Memories assault me.
One after another just like his fists used to. Just like his words that left layer upon layer of scars still do.
Nothing’s changed. The house still has the same oppressive feeling that it did when I walked out the door eleven years ago. The same heaviness to it from the man who reveled in controlling his son with fear.
And everything’s changed. The couch color. The brown carpet that’s now vinyl wood planks. The box television that’s now a flatscreen on the wall.
The man lying in the hospital bed in the center of the family room.
He looks like hell. Sunken eyes. Hollow cheeks. A gray pallor. What’s left of his hair that was once dark is now white from the stress of the chemo.
But his eyes—neither age nor sickness have dulled the spite in them.
I’ve spent the last week being the Vince Jennings everyone knows. Surly. Cocky. Talented. Rebellious. I’ve gone to meeting after meeting. Done interview after interview. I’ve held my ground professionally and personally.
The personal side has come at a fucking brutal cost. I left the house, I boarded the jet, I arrived in Los Angeles, all while telling myself that Bristol was being ridiculous for worrying about me coming back.
So I challenged myself not to call her. Not to text her. To see if I can live without her this time around. To realize how goddamn miserable I am without them. To validate my reasons for everything I need to do. To keep her as far away from the man this moment with my dad might turn me into.
If she’s nowhere near this, then I can’t hurt her or Jagger with what comes of it.
The only thing that’s made this misery easier is being so goddamn tired every night I collapse into bed. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss the fuck out of them. That I don’t pick up my phone, go to write a text, and then set it back down as a reminder of what life would be like without them.
Because I’m still not the man they deserve.
Not yet.
But after today, after I stand here in a house that holds only terrible nightmares, I need to be a man I’ve never been before. The man I know I can be. The one I want to be the moment I leave this house, knowing I’ll never return again.
“Vincent,” my dad murmurs.
We stare at each other for a long span of time but don’t speak. I have so much to say, but walking into this house is like stepping back in time. My thoughts and words immediately tangle with the fear of fucking up. Of not making myself invisible enough to avoid what inevitably comes next.
It’s incredible how three steps into this room and I’m reminded of how it made me feel. How he fucked with my head. How when I grew calloused to that, he then bruised me with his fists.
Nothing will ever be able to erase that. Not his sickness. Not an apology. Not his death.
His nurse stands abruptly from where she sits in the corner. She eyes me with distrust. It’s a valid thing for her to feel considering I’m staring at my father with disgust. She glances around the room as if to make sure there aren’t any weapons I can hurt him with. Only after she seems confident there aren’t, does she excuse herself from the room.
She neglected to realize bare hands are weapons too. Just ask my father. He was the master of using them.
I stay where I am. Back leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed over my chest, stare unyielding.
“It’s me you have to thank for your success, you know.”
Fucking classic Deegan Jennings if ever I’ve heard him. Narcissistic asshole. It’s always about him, even when it isn’t.
“If that’s what you think.”
“It’s what I know. I gave you the foundation you needed to be who you are.”
Foundation? Jesus. Does he really believe the shit he’s spewing?
“I fed you. I clothed you. I put a roof over your head.”
I let him talk. I welcome the words. I hear the bullshit in them. I recognize the things I feared for far too long. The things I believed.
“And you beat me to a pulp for simply breathing.” My laugh holds anything but amusement as I clap dramatically. “Award for Father of the Year most definitely goes to you.”
“You always were an unappreciative fuck, you know that?”
“Appreciative? How about I appreciate you showing me everything I never want to be as a human. As a man. As a father.”
He angles his head to the side and purses his sallow lips before they turn up in a taunting grin. “How’s that boy of yours, anyway?”
“My son is none of your fucking business,” I grit out.
“I’m pretty sure he is being family and all.”
I clench my jaw so hard it hurts, determined to resist letting him push the buttons he’s mastered.
“Did you take pleasure in it, Dad? To get paid to hurt me? To try and fuck me over? To sell your son out one last time so you could feel like you were still in charge?”
His chuckle says it did.
“And for what? Because you’ve resented me my whole life because Mom left you, and God forbid you had to take care of your son?” I shake my head. So much hurt and fear from the years slowly ebbing so I can see the truths I was too blinded to see before. The bullshit I dealt with was about him. About his shortcomings. About his failures. Not about me.
“I was doing you a favor.”
“Bullshit. You’re a selfish son of a bitch who was only thinking about getting one last dig in at his son before he died. One last fuck you to revive your black heart.”
His smile is half-assed. His wince in pain has me holding my breath momentarily and selfishly wanting him not to die so I can finish what I came here to do. “Or maybe I was trying to teach you a lesson.”
“A lesson? That’s some fucked-up logic coming from a man who doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”
He pauses and meets my eyes with a smugness I’ve seen more times than I care to count. “My blood’s running through him too, sonny-boy. Don’t you forget that.”
I’m at his bedside in a flash. My anger rioting. The urge to grab his sweatshirt and yank him to his feet so we can be eye to eye owns me. So he can feel the fear I used to have every time he used to do the same to me.
But I don’t. I grip the bed rail till my knuckles turn white as he sits there and gloats. He got what he wanted. A reaction to know he hit the nail on the head.
That he got his final dig in.
Even in death, my dad wants me to know he’ll still be there. He’ll still be around. That I should still fear if what’s in him is in my blood. Is in my son’s blood.
I don’t want to ruin his perfect.
I refuse to take his bait.
I refuse to let him leave this world thinking that he was successful in planting that thought in my head.
Instead, I take a few seconds to look at a man who used to strike fear in me. Now all I can feel is pity.
He’s just a man. Just flesh and bones.
He is not me. I am not him. I’ll never be him.
How could I ever think otherwise?
I shake my head and lean down close to his face. “You know what? I came here thinking maybe the fact you’re knocking down death’s door might have made you want to say things, make amends, right some of your wrongs . . . fuck if I know. But it’s clear you don’t. It’s clear you’d rather die alone with your anger than with a clear conscience.”
“Vin—”
I can see the fight in his eyes. The spite, and I cut him off before he can spew it. “I look at you and feel sorry for you. Nothing more. Nothing less. You wasted your life being bitter and brutal, only feeling good about yourself when you were tearing me down. Well, guess what. It didn’t work. Not your abuse—look who I became. Not your deception—look what I now get to love. Not the groundwork you laid for me—because I’ll never be like you.”
His stare is hard. His jaw is set. Even in death the fucker won’t bend.
Well, neither will I. Over the years, I’ve bent enough for him. Bent so much I thought I was fucking broken.
Not anymore.
Never again.
“Goodbye, Dad. I’m sorry it couldn’t have been different. I’m sorry you couldn’t find it in yourself to love. Just know that when you take your last breath, I made it. I’m everything you said I could never be. I’m everything I ever wanted to be. And I’ll never be like you.”
I walk to the door without another word.
Tears well in my eyes. Not for the man he was, but for the man he could have been to me. For the man I needed him to be but never had.
I’m not angry at him. The past is the past. A phrase I’ve been saying a lot lately. But I resent him for the opportunities he robbed me of.
It’s his degradation and abuse that had me walking away from Bristol at age nineteen.
It’s his lies that possibly stole eleven years of time that we could have been together.
But it’s him who pushed us all together. And that’s the greatest fuck you to him I could ever hope to have.
