Page 55 of Hard to Forgive

“Like I said, he left when I was a kid. He sent child support from time to time, the occasional birthday or Christmas card. Think I saw him once or twice a year most years. I didn’t see him at all between the ages of eleven and thirteen.” My dad may have been pretty shitty, but he’d always been there. He’d always put too much pressure on me, but even when he annoyed the piss out of me with it, I’d always known it came from a place of love. I didn’t think Jonas had that same relationship with his dad. “He didn’t even invite me to his wedding when he got remarried. He just sent me a picture of him and Sue, his new wife.”

“Wow, what a piece of shit.”

He snorted and nodded. “Yeah, little bit. Anyway, I met Sue about a year after they got married. Never really got along with her, but that was partially just due to my own Daddy issues, you know?” I didn’t know, but I motioned for him to go on anyway. “Then he came back to town three years ago. When he heard that I was working at Brighton, he made a big deal out of howhis sonmust have been some kind of genius to get into a place like that right out of college. And then, he started hitting me up for money.”

“And you’ve said no, every time.”

He groaned. “I wish. I tried, once, but he guilt tripped me. The day I lost it on Isabel, he’d called because Sue lost her job and they needed help with rent. Now, they need help with groceries.” He flopped back onto the bed and covered his face with his hands. “I should have said no. If I were smarter or stronger or better or just… If I wasn’t me. I’d have said no, but I’m a giant pushover, and I just keep thinking that one day, he’ll be grateful. Or maybe even that one day he’ll pay me back.”

I laid backward, my head next to his. “You’re plenty strong and smart,” I told him. I extended my hand into the empty space between us. He looked at it before lacing his fingers with mine. “You’re a good person, Jonas. A bit of a prick at times, but a good person, and I think every kid wants their parents’ approval.”

He squeezed my hand. “But does everyone lose their shit over it?”

“Maybe not, but I don’t know if you really lost your shit.”

“I almost had a panic attack.”

“Almostbeing the operative word there.” I thought for a moment. “Is there anything I should know about when that happens? Because if I have my way, we’re going to be around each other a lot, and I don’t want to be useless when you get like that. I want to be able to help.”

He turned his head to look at me, and for the next hour, we laid there, holding hands, as he told me what he needed when he got like that. He walked me through different strategies his therapist had helped him with. He told me about his two prescriptions and the emergency pill he kept in a small tin in his pocket at all times. He told me about things that his friends did to help him.

I didn’t think I’d be perfect at helping him through these, especially not at first, but I was determined to learn.

Because I didn’t want to let Jonas down again.

19

After work, Silas wentwith me to drop off groceries for my dad. After my freak out, he made a few good points. I didn’t have to give my dad the help he was asking for, but if I was going to, I was allowed to do it on my own terms. For instance, I could bring him groceries and not give him actual cash—if what he actually needed was groceries. It was hard, settling my guilt on not giving my dad exactly what he wanted, but I did it.

Silas held my hand as I delivered the groceries to my dad and Sue. He gave my dad alookthe moment it looked like he was going to be ungrateful, and then introduced himself as my boyfriend. I hated that my dad was meeting Silas before my mom, so I decided we had to make plans to fix that sooner rather than later. He also needed to meet the boys. It wasn’t like my friends had spent any time with him in high school.

We spent a few hours together every day after work that week. Then we spent the entire weekend at his apartment. It was easy to fall into a good rhythm with him. Saturday night, I sat on the couch beside him, drawing while he read. After awhile, hespent more time watching the way my pencil flew over the paper instead of focusing on his story.

Afterward, I finally showed him the rest of the sketchbook. I tried not to blush as he fawned over my sketches, mostly people. He tried to steal one I’d done of him a few days earlier, when he’d been working on a bit of code that had been bothering him even after we’d left the office. I promised I’d draw him something he could keep one day, but I wanted to keep that one exactly where it was.

I didn’t feel like it captured him enough.

When we went back to work on Monday, something had shifted. We weren’t blatant about the fact that we were together now, but I joined him and Isabel for coffee before the start of shift. She was still giving me the cold shoulder, and I could see the stress it was causing Silas. He’d told me it was important that we got along, and I understood that. It would be the same if the roles were reversed.

“You wanna get lunch today?” Silas asked me, thirty minutes before lunch break.

I looked over to where Isabel was sitting with Declan and Logan, their heads all over one single laptop as they worked animatedly. “I was actually going to invite Isabel to lunch. I think I need to get it over with, and she has to eat, right?”

He snorted. “You’re finally going to try to apologize again?”

“Yes,” I told him with a determined nod. “And while I’d love to have lunch with you, actually, that sounds a hell of a lot better than an apology tour, I know what this means to you. I know whatshemeans to you, and I need to make it right.”

Silas looked around the room quickly before giving me the world’s fastest kiss. It was one of those blink and you’d miss it moments, even for me, and I was the one who’d gotten kissed. “And you’ll get more of those after you apologize,” he teased.

“I didn’t need the added incentive, but I’ll take it.”

When lunch time came around, I swallowed my pride and went over to the desk Isabel was at. I cleared my throat, and all three pairs of eyes looked up at me. “Can I talk to you? And y’know, take you to lunch.”

She looked bewildered but nodded. I waited for her to grab her stuff, and we walked in silence to the elevator. It was the heavy kind of silence, the kind that felt like a wet sweater against your skin. My fists clenched and unclenched as the familiar weight settled in the pit of my stomach. By the time we stepped outside, my tongue weighed a thousand pounds and I desperately wished I’d had the foresight to bring a bottle of water with me.

But I hadn’t, so I was going to have to push through it.

“You wanted to say something?” Isabel asked, after we’d walked half a block away from the building, toward the food trucks.

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