Page 36 of Daddy's Pretty Baby

I stammered then.

“I can’t. I can’t,” I said, shaking my head.

Curtis just swung back to his cooking.

“Then you’re not the girl I know. You’re not the one who raised herself, who lived in a children’s home for a decade, who made it out alive, a budding artist. You’re not the Melissa that I know, you really are a quitter, someone who gives up at the drop of a hat.”

And I flushed then, staring at my toes, ashamed. God, Curtis was an expert at pulling a guilt trip.

“You’re not my parent,” I said woodenly, trying not to cry again. Why was life so hard? Why was even my closest friend turning on me, giving me the ninth degree?

But the elderly man wasn’t letting up, he was going for gold.

“I’m as good as you’ve got,” he said, hands on hips. “You don’t have no family, and I’m the closest thing. So it’s time someone told you the truth, it’s time that you started acting like the Melissa of old. So get out there and fight! You’ve been fighting your whole life girl, and to see you like this, shaking like a nabob. Man, I don’t know,” he said turning back to the stove. “It’s like the old you disappeared and some other girl’s in her shoes, someone I don’t recognize.”

I nodded then. Because it was true. I was a ghost of my former self, defeated, depressed, a gray cloud hovering on my shoulders. I was nothing. I was only a teenage girl, heartbroken, devastated, with nothing to offer and nowhere to go. And I couldn’t take it anymore. Curtis’ verbal lashing was deserved, I know, they were words that I needed to hear, and he meant them from a good place. But I couldn’t take it, not now when I was feeling so down.

“Thanks Curtis,” I said softly, letting myself out of the kitchen. “Thanks for talking.”

The old man didn’t even acknowledge my departure. I’d disappointed him so much that he didn’t even look up from the carrots he was chopping, reaching briefly to sprinkle some basil on them. And I let myself out of the restaurant, staring up once more at the Dunkin’ Doobie sign outside. What did I have? No job, no family, no nothing, not even Curtis anymore … and definitely not Robert Lancaster.

---