Page 80 of I Love to Hate You
“I don't think so,” I answer honestly, no longer able to keep the panic at bay. It snaps the levee and washes over me until I’m completely consumed. “Mr. Conner, I’m sorry to do this on my first day working with you, but I think there’s an emergency with Maya. She hasn’t responded to any texts or phone calls since last night, and now she’s not here this morning. She loves working here at BLM and is thrilled to have this job full-time, so the fact that she’s not here right now is a giant red flag. Something is wrong, and I hope you don’t fire me for this, but I have to go right now. I have to find her. I’m so sorry.”
Mr. Conner’s face suddenly takes on all of the worry I’m feeling. “Oh, my god. No, you won’t be fired, Kendrick. Go find her and make sure she’s okay. Keep me up to date with what’s going on, and you have my full support.”
“Thank you, Mr. Conner,” I say graciously, and I don't waste another second waiting. I turn around as fast as I can and sprint back to the elevator. Once I’m downstairs, I run full speed to my car, crank it up, and peel out of the parking lot toward Maya’s house.
Maya
Forty-Seven
~ MAYA~
“Thanks, Kendrick.”
“Of course,” he replies, looking down at me as I gaze up at him from the seat in my car. I can tell he’s wounded by the way I’ve treated him today, but if he only knew what day it is, he’d forgive me.
Unbeknownst to everyone I just spent the day with, today is the ten-year anniversary of the day my mother was killed in that fucking car accident while she was on her way to pick me up from school. I remember sitting in the counselor’s office, waiting nervously for her to show up, knowing she was going to be pissed about me fighting in class. Even though this was my first fight and my first time being suspended, I swung on a girl who had been picking on me. The pressure had built up over time, and I let it out that day, punching her in the back of the head after she’d knocked books off my desk and bumped my shoulder as she walked away. It was like I just snapped, tapping into an anger I didn't even know could get that hot. It took two adults to pull me off of her, and acting that way put my mother in her car and on the road to come get me. She died before reaching the school, and my life hasn’t been the same since.
On most days, I can handle the thought of my mother’s death, regardless of how much my father uses it as a hammer to hit me over the head. He smashes my skull with his words and I bleed in the moment, crying uncontrollable sobs almost every time he does it, but I always heal. The wounds scab over and I’m able to walk around with no noticeable signs of trauma until the next time he attacks me with those same harsh, debilitating words and I start to bleed again. It’s a vicious cycle that I wish would end, but every single year on this particular day, it’s not just my father’s blunt words striking me, it’s mine, too.
For three-hundred-sixty-four days a year, I have no problem telling myself that my mom’s death was not my fault. While I cry over the fact that she died while coming to get me, I manage to avoid blaming myself. However, the anniversary of her death always breaks through the barricade I have in place all year. It rolls in like a hurricane with winds far too strong for anything to withstand, and I’m swept away by the agony of guilt and self-pity. Even when I know the storm is coming for weeks and I try to batten down the hatches to prepare, the day comes and I realize that not only am I not ready, I never was. There’s just something about the day that hits me hard and twists my gut until I can barely stand.
I don’t know how I managed to get through work, but I was saved by the fact that Kendrick and I had to spend the entire day with HR instead of trying to be creative with Mr. Conner. Distracted by the monotony of filling out paperwork, I was able to focus on the sheets in front of me instead of the despair I felt from the moment my eyes opened in the morning. Kendrick did his best to make the day normal without knowing why I was so cold and distant, but not even the connection he and I have was enough to pull me away from the voice in my head that has been following me around—the voice telling me that I’m the reason she’s gone. It would speak every time I didn’t have something in front of me to focus on, and now that I’m in my car with Kendrick standing outside my window, the voice is all I hear.
You are the reason she is dead.
If you weren’t such a fuck up, she’d still be here, your father wouldn’t be a drunk piece of shit, and you’d be able to maintain happiness for more than a few weeks at a time.
You killed your own mother.
When I put the car in gear, an overwhelming feeling of sadness washes over me like a tidal wave, and I can’t even look at Kendrick again. If I do, I feel like I’ll crumble beneath the weight of the wave and he’ll know how broken I am. I don’t want him to see me like this, so I drive away without looking back, and spend my entire return trip home fighting away tears. I nearly slam into the back of a truck because the mist in my eyes blurs my vision, but I manage to make it back home without incident.
I park my car in its usual spot and drag myself to the front door, fully planning on going downstairs to cry myself to sleep, but when I open the door, the living room is in complete disarray.
“What the fuck?” I say to myself as I scan the room and take inventory of the damage.
My father’s recliner is turned on its side. The coffee table is flipped completely upside down, there is trash covering every square inch of the floor, nearly every picture on the wall has been knocked off, and the ones that are left have obviously been punched and broken. The few ceramic plates we had in the cabinets in the kitchen have been shattered and spread across the floor like puzzle pieces. The TV my father spends so much time staring at is lying flat on its back with a giant dent in the middle of the glass, surrounded by spider web cracks from where my dad apparently tried to put his foot through it. The place is an absolute mess, and just as I think it couldn’t get any worse, I hear the crash of glass breaking in my father’s room.
“Dad!” I yell as I take off running toward his door, but before I get there, it bursts open and slams into the wall, leaving a hole from the knob.
My father stumbles out of the room with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and a nine-millimeter pistol in the other. The sight of the gun makes me freeze, my eyes widening. Dad sees me and points the weapon at my face.
“And there she is, folks,” he says as if addressing an invisible audience, his words slurring like he’s speaking in cursive. “You like what I did with the place? I’m redecorating. Behold the child who murdered my wife, because she didn’t like her shoulder being bumped by another human being. Here ye, here ye! My wife had to die because my daughter didn’t like her shoulder being tippity tapped. Tap, tap, tap-a-roo. Oh, hello, daughter. Welcome home.”
My heart slams against my rib cage with every beat as he continues to point the gun at me, even while he lifts the bottle of Jack to his lips and takes a swig so big I don’t know how his throat manages to avoid catching fire. Of all the years I’ve watched him drink himself into a stupor, this is the drunkest I’ve ever seen him. He’s completely gone.
“Dad, please stop,” I say in a whimper. “Put the gun down.”
“Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, murderer?” he snips. He lowers the bottle to his side and leans against the wall, still pointing the gun with a trembling hand. “You may as well have used this to kill her. It would’ve been the same.”
“Dad,” I say, preparing to beg him to lower the weapon, but he does it on his own. He drops his arm to his side and immediately begins to cry, but when I take a step toward him, he looks at me with the devil in his eyes.
“Don’t you dare come near me!” he screams at the top of his lungs. “Look at you, standing there in your pretty little dress, looking like the spitting image of the woman I love. The very sight of you makes me sick because you look just like her, yet she’s not here. It’s not her standing before me, it’s you, her killer. Your makeup is flawlessly done, and you don’t have a single tear in your eye, while I’m a completely broken man. I don’t even want to live anymore, and you’re trying to make something of yourself without your mother here to witness it. How dare you be so steady on your feet. On this day? You stand there with a straight back and a clear conscience on the anniversary of her death? God, I hate you so much.”
I feel it when it happens. The dam breaks and the waves crash against me, swallowing me in one swoop, consuming me entirely. I snap in two, my knees buckling as the guilt wrecks me, and I fall into a crouching position with tears flowing from eyes as I let out a guttural scream of agony.
“Stop it!” I yell. “You think I don’t feel bad? How could I not? All you do is remind me of what I did, as if I don’t already know. As if I don’t kill myself mentally over and over again all the time. I know I did it. I know it’s my fault. I know, I know, I fucking know, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I took her away from you.”
“You should be!” Dad screams back. “You should be more broken than I am because you did this to us. You murdered her and killed us in the process, except you and I get to enjoy slow and agonizing deaths that last the rest of our miserable lives. You don’t get to bring a boyfriend in here and try to act all happy. There is no happiness. You don’t deserve happiness. You only deserve pain and torture for what you did.”
