the middle of the night. My father was standing in my doorway with a gun.
“He shot me first. The bullet went through my shoulder and out my chest missing every vital organ in its path. As I lay there bleeding and in pain, he told me he loved me more than anything in the world. He then turned the gun on himself.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until Gabriel wipes the tears from my face.
“I see him every night I try to sleep. I remember the pain in his eyes as he pulled the trigger both times. He was fighting a losing battle with demons I couldn’t help him with. And what’s worse, I think I have the same demons.”
I break down, allowing the many years I’ve kept my fears to myself to catch up with me. The first time I went to see a therapist I was so afraid of her telling me I was going to be like my dad that I would freak out before the appointments.
I didn’t want to be him, but then I’d feel guilty because he was the only person in this world that truly loved me. The only person in the world that gave a damn about me was so fucked up in the head he didn’t even know up or down sometimes. What does that say about me?
“Breathe, Summer,” his deep voice sounds low in my ear.
