The Taunting (College Life #1)

Alone with you in the ether

He looks at me with a dumbfounded look, "Why would you settle for less?"

I gasp, "I don't know. It doesn't matter now; he's my boyfriend and we are in love. As you can see."

I watch my father look over to the car, staring at Andreas as he talked to my mother, I know he can feel my dad's eyes on him, from the way the hairs stand up on his neck. Somewhere in this conversation, I feel like there is more to the situation, it can't just be about him thinking Andreas was using me.

"Why did you do it?"

"I told you that-"

"Yes!" I practically scream. "You said it was to protect me, but there has got to be another reason. I want you to tell me."

"Elizabeth-"

"Tell me!"

"I felt guilty about your accident, ok! Is that what you want to hear, Elizabeth. That when you crashed your car, and was on the side of the street scared and then taken to the hospital, I wasn't there! I was in a meeting, my phone was turned off because, at that time, my clients were more important than my daughter!" He puts a hand on his mouth, turning away from me, not wanting me to see his tears.

"Dad, what." The words come out quiet. "There was no way you could have prevented what happened."

"I know that, but you needed me and I wasn't there." He shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know, I felt that if I could prevent you from being hurt by Andreas, I could redeem myself." He looks at me, eyes red at the rim and tears pooling out of his eyes. "You don't know what it was like to watch you, what you went through after the crash. For days you wouldn't leave the house, and when you tried you would freak out. It was almost a year before you would even sit in the car, and when I tried to get you to touch the steering wheel, you would freak out. I remember your screams at night when you would have nightmares, how Bridget would have to sleep over at a friend's house because she couldn't deal with it. I always think, what if you had died? And I'm sitting in a meeting, worried about some other family when mine needed me."

I run over to him, wrapping my arms around his body. Trying to shield him away from those bad memories. Wanting to protect him as he did me. "Dad, no! You were there for me, you sat with me at night on the porch and we would look at the stars. When mom couldn't take it sometimes, you would do your best to wash our clothes or make dinner. All I remember is you being there for me, more than a person has been there for someone. Those hours that you weren't there, we can make up for those. You've got to let that go, dad, it wasn't your fault."

He shakes against me, "And it wasn't your fault that the car crashed, it was an accident that could have happened to the most experienced drivers."

He's right.

For years, I let that car crash hold me back. For too long I have been hiding in the dark, scared of something that I should have gotten over a long time ago. I think about Bridget, and how she was scared to be with Teddy for love, but she overcame that and is happy with him. I think about the love of my life, Andreas, and how he was scared to fall in love again, to give himself to someone, but he faced his fears. He went to Stanford, sat down with Jessie, and talked. He's now cured.

I need to face my fears, and the only way to do that is to get behind the wheel, not to think about the past, not to move backward, but forward. And what better way than to do that with a car.

As I hold my father, I feel around in his maroon coat pocket for his keys, I grab them. Pulling his head from the crook of my neck, I look at him. "Let's move on together, ok?"

"Ok."

I pat his shoulder, "You're sitting in the back with Andreas."

"Why." He sniffled.