Bar Red's Redemption ✔

c h a p t e r. 15

"She didn’t realize how much depends on what you’re remembered for. Sometimes, it’s so much better to be forgotten."
—Lauren Oliver

chapter 15

"I swear to potatoes there's something in my eye." Gus groans, rubbing his palm from his eyebrow to the side of his nose.

"It's brain cells," Fen says. "They're trying to crawl out of you knowing they don't belong because you have no brain."

Ouch.

Bar instantly glares at the hot-tempered chick, knowing that his best friend was probably taking the words to heart.

"Why a-are you, you being so mean today, Fen?" Clementine asks, popping a piece of an orange into her mouth as Bar hands it to her and kisses her forehead.

He often peeled her oranges, knowing the little goddess hated doing so herself but loved the taste.

"No reason." Fen scowl argued with the words as she crossed her arms as she leans back.

"I called my future bae Aspen-Faye— Hey! That rhymes!— instead of AJ or Fen and now she's being a crabby, beautiful ass towards me." Gus explains, beaming towards Clementine.

The little goddess giggles and nods and everyone goes back to their respective activities.

Law tried to help a confused Gus with school work and momentarily failed— a common occurrence, but tried again nonetheless.

Fen beings to talk to Elijah about divinities and religion, momentarily dragging Bar into it while Clementine sat on his lap, contently eating an orange.

"Do you believe in God?"

Bar snorts. "Fuck no."

How could he believe in a God that allowed a father like the one he had to live an unpunished life with no shame?

"Why?" Eli looked confused.

Fen was indifferent, believing in nothing— no afterlife, no divine intervention pulling at strings, no big man in the clouds, and no slandered angelic son rotting away in hell.

Eli, on the other hand, was a firm believer that there was a God, and that he is kind.

"Because," Bar shrugs. "Even if God was real he wouldn't have my faith. Good is hard to believe in. Bad is easy to see, it's everywhere. Besides, the God you are talking about isn't benevolent. What sort of God is kind when they make beings who so easily are ready for their own demise?"

A God that lets a father beat his child.

A God that let Bar hurt Clementine.

A God that didn't care about his children or prayers or bad sons or bad fathers or dead mothers or bullies or abuse.

A God whose an absentee father himself.

"Ugh!" Conway suddenly groans, disrupting the tension strumming through Bar as he slams his phone onto the table, slumping in his chair. "Why are the girls who like being choked and submissive during sex the same ones who cry when yelled at?"

What a dick, Bar thought.

"Because, asshole," Bar snarled. "There's a big difference between being sexually dominated and verbally amused. I hope to fuck that any girl who respects herself stays away for you, and the ones who don't."

"T-they do," Clementine whispers into Bar's ear and he snorts.

"Come on, Red." Fen rolls her eyes. "If no girls went around him, he'd be left with blue balls."