When I got back from getting the tattoo, Dad was there, waiting on the steps to the door to my dark, shabby little apartment building. He looked haggard and rumpled, with subtle bags under his eyes that he never used to get when I was little, back when life was simple and perfect, and I had a mom and a dad and a family and a future.
I stopped, shocked into immobility.
Dad didn't smile or scowl. He didn't say hi. He looked at me under furrowed brows and rumpled hair, with an otherwise stony expression. My breath caught in my chest, and when I finally exhaled, I found myself panting as if I'd just run five miles. My heart raced.
My tit throbbed where I'd just gotten the tattoo.
My heart hurt beneath that.
Of all things, I blushed. I fucking blushed. My first reaction was that I was ashamed. I wanted to run and hide.
He must have sensed it, because he stood and came to me. He pulled up short, a step away, as if he'd run into a forcefield.
My dad, my own dad, was afraid to get too close to me. What was left of my heart shattered in my chest.
The next thing I knew, I was balling crying. Yet again. He stepped forward and gathered me into his arms, while I sobbed into his chest. His large hand brushed into the hair behind my head, and held it hard against him, locked in place. His other hand looped behind my back, locking me into place. The pressure on my tits hurt the fresh tattoo. I sobbed. Loudly. I don't know for how long I sobbed.
For that moment, at least, he was my dad again, just my dad, holding me while life screwed me over again, like it had so many times before.
When I regained my composure, he continued to hold me, but the hug got awkward. I started to become acutely aware of the pressure of his chest pressing on my tits, and I think my nipples started to harden. Again I felt ashamed. I stepped back, and he, I think gratefully, released me. I sort of bolted for the door. As I stepped around him, I glanced sidewise at his face, just quickly enough to try to read his still near blank expression. I shot past him toward the front door, bounding up the steps by twos. The pain, fear and uncertainty on his face hurt as much as anything else.
He didn't try to follow me. Of course he wouldn't. He drove all the way from Baltimore to see me, to talk, but if I didn't want to, he wasn't going to force me. He never, ever did. He only stood in place, only half turned in my direction, looking over his shoulder, and stared at me as I looked back at him. I turned completely away, fumbling for what felt like an hour with my keys, until I found the right one, turned it and opened the door. I stood there frozen in the half open door, my back to him, for another eternity, warring with my mind and my heart, before I decided what I wanted.
I looked back at him over my shoulder and waited. Recognizing the silent invitation, he strode forward, I think trying to hide his eagerness. He held the door for me as we entered. He followed me up the five flights of stairs, down the short, dark hallway, and into "my place."
It was a tiny, sucky hole, barely big enough for the small cot, small dresser, and small desk that filled it. It didn't even have a TV, but I don't watch TV. I read, and I write. Sometimes I sketch, too. That's it. I need a desk and chair for my laptop. Sitting on the desk was a small lamp that you had to fiddle just right to get it to turn on. Beneath that, at the base, were three very plain looking, smooth, flat stones. Each had a word clumsily etched into them; "strength", "harmony" and "change". The dresser had some tiny bluetooth speakers sitting on top. That was it. That was my room and all of my possessions, that and a closet of clothes that other girls tended to call odd, or embarrassing. The one narrow window looked out into a dank alley, and as I already mentioned, a dumpster. The air was perpetually musky and stuffy and either too hot or too cold, sometimes unavoidably so.
The walls were covered with posters of horses. I always loved horses as a kid. Dad once asked if I wanted to learn to ride, and I was horrified at the idea. Horses were strong and fast and graceful and free. God never intended anyone to ever ride a horse. That was just as wrong as anything could be.
I fell onto my bed, face down, breathing into the mattress. I could feel him standing there in the doorway, uncertain, having no obvious place to sit. Reluctant, I guess, to join me on the bed. I rolled over, flat on my back, to stare up at him. The pose, I imagined, was unsettling to him, unpleasantly similar to the pose I held when he last saw me. On his bed.
Before he fucked me. And after.
I finally started to get angry. It was the first moment in the whole affair when I felt like I wanted to hurt him, and also the first time I realized that I was angry at him as well as myself. I pulled out my phone and turned some music on, and the melody of Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon" drifted softly out of the speakers on the dresser.
He stared into my eyes. I wanted to escape by rolling back over, onto my belly, but I didn't want him looking at my ass. After spending days and days in Baltimore trying to get him to look at my tits and my ass, look down my shirt, stare at my lips, I didn't want him looking at anything at all. I sat up instead, moving to the bed's edge, to stare at the dust accumulating in the crook where the floor met the wall.
When he stood there, still, I patted the bed beside me, and told him it was okay, even if it wasn't. Suddenly, I wasn't angry at him anymore. I'd gone back to feeling ashamed.
The moment he sat beside me, I leaned into his shoulder. I'm not one to beat around the bush. I don't shy away from a fight, or a loss, or a regret. I just blurted it out. I asked him if he was ashamed of me.
When he stiffened, I looked up into his face, surprised by the shock in his expression.
He started talking then, and I didn't get a word in for the next twenty minutes. For the first time in my entire life, I saw my father cry. Tears welled in his eyes as he apologized. He told me it was his fault. He told me I could never be to blame. He told me he loved me.
I screamed at him not to say that. I took it wrong, and it flipped a switch, and I turned into a frenzied animal. If I could have reached my stones, if I'd had anything else to throw, and room to throw it, I would have. I railed at him. I stood up and stomped. I kicked the wall. Don't say that!
