Page 106 of As the Rain Falls
I don’t contradict him, even though I do feel some type of way about his statement. Trying to reason with a fool just makes you sound twice as foolish, and right now he is wounded. Blood drips in tiny dots next to him, a cut splitting his palm in half.
I start to get up, but then I realize that I’m barefoot, and our living room is completely trashed.
“You don’t think that’s true?” He glares at me with angry eyes. “Well, I raised you, didn’t I?”
I take a deep breath, searching for my flip-flops.
Gregory takes a step forward, then another, and crashes against my shoulder, knocking the air from my lungs. I hook his arm around my shoulders and neck, letting most of his weight fall on top of me. He steps on my foot, hard, and I feel the sting of a broken glass poking at my heel.
“I raised you!” his sentence breaks into laughter, stinky breath reeking on my face like a curtain. “Really, Beckett. I made you. How fucking amazing is that?”
“Jesus, you’re stepping on me!”
We walk side-by-side, me trying to avoid all the glass, him ranting about something I can barely pay attention to.I open the door to the master’s bedroom, turn on the lights with my elbow, and walk him to his bathroom. My arms burn, but I keep going.
“You’re the best, Beckett. The best fucking son I could have ever asked for!”
I close my eyes and count.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Te—
“I mean, besides the fact that you came out of your mother’s cunt, which made you a complete retard sometimes,” he laughs openly, forcing my head down and pressing a sloppy kiss to my forehead, his blood staining the front of my shirt. “But I really wouldn’t have it any other way.”
I shove him inside the bathroom, clothes and all, and crank the shower from warm to cold.
“Stay put,” my voice sounds dead to my own ears. I’m so tired. “I’m getting, uh, a towel.”
“Get the fuck away from me!” he yells, thrashing against the wall.
Blinking hard to keep myself awake, I walk back to Lucia’s room next door and steal one of her clean towels. My vision swings as I glance down, noticing there is blood underneath my feet, marking the floor. Pain shoots up my right leg, and I try to let out a moan, but nothing comes out.It’s like my vocal cords are being squeezed out.
“Beckett!” my father calls for me. “Come back!”
Run, boy.
Just run.
I don’t. I force myself to walk back to the bathroom instead.And when I open the door again, I notice that I made an obvious mistake.
Gregory is curved on all fours, spilling his stomach’s contents over expensive shampoo bottles.My immediate response is to not have any reactions at all.
I mean.
Jesus-fucking-Christ.
“You’re acting like a—” I stutter, trying to haul him to an upright position. “You’re acting like a child!”
Gregory hides his face behind his hands as I stare him down. Then, he peeks at me with one eye open. The next thing I know, he bursts out laughing.
“I want—” I pause, trying to find a way to express myself freely, but nothing comes out. My lips part, taking the shape of words, but my tongue is stuck at the bottom of my mouth. “I want you to stop! Stop laughing… Stop laughing at me!”
“There it is,” his smile is wide and cruel. “That’s my boy.”
It’s 4 A.M and I’m completely exhausted. Drinking is all my father seems capable of doing, besides annoying the shit out of Le Port’s police department. I can’t deal with him anymore. It’s too fucking much.
“I’m sorry,” Gregory wheezes through another broken laugh, his face getting all red. “It’s just so fucking hilarious.”
I stop pacing, wrapping my arms around myself for comfort. I need to feel something other than this emotion rising up, taking over me, threatening to spill. If I have a meltdown right now, I won’t be hearing the end of it tomorrow.
