Cross

13 | It's about time...

"You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy. So let them go, let go of them. I tie no weights to my ankles." - C. Joybell C.

               Chapter Thirteen

"I have helped you in the past – that you can't deny.

Without me, your dear ol' father,

You would not have found.

If you wise to continue to receive my help, however,

by my rules you'll have to abide.

                                                                  -B"

Scorching heat clouded my vision as the wicked flames of anger enveloped me in their fiery embrace. I felt all the blood inside me simmering, boiling even, as my eyes scanned and re-scanned the typed letters on the card. I caught a few strange looks from the people walking on the streets as I continued to drown myself in a molten-lava of rage. No doubt, I seemed murderous, spiteful, and more wrathful than Medea when she found out about her lover's affair.

I crumbled the card and the envelope until it was nothing but a ball of useless paper; and, I had a half of mind to throw it in a fit of rage across the threshold of my house into the trash can, but something stopped me. A shriek of frustration was lodged precariously within my vocal chords. I wanted to vent, to shout on the top of my lungs like a mad woman, and, perhaps more urgently, punch something – anything. I couldn't bring myself to do any of that.

The presence of my father within hearing distance was like icy rain falling into an erupting volcano. I was being both lit from within and doused from the outside. It was a tug of war – insanity vs. logic – but there were no winners. Only losers. Me.

Swallowing down the bile that had risen in my throat, I allowed myself to seethe quietly for a few minutes before I composed myself. Time felt stretched out, wonky, as if I had entered an alternate universe where I owed an immoral and foul pathetic excuse of a man anything besides justice. It was difficult to wrap my head around his words due to the fallacy of his statements. Nevertheless, I managed to wipe off most of the expressive anger off of my face by the time I entered my apartment.

Luckily, I didn't need to put much effort into adopting a casual behavior and mindset. Walking into the kitchen, a strong pleasant smell caught me by surprise. It was enough to momentarily blindside me from the reality of my situation.

"Are you making lasagna for dinner?" I asked, unable to keep the pure excitement out of my voice.

He looked up from the kitchen table, where he had been sitting, his nose buried inside a newspaper. With an innocent smile playing on his lips, he said, "You sound excited."

My eyes widened as I dropped all the excess luggage and my bag, which now held the two crumbled balls of paper, on the table and took a seat across from him. "Are you kidding? I haven't had lasagna since mom..."

I cut myself off, my voice faltering as images from the past hijacked my train of thought.

The atmosphere became colder as both of our moods dipped for a second, but I caught myself. There was no point in having two depressed souls within one house. One was enough and I was willing to take all the stress and problems in the world if it meant my father could be happy again.

"Since forever, you know?" I said.

"Yeah," he said, deeply sighing afterwards. "I know."

I always hated living in New York City, or any of the other boroughs, because of the cramped spaces and tiny apartments, but my father had been a silver lining. With another person sharing the space with me, I had company and that, in and of itself, seemed to have enlarged the house psychologically speaking. If there was one thing that I had come to realize over the past six months, however, it was that emotions – especially the negative ones – had a way of consuming all of the oxygen present in a room, like a fire.