Page 70 of Ebbing Tides
My hand tangled in the strawberry-blonde mess of her hair and tipped her head to the side as I kissed her neck.
I muttered against her skin, “My dad.”
After the afternoon I’d had with my father, I’d been looking forward to this time with Melanie.
She had spent the day with Charlie and her boys, going through some of her husband’s things and looking at old photographs from when they—Melanie; her husband, Luke; and Charlie—had been younger. I arrived at my office with Lido later than usual, shaken up and bothered by my father’s incessant begging for me to end his life, when I received a text from Melanie, asking if she could stop by later to smoke and expel some pent-up energy.
I’d said yes, of course, eager to engage in anything that might push the thoughts of my father from my head, but it was more difficult than I’d expected. He never seemed far from my mind, and the tiniest thing pulled him back in, put him at centerstage, and now, with his name just barely leaving the tip of my tongue, I couldn’t find it in me to think of anything else.
Not even the woman of my literal dreams sitting in my lap.
The desire for sex warred with anxiety and dread, and I struggled to stay in the middle of carnal passion. It was slipping away, more rapidly than I preferred, and I whined pathetically as Melanie turned her head to scatter kisses along my jaw and cheek.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” she asked, her hands squeezing the back of my neck.
“I’m sorry,” I groaned, knowing the fight was futile.
I shifted beneath her, separating our bodies with deep-rooted regret. She said nothing though, and there was no resentment to be found anywhere on her face.
“Time for that cigarette?” she asked, cupping her palm against my cheek.
Not a bit of annoyance or disappointment touched her beautiful blue eyes, and I lifted one side of my mouth in a half smile.
“Yeah,” I replied gruffly. “Let’s do it.”
She left my lap and grabbed her pants from off the floor. Lido was barely perturbed by the movement, apparently used to our seemingly constant need for physical touch whenever we were together in this space. He sighed and rolled onto his side, falling into a deeper sleep while Melanie pulled her pants on.
“I’m sorry,” I said, offering a weak apology for ruining at least one of the night’s plans.
She looked up from tying her sweatpants at her waist. Her eyes twinkled, her lips stretched into a smile, and in that instant, she looked younger. God, Ifeltyounger. Like in that moment, we weren’t a middle-aged man and woman—widowed, sad, and brought back together by an incredible twist of fate. Instead, we were two twenty-somethings, caught in the middle of this exciting and wild thing. Impulse wrapped its greedy hands around me, and I reached out, snagging her wrist in my hand and pulling her toward me. She stood between my spread knees and pressed her palms to my cheeks, dropping her lips to mine for a fraction of a second, and I hung on that invisible string as she backed away, leaving me desperate for more.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” she assured me before pressing another kiss to my forehead.
She stepped away, only to open the window and grab the pack of cigarettes and lighter, while I tucked myself away and zipped my pants up. Then she was back, sitting on my thigh and pulling a smoke out from the foil pack. She held it out to me, I opened my mouth, and she placed it between my lips before setting the lighter aflame. My eyes held hers, my heart thumping a proclamation I dared not utter aloud, as she brought the flickering light to the end of the cigarette. A tendril of smoke swirled into the air, and after she flipped the lighter closed, she plucked the cigarette from my lips to slip it between her own.
“Can I ask why you wrote a letter to your dad?”
I wrapped my arm around her waist, and she settled against my body, crossing one of her legs over the other. My eyes drifted toward the envelope lying on the desk, and I slowly shook my head.
“I didn’t,” I answered, returning my attention to her and the cigarette as she passed it back to me. I pinched it between myfingers and brought it to my mouth and said, “That’s from my mom.”
“Why do you have it?”
I chuckled, a shred of boyish mischief jolting through my bones. “I stole it.”
Melanie was both amused and taken aback as she laughed. “Youstoleit? What is it?”
With a shrug, I took a puff of the cigarette, wishing for only a moment that I wasn’t enjoying it. But fuck it. Life was short enough. A week of spontaneous cigarette smoking wasn’t going to hurt.
My lungs were full of smoke as I passed it back to her, then said, “If I had to guess, it’s her suicide note. I found it in Dad’s desk after he begged me to kill him.”
That washed the amusement right off her face as she stared at me, aghast. “Wait, what?”
I nodded and emptied my lungs. “He wants to die and demanded I end his life. And … I don’t know. I guess if I had less of a conscience, I might’ve considered it. I cannot begin to imagine how he feels right now. Just waiting to die and not knowing when the hell it’s going to happen. But I can’t … I can’t do that. I wouldn’t be able to live with it.”
“But you thought about it,” she answered quietly.
I gently shook my head. “No, not really. I mean, maybe for a second after he asked, but no. I have so much blood on my hands, Melanie. It’s …” I turned my palm over, looking over the lines and calluses, the rough edges evidence of the time I’d lived and served. “It’s a lot to carry all the time. All the fucking time. But none of those lives came with a choice. It waswar, or it was an accident, or it was …” I glanced toward my mother’s handwriting, scrawled across the envelope intended for my father. I gave my head a shake and tightened my hold on Melanie’s waist. “Anyway, I won’t let myselfchooseto kill my father. Maybe that’s selfish. Maybe … maybe killing him and ending his suffering could be the one thing to make him fucking like me. But if that’s what it takes to get his approval, then to hell with it. I don’t want itthatbadly.”
