Everest Green was determined to go through her four years of college unnoticed by steering clear of any kind of trouble. Law school was her ultimate goal and no one was going to stand in her way, not even the Greek god lookalikes at Bowling Green Un...
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If he came with a face I had yet to see, with a voice I had yet to hear, I would still know him. Even if the years separated us, I would still feel him. Like Lang Leav wrote. Somewhere between the sand and stardust, through every collapse and creation, there is a pulse that echoes of us.
We were stardust, him and I.
He was sitting in the same spot we sat the first time he brought us here, looking up at the stars. I walked towards him and as I got closer I could see the tears that were streaming down his cheeks. He was in pain. As I got closer, it didn't take him much to realize that he wasn't alone anymore. He turned his gaze towards me and I could see that he wasn't expecting to see me. "Ev, what are you doing here?"
"O'Connor called me," I reply as I sat down right next to him. "He told me what happened and was worried because he didn't know where you ran off to."
"I just wanted to be alone," Connery says looking down. "The memories, they brought back so much pain, it was all too much. All at once."
"It's years of painful memories," I say. "How could you ever forget?"
"He had nine years, nine whole years." Connery sighs. "Why now?"
"Did he tell you the reason why he showed up?" I ask.
"Yes," Connery replies. "He said that he wanted to make things right between us but I wasn't having it. He had his chance Ev, he is nine years too late for that."
"He dared to call beating mom up over and over again while you drowned yourself in whiskey bottles a mistake. A mistake. A mistake is something you make once, but when you do it repeatedly without caring, that's a choice."
"What did you say to him when told you it was a mistake?" I ask.
"I told him to keep his sorry excuses for himself. After all of these years, that was the best thing that he could come up with. And then he goes on to tell me that he will always be my father. He stopped being my father the moment I walked out the door with my mom." Connery pauses. "I don't know what he wants to do with me anyway, he has a little perfect family of his own. He didn't feel the need to look for us back then, he doesn't need us now."
"It breaks me Ev, the fact that his own family wasn't a reason enough for him to get his shit together. He found a reason to get his shit together after we left, we weren't enough for him. We weren't but his new family was." I didn't know what to say, so I did what I knew would speak more than any word I could say. I embraced him and he broke down.
"I don't have all of the answers you're looking for right now, they're answers that only he can give you," I say as I place my hands on Connery's cheeks. "But know that you didn't lose anything the day you walked out that door. What you left behind wasn't the dad you had always known, he wasn't the dad he once promised he would always be Connery. He was the one that ended up losing because you and Emma turned out to be one of the best people I have ever had the chance to meet in this lifetime. And he knows that he realizes that."
