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“I think he meant well at first. But as the years passed, he became bitter, and started taking it out on me. I was just a little girl so I didn’t understand. My father was a towering figure in my life. He was everything to me. When he said I was a failure, I believed him.” I look away from Ethan, trying not to cry. “I stopped playing violin after that afternoon. I refused. He never hit me, but he yelled a lot. The yelling was worse.”
“I can relate to that.”
I look at him, surprised. He pulls away and lies down next to me, hands behind his head, looking up at the top of the canopy.
“My father thought computers were for sissies and pussies,” he says. “His biggest dream in life was for me to join him working at the police department.” He glances at me and grins. “My father is a cop, by the way.”
“I had no clue.”
“I don’t talk about it. My dad was a grade-A asshole and still is. We don’t really talk much. My mother is okay, but she didn’t really do much to stop my father from being a dick. He was constantly talking down to me, constantly telling me that I was a pussy and a piece of shit for sitting in front of my computer all the time.” He sighs, trailing off.
“That’s hard. When your parents don’t believe in you.”
“There was other stuff, too,” he says softly. “He tried to toughen me up.”
“How?” I ask, lying next to him. I put my hand on his chest.
“Beat the shit out of me,” he says. “He’d be hitting me, saying it’s for my own good, although I’m pretty sure he just liked doing it. But all that abuse just made me more driven to get the fuck out of there.”
“I can understand that,” I say.
“I got lucky. My company worked and shit took off for me. But if I stayed in that house much longer, my father would have killed me, or I would have killed him. There was no happy ending for me there.”
“But you got out.”
He nods and looks at me. “You did too.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
He takes my hand and squeezes. “Hey. We both got out.”
“You’re right.” I curl up next to him, my head on his chest. “We did.”
I close my eyes as we lapse into silence. I don’t want to push him for more of his story, but I can imagine it. I lived some of it, I bet. It’s amazing that he ended up here and I ended up here too, but we took such different paths. Similar beginnings, but such different choices and events.
I can feel sleep tugging me down, and I want to resist it since he’s still here, but I can’t. All I hear is his breath and his heartbeat thumping slowly in my ear. It’s comforting, and when I finally go back under, I don’t dream anymore.
It’s just peaceful and calm. There’s nothing else.
19
Ethan
I glance at my agenda and sigh. The day is nearly over and yet I feel like I haven’t gotten a damn thing done. I’ve been feeling like this ever since Aria came into my life, but I know it’s not her fault. I’m just distracted by her.
Last night, I fell asleep in her bed. I told myself I wasn’t going to do that, but it happened. When I heard her screaming, I thought something horrible was happening.
Instead, I ended up opening up about my life. I never talk about my father, not with anyone. It’s not that I’m ashamed, or not exactly, but I just can’t stand people feeling any sort of pity for me. I survived it and got the fuck out of there, and that’s all I care about.
I still speak with my mother maybe once a month. I paid off their house, despite my father asking me not to, and bought them a new car. But that’s the extent of it. I’d give them more, take care of them for life only because they’re my parents, but my father made it clear that he doesn’t want my help.
Too proud or too stupid, I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m moving on past all of this.
But I understand what Aria is going through. I used to dream of my father and the beatings he’d give me, all for my own good, all because he wanted me to toughen up. Of course, he was beating on a fourteen-year-old boy, but that didn’t matter to him. I was a sissy because I was good with computers and I was smart, and no son of his was going to be a sissy.
As soon as I turned sixteen and hit a growth spurt, the beatings stopped. Mostly because I got big enough to fight back and defend myself. He didn’t want to risk getting hurt. But the emotional abuse never stopped, not until the day I left that house and never looked back.
I’m not a weak man. I don’t let that shit define me or hold me back. I’m not some fucking victim. But I can’t pretend like it didn’t happen. I was just a kid and I didn’t know any better. I shouldn’t be ashamed of it.
