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12/15/16
MY DOOR CREAKS as it slowly opens. My head rises from my book and locks on my lanky father standing in my doorway.
"You were fighting, again," I state with a deep sigh. I cast my gaze back to the worn book in front of me pretending to focus on the words as my father makes his way into the room.
I hate when my parents fight. It makes me want to curl up into a ball and cry, when I hear their loud voices and hateful words. Our house isn't super big, and paired with the thin walls it makes it easy to detect when an all out war is going down. Even when they try and hide it from me, though they never can.
"We weren't fighting," he tells me as he sits at the corner of my bed making the mattress dip in his favor.
My eyes flicker to meet his, a cold expression coating my face. "I'm sorry, you were discussing very loudly," I say sarcastically. My father's eyes narrow and his lips purse as if he wants to crack a smile at my clever mockery. But he knows he shouldn't, so he holds it in.
"Hayley...." he trails off.
I lift my hands from my book and hold them up in defeat. "I know, I know, " I concede. "I'm sorry," I state though it doesn't come out with any true heart.
"I love your mother, and she loves me," he explains, as he always does. "We love each other so much that sometimes we don't know how to contain our feelings. But just know—"
"You won't stop loving each other," I repeat the words he tells me frequently these days. "Whatever," I mumble under my breath. They have been fighting more often lately, but my father always assures me in their love for each other. But is that sufficient? One day will they decide they love each other too much, and go their separate ways? Is their love actually enough?
I close my eyes and push away the awful feeling that creeps inside my chest at the thought of my parents separating. Of them deciding to not be together anymore. Not to be a family anymore.
"She started it like she always does," I mutter about my mother. I love her, so much. But I connect more with my father in all honesty. We see eye to eye on an array of things. Where as many times I clash with my mother on the same topics. Making me selfishly take my father's side on issues I have no business butting my head in to.
"She didn't Hayley," he tells me sternly. Defending the love of his life like he always does. Even when a part of me thinks he knows I'm right, at least sometimes.
"Don't go," I whine hating how childish I sound. Especially when I like to believe for a young teen that I am wise beyond my years.
"It's not that bad out," he counters trying to make it seem like a quick run to the store is nothing. When in actuality he's right, it is nothing. But something in the pit of my stomach knows, knows that it isn't just nothing. It is something, it is everything.
