On the Plus Side

Page 73

I would, too! I didn’t need this shit. My dad and Jenny didn’t need it, either. We were moving on with our lives. My life was just starting to make sense and the last thing I needed was anything that had to do with the woman who birthed me.
He didn’t move as I got in his face.
“Devin, just listen.”
“One,” I started to count.
I was already passed being pissed off. I was giving him a chance to turn and leave.
“There are things you need to know.” He started to panic.
“Two.” I swear if he was still standing there when I got to three I was going to punch him square in the face.
“If we could just wait until your dad’s here, I really have something I think you all should know.”
Oh, hell no! He was not rubbing this crap in my dad’s face. My dad didn’t need to see the man my “mother” was fucking. He didn’t need to know that this man even existed.
“Time’s up, Fuck face…three.” I snatched him up around the collar and hauled his scrawny frame upward.
He pulled back as if he was going to run, but I was much stronger. I pulled back my arm ready to feel his nose against my fist.
“Devin, your mom passed away last week!” He shouted in a panic and I could see the sadness in his eyes.
Everything stopped. My fist sat suspended in the air and all the oxygen left my body. Black spots danced in my vision and I felt my other hand loosen around his collar.
“Are you OK, buddy?” I heard him ask.
“I’m not your fucking buddy.” I shoved him away. “How’d she die?” I croaked.
“Lung cancer. I only came because I thought you and Jenny should know. I would’ve liked to talk to your father about this. I bare no ill will with him. Your mother and I met a year after she moved to Maryland.”
Maryland. That’s where she ran off to. That’s where she’s been all these years, living her life as if Jenny and I never existed and now, she was dead.
I never got a chance to tell her how badly she scarred me. I never got to tell her how I felt, how I hated her for turning me into a heartless bastard. I hated her for leaving me and Jenny. I hated her, and now she was gone. She’s been gone for many years, but I think there was always a part in the back of my brain that thought I’d see her again one day.
I was disgusted by the fact that as much I as hated to admit it, I’d hoped to see her again. She was gone. My mother was dead.
“Leave.”
“Devin, I think I should talk to your father.”
“I’ll deal with my father, you leave.”
I’m not sure what it was in my face that made this guy turn and leave, but he didn’t hesitate.
I watched as he walked back to his luxury car and pulled away. I felt as though my feet had grown roots. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, and the worst part was it hurt so bad knowing she was dead. She didn’t care about me a bit, yet here I was deep inside mourning her.
No way could I tell dad and Jenny. No way.
Suddenly, all I felt was anger. How dare she die without saying goodbye to us? She died from lung cancer, not a sudden death. She didn’t die in a car accident or have a fucking massive heart attack.  She had found out that she was dying and she still didn’t come to say goodbye.
I lost all control of myself as I rampaged through the garage. I pulled over tool-boxes and busted out car windows with a tire iron. Poor Lucy got the brunt of it.
After I destroyed the garage, I was inside tearing through the refrigerator. I sucked down one of Dad’s beers, but it wasn’t enough. I could still feel. I ripped open the liquor cabinet and grabbed dad’s large bottle of Crown Royal. I didn’t even bother with a shot glass as I downed the burning liquid. The fire in my throat seemed to relieve the pain in my chest.
I needed to not feel. I didn’t want to feel anything.
I wished to Hell that Dan Archer had stayed so I could pound my fist into his face. I was full of anger and now I was also full of liquor and I needed a release of some sort before I fucking exploded.
That’s how Jenny found me, drunk out of my mind, sitting at the kitchen table.
“Devin!” She came busting in the back door. “Are you OK? Someone destroyed the garage and busted a window in your car. What the fuck happened?” She was panicked.
Her wide green eyes beat into me…so innocent. She was just a baby when that bitch left us and now she had the nerve to leave again.
I’d kill anyone who ever tried to hurt her…anyone. Actually, I had a date with a baseball bat and an attempted rapist’s face. If he was man enough to beat a female senseless, then he was man enough to take the beating that was coming his way.