Heartbreak Hypothesis

t w e n t y - t h r e e

"Why does that happen whenever you talk about him?" When I looked into Daniel's dark eyes, there was nothing but tender care in them.

I didn't have an explanation for it. My father's death still hurt. A lot. And before now, I'd been terrified of talking about it. But Daniel was here and he wanted to listen.

For two years, I had to deal with the grief alone. My mom has her own concerns which piled on top of mine. If I said it wasn't choking me up, I'd be lying.

"I—I guess I got used to not talking about him. It's like a reflex now." I paused to look at the tall white vase next to Daniel's trophy case, taking in a deep breath. The silence between us urged me to continue.

"The only sport I was familiar with was baseball. My dad and I would play for hours until mom had to seize our ball and hide it in the attic." A smile crept onto my lips and sat there, comfortable in the atmosphere. "I always won. Dad took it upon himself to ensure it. But I knew he was going easy on me because he knew how much of a hard head I was."

A memory popped up in my head and I shifted my gaze to Daniel only to find him smiling too. "I was terrible at it though, because of how much he spoiled me. He hated to see me sad and would often steal cookies from my mom's jar just to cheer me up. Goodness knows how much mom hated her cookies going missing but she loved him too much to complain. And she loved that he loved me."

I rubbed my forearms, feeling goosebumps rise on them. Maybe it was the cold, or probably the fact that my story was just about to get darker.

Mom's love was what drove her off the edge. She channelled all her strength to loving her family and when it fell apart, she simply had to channel that strength elsewhere.

"The cookie thing didn't stop as I grew. I was a proud daddy's girl. One saturday morning when I was seventeen, dad had just stolen me another cookie to bribe me into doing the dishes while he rushed to the store to get groceries." I pause to lick my lips and steady my breathing. My throat thickened like it just couldn't bear to finish the story.

I shut my eyes. "He never came back." I didn't get to see Daniel's reaction, but I did feel his arms around me as the tears hit. Sniffling, I continued. "Turns out he was hit by a truck on his way back and the impact was so much that it drove him right into an electric pole." A pause, a sob, and tears followed. Lots of them. "He didn't even make it to the hospital."

Something in my chest clenched and the next thing I knew, the side of my face was pressed into Daniel's chest and I cried my heart out while he just held me. It took a minute before I could form words again but I didn't pull away.

"It wasn't just my dad that died that day, my mom did too, and so did the love in our house. It broke her. Blinded her so much that she couldn't see me, she still can't. I found her doing drugs a week after Dad's funeral and she's not stopped since."

"I'm sorry," Daniel said into my hair.

"You don't have to be sorry for me," I murmured against him. "It's been over two years. I'm a big girl now."

His hold on me tightened, his jaw shifting at the top of my head. "I'm not sorry for you. I'm sorry you had to endure all of that alone."

The sound of something blowing up erupted from the television and rippled through the air but neither of us flinched. We'd fallen into this comfortable silence and I wasn't ready to let go of it yet.

Or specifically, now that we'd began, I wanted to know more about him.

"What was your dad like?" I found myself asking.

Daniel exhaled before speaking. "He was nothing like yours, unfortunately," he said with a small chuckle that reverberated from his chest to mine. "He wasn't so much of a family man which I guess was why he and mom had just me. But that made him pretty strict. He pushed me to be the best I could and wouldn't talk to me for days of I messed up. And that's saying a lot because he left when I was six."