Playing Chase (Against The Wall) (14 page)

I have no idea why my dad invites me places when he doesn’t plan on actually spending any time with me. He always ignores me and does his own thing. Like now.

“Hey, dad. I gotta go.” I’m about to stand but he puts his hand out to stop me.

“You can’t go yet, Chase.” He leans over to tell me quietly, “Simone has a friend. She’s walking over here right now. You have to keep her company while I go in for the kill here.”

“Not going to happen, Dad. Sorry.”

“Come on.” He holds my back from getting to my feet. “Five minutes. Give me five minutes and then you can leave.”

I look at my watch. It’s still early. Tiff hasn’t called yet so I decide to give him his damn five minutes.

“Not a minute more,” I tell him.

“Sophia, this is Chase.” He introduces me to the woman who sits next to me. “Enjoy.”

The fact that he says
enjoy
like he’s serving me up to her on a silver platter pisses me off to no end. I told him I had somewhere to be tonight. Someone to be with and he still thinks it’s okay to throw this woman my way.

“Nice to meet you, Sophia, but I gotta go. See ya later,” I tell her. I start to rise, but Sophia catches my hand and pulls me back down to her and placing my hand on her very large and very fake breast at the same time.

“Chase?”

Oh holy hell. This is not happening.

I yank my hand free of the implants and turn toward Tiffany. “Hi.”

“What the hell is going on?” The look on her face is rage and pain all at the same time.

I swore I’d never hurt her and the tears filling her eyes are evidence that I have failed. Again. “Nothing. I was just leaving.”

“But you thought it would be nice to cop a feel first?”

“Tiffany, come home with me and let me explain.” I reach for her and she steps back.

“Are you crazy? Chase, you lied to me. You said you were going out with your dad to celebrate his new place.”

My dad takes this moment to join the conversation. “We are celebrating,” he says through a fit of laughter before nuzzling back into Simone’s neck.

“He makes me sick and so do you.” She closes the distance between us, tears falling down her eyes. “I thought I could trust you.”

I reach for her hand and hold it gently in mine. “You can trust me, Tiffany. You can. This is a big misunderstanding.”

She looks over at Sophia. “Big. You got that right.”

“Tiff…”

“I gotta go. Don’t call me. And don’t come over.” She pulls her hand from my grasp and walks away from me.

I scrub my hands across my face, trying to figure out what I should do.

“Don’t worry about her, son. You got Sophia here. Enjoy her while you can and then go get that feisty one later. No sense in ruining a good time
, while you have her.” He wags his brows in the direction of the fake boobs.

All I can do is give him a hard stare. If looks could kill, my dad would be six
-feet under right now.

By the time I get outside to find Tiffany, she’s gone. I sit in my car with my head on the steering wheel holding on for dear life and trying so hard to think clearly. It may have been my fault in the
past, giving women reason not to trust me, but it wasn’t this time.

This is a complete mess. What are the chances that Tiff would see me at that exact moment? With my luck, I shouldn’t be surprised. It just doesn’t seem fair. I tried doing the right thing and keeping my distance from her but I couldn’t. I was honest with her, more than I ever have been with anyone in my life. She knows me, knows my faults, and still sees the good in me. And when I finally take a leap of faith and allow myself to show her the love that I have for her, something like this happens.

I take out my phone and try calling her. She doesn’t answer.

“Tiffany, you know this is just one big misunderstanding. You know you can trust me and I know you don’t believe that I would do anything to hurt you. Please talk to me. I love you.”

The wallpaper on my phone stares back at me. One day I took a picture of Tiffany while she was teaching. She stood at the front of the class with a huge smile on her face and her hands held high. She was telling the students a story about when she took her first advanced placement class, and the textbooks were so huge, that she was ready to walk out of the room. Of course, there was a moral to the story. One of those ‘if you believe it you can achieve it’ kind of things. What I’d give to hear her say, “let me tell you a story” just one more time.

The streets are empty as I drive to Tiffany’s house. There is no way I can let this stew overnight. The longer she waits to talk to me, the worse the story will get in her mind. And I can’t allow her to go on thinking that I went out tonight with the intention of hooking up with some chick with abnormally large breasts. I can’t allow her to go on thinking that I would betray her trust. I can’t allow her to hurt.

My chest tightens when I pull up and her car is not in her driveway.

I take out my cell again. This time I text her.

Honey, I’m in front of your house & your car isn’t here. I know u don’t want to talk to me, but please tell me ur safe. I’m worried. <3u

Time stands still as I wait for a response.

I’m safe. Turning off my phone now.

There is only one place left to go. Home. I’m hoping my dad went home with the flavor of the night
, and I have my place to myself. He’ll be gone tomorrow so I just need to keep my distance until then.

I toss my keys on the coffee table and fall back into my sofa, a migraine beginning to pound in my skull. She left and she didn’t give me a chance to explain. It’s not something I
would’ve expected of her. But then again, I doubt she expected to see me with a handful of someone else’s tit. That had to look awful to her. Seeing me in the dim light of the club, my dad making out with a woman on the lounge next to me, while I was feeling up the girl next to me. It was probably only two seconds, but it was two seconds too long. Long enough for her to believe that I was out cheating, while she was out celebrating her best friend’s birthday.

My night turns to even bigger shit when my dad gets home.

“Hey, son. I didn’t expect you to be home.” He plops himself down on a chair opposite me, smacking his gum and reeking of cheap perfume. “So did you get lucky? Come home for a shower before you go hit that other little hottie in the boots?”

My teeth clench together and I try my hardest to fight back the urge to tell my dad off, but there’s no fighting it this time. “Dad, I told you not to talk about Tiffany that way.” I try keeping my voice steady, trying to hold back the anger.

“Who’s Tiffany? The one in the boots?” He shakes his head. “Come on, son. We’re not going to go down this road again, are we? I bet you think you’re in love again, don’t you?” He laughs. “Marino’s don’t fall in love with one woman. We’re meant to indulge in female companionship. And when we’re done with one, we move on to another. We don’t get tied down, Chase. Forget this bitch just like you did the others.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I shout. “What in the hell happened
to you that you would treat women the way you do? You’re like the classic case of a man with mommy issues. Did my grandma not hug you enough? Did my mom not love you enough?”

“Fuck your mom,” he says.

That’s it. I pop my dad in the mouth and I don’t even feel bad about it. “Do not talk about my mother in such a way. Don’t you fucking dare.”

He raises the back of his hand to his mouth and sneers at me. “I never had any intention of getting married or having kids, but she didn’t know how to use her birth control the right way
, so she got knocked up and trapped me into something I never wanted. Stop being a fucking pussy, Chase. You don’t want to be tied down either. Love is for the ignorant. It doesn’t exist. You’re a fool if you think it does.”

“Then call me a fool. But at least I’ll be a happy fool. Not a bitter old, lonely man.” I scrub my hands over my face, wishing this was all just one big fucking nightmare and I’ll wake up in the morning and it’ll all have gone away.

“You’re ridiculous. Maybe you’re not even mine.” He rolls his eyes as if I’m such a nuisance to him. “You’ll see one day. Women are only good for one thing. Everything else, you can do on your own. You don’t need to depend on anyone but yourself. When are you going to learn?”

“Dammit, Dad. Why do you have to be this way? Do you know what you’ve done to me? What you’ve raised me to be? A cheater. A man who screws over every woman he loves. I lost Shelly and swore I wouldn’t let it happen again. And then when you dropped by to be a dad again, I lost Summer too. I still can’t believe I cheated on her. It was only one kiss with an old friend I ran into at a movie, but I let her believe it was more
, so she would dump me. I couldn't imagine living without her but I knew I didn’t deserve her love. Listening to your stupid shit about her being with another guy had me so pissed that I actually hurt her. Physically. I could hear your voice in my head, taunting me about how I wasn’t man enough to keep my woman satisfied. About how she’d moved on so quickly that she probably never cared. So I grabbed hold of her arm, hoping and praying that she’d say it was all a mistake, and that she did love me and she wanted to be with me. But she didn’t…I lost her too. I turned into some kind of madman, grasping at straws for either Summer or Shelly to love me. For either of them to want me or understand me, but all I did was hurt them more, and I made a total ass out of myself in the process. And when you finally left like you always did, I had plenty of alone time without you and without Summer to think about what I'd done. I'm not blaming you, Dad. It's my own fault for letting your words get to me. But I'm done. I can't do it anymore. I don't want to be that guy anymore…I refuse to be…like you."

He shrugs. “Then don’t be.”

He acts like none of this bothers him. I just unloaded years of frustration on him, I hit him even, and he doesn’t even blink. He makes me sick.

“You know what, Dad?” I lift my head to look him in the eye. “I won’t be. You’re right. I’m a fool. A fool in love with a woman who makes me want to be a better man. I’m going to show her every day for the rest of our lives how much I love her. And I’m not going to let you ruin that for me. Not anymore. If you want to be part of my life, then you have to accept that Tiffany will be in it. You won’t talk badly about her. You won’t talk badly about mom. You’ll
accept that I’m not your fucking wingman, I’m your son and you’re my father. And hopefully, someday soon, you’ll start acting like it. Now, get the fuck out of my house.”

Matty and Noah are having some father-son time. I sit on the chaise while they play on the floor with the big chunky building blocks. They’re quite the team. And I can never get enough of watching them together.

The stupid doorbell rings making me get off my ass. If it’s another little kid selling frozen cheesecakes, I’m going to scream.

“Chase, what are you doing here?” The dude looks like hell.

“Hi, Shel. Is Matt home?” His hands are on his hips and his eyes are near bloodshot. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days.

“Yeah, come in.” I hold the door open and he steps inside.

He follows me into the living room. When Matty sees him, he gets to his feet, leaving Noah on the floor to play by himself. My boy is good at that. Thankfully, he can keep himself entertained. For thirty minutes at the most, but hey, it’s something.

“Hey,” Matty says. “What’s up?” He gestures to the sofa. “Have a seat.”

“Thank you,” Chase says. “I’m sure Mel told you I’d be coming by.”

I shake my head. “No, no she didn’t. Why? What’s going on?”
He is starting to scare me.

“Hey, little guy
,” he reaches down and ruffles Noah’s hair before sitting down. “He’s adorable.”

“Thank you,” Matty says.

“I’m sorry to stop by unannounced, but I needed to talk to both of you.”

“Okay,” both my husband and I say in unison.

“I came to tell you that I apologize.”

What? Excuse me? Did I hear him correctly? “For what?”

Chase’s eyes become glassy. “For being a total and complete ass to you since we were fourteen.”

Matty takes hold of my hand and now my eyes are starting to water.

“Matt, forgive me for a second while I talk about our past, but I really need to say these things to Shelly.”

“No problem, Chase. If it’s okay with her, I’m listening.”

I nod, letting him know it’s okay to continue.

“I’m here to apologize.” He pauses, taking a deep breath. “There were so many things going on in my life when we were young
, that I did things I shouldn’t have, and hurt you in the process. Nothing will ever excuse what I did, but I had to apologize.” He rubs his hands together and I can almost see the wheels turning in his head. “For some reason, we’ve never been able to let go of the past and I’m hoping that someday we can.” He looks me straight in the eye with tears threatening to spill out. “I’m really grateful that you were part of my life for so long, but I’m sorry that I never had the courage or the strength to be the man that you deserved. I’m really sorry I couldn’t be that guy.”