I'd choose you

13. My father looks like a feather

I never knew what it was like for your parents to love each other, yeah sure i knew what it was like to see my mom happy and in love, but i never got to see my father happy and in love.

I remember one time, when I was around five, I remember that my dad decided not to take me back to my mother's house after the end of our weekend. My mom had just got married to my step dad and my father had stayed in Chicago with us for a couple of months before leaving for nine years, but that's not the point of my story. I remember him buckling me up in the car and driving to the park instead of my mother's house. He had turned off his phone and left it in his car. I remember him taking me up and down the slide and I remember him pushing the swing as I kept screaming for him to go higher. I remember that i was so happy to be with my dad and to finally be able to spend some quality time with him to make some decent memories together.

And then i remember seeing my mom get out of the car, i remember how pale she looked, she got scared to death, she probably thought that her daughter was getting kidnapped or sold or worse killed. Instead she had found me there playing in the sand as my father couldn't stop smiling, and his blue eyes shined as he looked down at me. I remember that he looked at my mom and then at me and said: "uh oh mommy is mad at daddy isn't she? We are definitely in trouble this time buttercup" with a sarcastic tone and once my mom saw that i was okay and safe she sat down near my father and said: "just disappointed that i lost all the fun". She wasn't mad, at least not at me, she was mad at my father for ignoring her calls and making her imagine the worst scenarios. That is one of the best memories I got of my parents together in the same room without screaming their lungs out at each other.

—

I wake up feeling my head pounding and my heart beating outside of my chest. I'm sweating like crazy and I smell like chlorine and alcohol. I'm wearing clothes that are not mine. What the hell happened? What did I do?

I walk to the kitchen and I see him cooking breakfast, I can smell the pancakes and I close my eyes and let it fill my nostrils. He is a great cook.

"Good morning" he says once he sees me. I sit on the stool in front of him and place my face in my palms and shut my eyes closed squeezing them to try and focus on one thought instead of a thousand. He hands me a glass with something orange in it, it looks bubbly, sparkly and I frown watching the glass make a bubbly sound repeatedly. "It's for your head" he tells me and I grab the glass downing it like a shot so as not to let the salty taste get to my head. "Do you remember what happened last night?" He asks me and I shake my head brushing my hands over my eyes, rubbing them as much as I can. "What did I do?" I ask and he chuckles slowly, and just by hearing him chuckle I know that I fucked up real bad last night.

"My mom was about to ask us about marriage and stuff so I pushed you in the pool" "what the hell Ethan!" I exclaim and frown at him, he hands me a plate with pancakes that look so good and fluffy, I look up at him again and motion for him to keep talking. "That's not the worst, we went into my old room and you made a scene because I wouldn't look at you while you were in your lingerie... oh yeah and we kissed, in the pool" I slap my palm across my face as I grab another bite and shove it in my mouth. I now wonder if he owns a gun so that I can finally shoot myself and end up six feet underground where no one can talk about all the things I did while I was drunk. "I told you that I wasn't going to touch you while drunk and that we were going to have this conversation once you sober up"