I Could Never Leave Your Bed (Mike Fuentes)

Chapter 3

I kept walking down the path I had memorized from the first day I got here, the first day of coming to live with my dad, or the guy pretending to be him at least. I don’t know why he decided to do this now, when I’m practically already an adult. He missed out on most of my life and left me with that crazy woman. I’m only here because I couldn’t stay there anymore, not with all those memories, not with every opportunity of running into Mike again.

Suddenly it hits me, the flashbacks, of him, of us, everything, and I can’t stop the tears. I know what’s going on, the all too familiar pain in my chest hits me like a ton of bricks making it hard to breathe and I want it to stop, he was always there to stop them and now they’re worse and they’re because of him. I have to take control I can’t let these panic attacks control me, I just don’t know how.

“Sam?” My father’s deep voice laced with concern reaches my ears and suddenly the pain stops, and my breathing becomes steady again. No matter what he did, he still makes me feel safe, that voice the same voice that used to say my name when I woke up from a bad dream pulls me back. He’s not the same man that protected me from the monsters, I know that, but somehow he still feels right, he still feels safe.

“Are you going to the park?” he asks me as he reaches me. He sees the tears but he doesn’t say anything and I can see it in his eyes the sadness and the guilt but most of all the frustration. I know he wants to wipre the tears away, but he knows I won’t let him.

I nod and continue walking, without a glance back at him, but I can hear his footsteps behind me. This is what we’ve been doing since I’ve came here. These silent walks and silent everything, barely even saying anything. At first he tried talking to me; asking me questions and telling me stories. He quickly found out I wasn’t in the mood for conversation. That’s when I started coming here, a park not too far from his house, I guess you could say it was the place where I came to think. That’s where I met Jack, and just like my father tried talking to me, and finally just decided to sit with me quietly. I liked that, liked his company, just like I was enjoying my father’s company at the moment.

“You know, I used to have a lot of panic attacks too.” My father’s voice breaks the silence and I can’t help but to look back at the man I used to call ‘Dad.’ I can’t deny that he’s my father; I’m practically identical to him, with his dark wavy hair, olive skin, and grey eyes. I raised my eyebrow at him not really believing that the man who acted so fearlessly with me as a child was subject to the same pain I had become accustomed to living with. “I don’t know if your mother ever told you, but I used to be a soldier, and when I came home the war followed me home. It helps if you can distract yourself with something.”

“Like what?” I ask him, and I can see his lips twitching into a smile, because he’s getting somewhere and I feel awful about treating him the way I’ve been treating him.

“Usually something that you enjoy to do, something that can disconnect you from here, take you somewhere else.” His eyes were shinning as they looked into mine and I knew that somehow he had taken himself to that somewhere else he was talking about. He pulled out a camera from his back pocket, and I couldn’t help the smile that was slowly making it’s way to my lips. “Photography can do that. You can look through the lens and be transported to a different world. You can use this camera whenever you like, Sammy, whenever you feel your anxiety rise, just put it back when you’re done okay?”

I let out a shaky breath as I stared at the camera in my hands. I always wondered how he knew about my love for photography, but it was that gesture that broke down my walls, made our relationship less strained and finally got me to open up to my dad. Right now I was taking pictures of everything in sight, calming my nerves. Seeing the Fuentes brothers after all these years almost sent me over the edge. I was too close to having a panic attack all through lunch and I could see it in Jack’s eyes, he knew it too, so he didn’t mind when I rushed out with my dad’s camera.

“Hey!” That voice snaps me out of my thoughts, and at first I think its Jack telling me it’s getting close to doors opening but when I turn I find a different sight that makes my heart ache. “I need to talk to you.” Mike says as he approaches me and his voice is so serious.

I can’t help but to stare at him, and I see all the differences in him, even to the way he walks. The tattoos he’s acquired over the years, his lip ring, that half shaved head, it’s all different, and he’s aged so much since I’ve seen him. He’s not the same little kid that I grew up with, Mike was all grown up.

“About what?” I counter with a fake confidence I have mastered over the years. I have learned to keep all my emotions hidden, and it’s all thanks to the man standing in front of me, but really I’m freaking out inside, because he’s so intimidating now especially with the way he’s looking me over.

“About Vic.” He says simply as he closes the distance between us so there’s only a few feet separating us.

“Vic?” I ask genuinely surprised, because him being here meant that he knew who I was, or at least I thought that was why he was here, until he brought up Vic.

“Stay away from him,” he snaps at me with an edge to his words, and I can’t help but to furrow my eyebrows at him, at his behavior, “He doesn’t need any drama in his life. He has a girlfriend, okay? I don’t care what you were to him in the past, just leave him alone. He has a good girl in his life and he certainly does not need a slut like you messing things up for him.”

I can’t help but to stare at him wide eyed, as he starts walking away without a word and I can’t help but to let out a humorless laugh, because he’s hurt me again, and he doesn’t even know it, know the history I’ve had with both of them. He turns around and frowns at me, and I know why because he doesn’t understand why I’m laughing.

“You honestly have no idea who I am, do you?” I say and although there is humor in my voice I’m breaking inside. Mike’s frown deepens as he looks over me again trying to figure out who I am and suddenly his eyes stop on the camera in my hand, before they finally meet my eyes again. “It’s nice to know you’re still the same asshole you were when I last saw you, and you can’t keep me away from Vic, not now that he’s back in my life.”

With that I pushed past Mike as I clutched my father’s camera trying to keeps my emotions under control, but a single tear still managed to fall as I made my way back to the buses.