I don’t think it’s my imagination when I see the hate on his face. It’s there and directed solely at me. I know the look well, because I’m pretty sure I hated myself for way too fucking long. Meeting Violet changed everything. That sounds hokey as hell, but it’s true. She’s changed so much about me and we’ve barely begun together, but I know it’s right. I know it’s real.
Just like I can read my father’s face and know that it’s disgust that he’s feeling.
“I’m never home much on the weekends, Dad,” I mumble, turning away from him to head upstairs. I could tell him he could get used to it, that from today and every day going forward he will see less and less of me, but it’s honestly not worth it. Once he gets whatever this little confrontation is about, out of his system, he’ll go back to not knowing I’m around most of the time.
“That’s going to change,” he growls, and I turn around carefully. I’m on the fourth step up and when I turn my father is at the base of the stairs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look at me with so much anger—and that’s saying something. I descend down the steps so that we’re standing eye-to-eye. My father and I are practically the same height and build. I’ve tried to wear my hair close to his and carry myself like him. I did it on purpose. It sounds crazy, but I used to think that it would make a difference. That somehow, if he saw himself in me instead of Parker, we would magically grow closer.
That was clearly a stupid thought. Nothing will ever connect my father with me.
“I demand to know where you’ve been!” he snaps, his face so full of anger that it’s white with splotches of red dotting his complexion.
“Why does it matter? You never cared before,” I accuse. “Why now?”
His eyes narrow and he leans in as if he’s going to intimidate me. I could warn him that I’m not really scared of him or anyone at this point in my life. The only exception to that might be Violet the other day when I was worried she wouldn’t forgive me.
“I won’t have you throwing your life away on a piece of trash,” he snarls, and I can’t describe the anger that I feel.
“You had better not be talking about Violet,” I warn him.
“Who else would I be talking about? Jesus son, what were you thinking?”
“You don’t even know her! What gives you the fucking right to judge her?”
“I saw her! I know enough! She made a scene at our party. The whole damn town is talking about the cheap bitch my son is dating. You know better than this shit. Our kind might fuck trash like that, but we never bring them home,” he spews, so much hate inside of him that you can’t miss it.
I bring my fist back, not even thinking and then I plow it into his face. He goes back with the force of the blow, but because we’re evenly matched, he recovers quickly and sucker punches me in the stomach. We trade blows and I can’t lie; my dad gives as good as I give him. I stagger under the weight of his punches. The last one is so hard that my legs threaten to buckle.
I block one of his blows that was going to my stomach, the ring on his finger grazes my skin, slicing the flesh on my knuckle.
“Still can’t beat your old man, can you?” Dad heckles, a nasty sneer on his face. “Maybe after I get done teaching you a lesson, I’ll find your little piece and give her a go—prove to you that women like that are only after two things—your dick and your wallet,” he spews out.
I’m looking at him and I can finally, after all these years, see the hate and the anger he sees when he looks at me. Now he doesn’t have even a semblance of a mask in place. It’s all there for me to see and it stuns me so completely that I don’t defend myself or even try to hide from his punch.
His fist connects with my right eye, the pain intense, but not as bad as what I feel in my gut when I finally face what I’ve known all along. My dad truly hates me. I don’t know what I’ve ever done to him, besides come up short