Page 28 of Contention

Lies lies lies, tell that to the empty vodka bottle in the recycle bin.

“Hmm.” Bianca isn’t impressed, nor is she buying it.

Their food comes shortly after and they begin eating in a short silence. Then, surprisingly, Bianca tries again to broach a touchy subject.

“Have you spoken to him lately?”

“Spoken to who?” Kara munches on a fancy bruschetta before taking a deep sip of her fresh drink. She balances it out with water, drinking deeply from that as well to stay hydrated.

Bianca waits to catch her eye. Once she has it, her shoulders do a little shrug. “Your dad.”

It’s like a bucket of ice being dumped down the back of Kara’s shirt. Those words make all the muscles in her body tense up and she feels the alcohol in her stomach begin to rot sickly. She sees an image of him in her mind, his head of dark hair, so similar to hers, the slash of his mouth, also like hers.

Shaking her head, Kara takes a deep gulp from her second dirty martini, briefly feeling the urge to vomit well up inside of her. She’s drinking too much too fast and the conversation is enough to make her feel off. “No. I haven’t called him in a while. Why? Do you think I should?”

That would be an awful idea, if that’s what Bianca is getting at.

The redhead purses her lips, looking confused. “Just…seeing if that’s what’s going on with you. He doesn’t call you? You don’t call him?”

There’s not enough alcohol in the world for this sort of conversation. Bianca would simply never understand. Her parents are still married, living together in a lovely suburb with their other two children. Their biggest concern has always been Bianca’s younger brother driving his car into a pole and getting the family insurance hiked. Or something to that note.

Suddenly, Kara doesn’t feel so hungry anymore. “He moved to Arizona to work for grandpa. It’s been, what, six years? I don’t even notice his absence anymore. Not really. It’s best if we don’t talk.”

The fact is, Kara had been the one to call her grandparents. She’d been twenty-two and tired, so fucking tired.Her mother had been dead for five years by that point and the full force of her father’s razorblade attention fell to her and her alone. “Papa. Please. Can you make a spot for him in your company? We need to be separated by states before the homicide squad gets called by the neighbors.”

Her grandfather had sighed. She was asking for something that would be a fight of a different sort. “I can, but there’s no guarantee he’ll want the job. You know how he is. He won’t take anything he views as beneath him. He’ll want a leadership role.”

“So, give him one,” Kara had gritted out. “Manager, Director of some made up business unit, I really don’t care. He’s killing me, Papa. He’s suffocating me.”

All code for, ‘Kara’s going to throw herself off a building soon if you don’t get him away from her’, Papa.

Her grandpa made a sad sort of noise. “Kara. Have you ever thought that he might not leave you?”

The words hovered like an illness. It was well known that Charlie Hayes felt that his daughter was an extension of himself. Not only that, he viewed her as a possession. However, he was fickle and self-centered.

“He’s left me before,” Kara mentioned, referring to when he’d left her mother all those years ago. “I’m sure if you make the offer attractive enough, he’ll leave me again.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m making no promises. He’s unpredictable, despite being predictably egotistical.”

“Thanks, Papa. I’ll be fine without him, you know. You don’t have to worry about me.”

She knew when her grandpa had talked to him. Her father had gone suspiciously quiet for a few days, as if mulling something over. He’d look at her, as if trying to make a decision. When he said nothing about it, she knew she had to be the one to push his hand. Kara decided she needed to make sure his decision was as selfish as possible.

So, she went to the store, bought a dye that resembled the natural color of her late mother’s hair. She’d never been one to dye her hair, but desperate times called for desperate measures. With the new hair color, she almost looked like a younger version of her mom. As the act was intended to do, it set her father off.

He’d been pouring over paperwork at the table in the kitchen, chewing on the end of his pen. His eyes had looked up as she passed by. “What the hell did you do to your hair, Kara?”

She played dumb, like she had no idea what the problem could possibly be. Kara had touched her hair absently and forced a dull smile on her lips. “Oh, this? I figured I’d try something new.”

“Try something else then,” her father had said in that dangerously quiet tone, the soft growl in his chest, dark eyes going darker by the minute.

She’d met his gaze brazenly. “I happen to like it.”

He had reached out and grabbed her, pulling her to his side.

“And I happen to hate it,” he’d sneered in her face, fingers now buried in her hair.

With a wry grin, Kara had tilted her head innocently to the side as much as she could in his strong grasp and said sweetly, “Sorry, Charlie.”

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