Page 67 of Mayhem

Here we fucking go.

“Okay. It’s later,” she announces. All business.

I knew it. I knew we’d get here, and I’d have to do this. It’s probably best if I just come out with it. Rip it off like a bandage.

“Tess and I broke up,” I say, not looking at her, and keeping my focus on the pan on the stove, the smell of melting cheese permeating the kitchen.

Silence.

I’m forced to look over and see what Charlie’s doing, and find her sobbing quietly into her hands, her shoulders shaking violently.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. No.

I slide the pan back and shut off the burner, rushing over to Charlie and pulling her into a hug. What’s left of my heart shatters even more and turns to dust in my chest. I can’t breathe.

“Why?” she wails, looking up at me, her face red and streaked with tears. I do my best to wipe them away, but they won’t fucking stop. They won’t fucking stop.

“Baby girl, I know this hurts. Believe me, it hurts me too. But there are some things you’re just too young to understand.”

Her breath hitches, but the tears keep coming, and now confusion clouds her usually bright eyes.

“But you love her,” she says between hiccups. “And she loves you.”

“Baby—”

“No, Daddy. It’s true. And that’s all that matters.”

My chest clenches. She’s right about me. I do love Tess. I came to that realization last night. But she’s wrong that it’s the only thing that matters.

“Sometimes, loving someone isn’t enough.” And don’t I know it? I’ll never be enough. My past will always haunt me.

Her brow furrows, but the tears keep coming. “No. You two love each other, and Mom says that if two people love each other, they can do anything.”

Damn it Ren. Putting ideas like that into Charlie’s head. Just because she got her fairy tale ending with Jude, doesn’t mean the rest of us get that. I’m living proof we don’t, no matter how much I wish it were the case.

“Not always.”

“Why not? Did you even try?” The accusatory tone in her voice strikes a chord in me. A raw place that was vulnerable to the attack.

“It’s complicated. Like I said, when you’re older?—”

“Did you try, Daddy?”

The knife twists. She’s zeroed in on the heart of the matter, and all I want to do is shut down. End this conversation. Run away to another fucking country. Change my name. Anything to get out of talking about this.

My little girl is breaking this entire thing down like an expert mathematician solving an equation. And I can’t respond. I can’t find words to argue her straightforward logic. How could I when somewhere deep down, I know she’s right?

“You’re happy when you’re with Tess,” she whispers, the tears now slowing down. She’s shifted into convincing mode, and I recognize it, but open myself to it. I want to be convinced. “When you smile around Tess, you get little wrinkly lines around your eyes.” She reaches up to draw on my face with her finger. “You don’t get those with anyone else.”

“Oh, yeah?” I say. Words are still escaping me. I’ve been standing on a precipice, not afraid of falling, but of crushing someone else in the process. Tess. I don’t want to hurt her anymore.

“Yeah. And Tess gets them too. I see them.”

I scratch at my beard, considering everything. Tess’s last words to me have been echoing and bouncing around my brain since last night.

“Please don’t do this.”

It was quiet, but I fucking heard it. And I ignored it like the selfish asshole I am. And it’s plagued me ever since. After everything, she didn’t want to end things. She was willing to work through it. And I just threw it all away, trying to be a martyr or some shit. Trying to save her from me.

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