Page 64 of Full Circle

Wesley gasped. “No, Celeste, don’t!” But it was too late. I could already feel Wesley’s cock jerking inside me as he came to release without a condom.

We were both frozen in place for a long time. Neither of us knew what to do or how to proceed now that we had unprotected sex. I winced when Wesley withdrew from me, his cock coated in a mix of cum and blood. The hollow feeling that returned the instant his body left mine hurt far worse than the loss of my virginity. Now that it was over and reality crashed back around us, I was too ashamed of my poor actions to even look at him. My daddy was on an operating table, on the verge of death, and my recourse had been to sleep with my boyfriend? What kind of fool followed that logic?

I didn’t say a word as I rolled out of bed and powerwalked down to the bathroom, locking the door behind me so Wesley couldn’t enter. Sex ed taught me enough to know that there was no way to wash the deed out of me, but I sure as hell was willing to try.

Water so hot it scalded me seemed like the appropriate baptism for my sins. I didn’t make a peep as I harshly scrubbed my skin, spending extra time washing my private areas as though it would change what happened. By the time I was done, my skin was a lush pink, blistering and raw.

With a towel wrapped around my torso, I brushed past Wes waiting at the door, refusing to look at him or address the elephant in the room. The walk in closet was set up with most of my clothes, so I made a beeline in there to dress.

Wesley followed hot on my heels. “Hey, we need to talk about this!”

I held up a hand to stop him, still refusing to meet his gaze. “I need to get back to the hospital. That’s the only thing I need right now.”

“Damn it, Celeste, don’t do this! Don’t shut me out because you’re scared!”

There was no answer I could give that would satisfy him so I remained silent. Now wasn’t the right time anyway. We both needed to process the enormity of what we had done before we could safely talk about it.

Besides, it wasn’t like unprotected sex automatically meant a baby. There were couples who tried for years and couldn’t get pregnant. It was way too soon to start worrying over things that could happen when there was enough actually happening to suffocate me. Daddy might even be out of surgery by now.

“Fuck!” Wesley roared. Out of my periphery, I saw an object fly through the air before it smashed into the full length mirror hanging on the wall. “Don’t you dare ignore me over this, Celeste! You owe me more than that!”

“Owe you?!” I screamed. “Is that how we’re gonna play it now? You do something for me and it means I owe you?! Guess you really are your father’s son!”

That was shame turning my insides to stone. It was the lowest blow I could possibly give him and I was appalled I had even said it, but I was also way too freaked out to take it back.

Wesley blinked like he was seeing me for the first time. “I’m gonna shower,” he finally said, “and hopefully when I get out, the real Celeste will be here. Because my Celeste would never intentionally hurt me like that.”

Mama was right, I realized. Hurt people really did hurt people. I would have gladly stepped into a black hole if it meant I could escape the shame and guilt swirling through me.

Well, genius, you wanted to feel something, huh?

What should have been an intimate, romantic memory with the boy I had loved for most of my adolescence was now tainted. Neither of us would ever look back on this moment without remorse and anger, and Wesley had every right to hold a grudge. And the worst part of it was that nothing could be further from the truth. The similarities between Wesley and Mr. Madden began and ended with their last name.

Thank God the mirror had shattered because I was too despicable to look at right now.

Pounding so hard the walls rattled came from the other room. Wesley, freshly showered and angrier than a thundercloud, beat me to the door and opened it to Marla and Nana’s frantic faces.

“C’mon, the hospital called! He’s outta surgery and we need to get there pronto!” Nana yelled.

My heart leapt into my throat. Hope was the most dangerous drug there was and I was riddled with it. Wesley didn’t even look at me as he swept from the room, whipping out his cell to call for his driver to meet us downstairs.

I wanted to say something to him, but a car ride with my nana and my mama’s best friend was not the appropriate setting to discuss my nonexistent virginity. It was almost a blessing that they were both so preoccupied with Daddy’s surgery that neither of them noticed Wes and I sitting on opposite sides of the car, our bodies both angled away from one another.

There was a bevy of activity on Daddy’s floor when we arrived, with a nurse shouting and a bell-like alarm going on. As we rounded the corner from the elevators, I realized everyone was running into Daddy’s room.

For once, the movies got it exactly right. Everything shifted into slow motion as I went into autopilot. Although I could see the nurses and doctors’ mouths moving, only white static echoed around me. Dr. Hassan was there, his face blurry, as he pointed towards a monitor on the wall with a long, straight line. My daddy, white as a ghost, lied flat on his back on the hospital bed, an oxygen mask over his nose and throat, while a nurse performed CPR. I already knew it was futile in the way that everyone knows the day will pass into night. Merely fact. While my daddy’s body might occupy that bed, there was no longer a living soul dwelling in it.

This wasn’t the peaceful exit most people dreamt of. This was chaos and pandemonium, with nurses and doctors hectically trying to draw life back into a corpse that refused to accept it. It was like my mind was playing tricks on me as I drew parallels between my daddy’s death and my mama’s, and suddenly it was my mama on the hospital bed with a different doctor trying to revive her. My vision went back and forth between the two extremes, recalling in minute detail every aspect of both. Their passings were both so distinct and vivid, yet utterly and inconceivably the same.

A hurried body knocked into me, damn near bowling me over, and time snapped back into the present. I could hear Nana’s gasping sobs behind me as Dr. Hassan barked orders for someone else to take over compressions and to inject something in Daddy’s IV. They hadn’t accepted what I already knew—Daddy was gone.

Numbness washed over me again, settling in next to my old pal, Grief. They were gonna be like another layer of skin for the foreseeable future.

“It’s no use, sir!” the nurse performing compressions cried.

Dr. Hassan sighed heavily. “Time of death, 1904.”

And that was it. The end of my daddy’s life was reduced to a number. Just another question on the hospital’s tedious forms. It had no consideration for the life we led, or the father he had been, the husband I could remember admiring as a little girl, the savvy businessman, or the man who was so warm and caring that he built his mother-in-law a cottage on his land just to take care of her. What did any of the doctors or nurses care that Daddy had been a real person? To them, he would never be anything more than the patient in the VIP room. Forgotten by the end of the night.

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