i wish you never left

one

Lilith,
4th of July.

･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

My mother used to say that we should treat people the way we want to be treated. It's the only good advice she gave me before she left me and my father.

For a while, I thought she was right.

But then, I noticed how wrong she really was about that.

I guess that's why I'm alone at a beach on the fourth of July, smoking a cigarette and not with my friends partying since it's the fourth of july and summer.

I bring the cigarette slowly to my lips and inhale it very deeply.

I know it's bad for my lungs and my health, but during those ten minutes that it takes me to smoke a cigarette, I feel calm.

My mother would probably hate me for this.

She would probably try and try to convince me to stop and instead spend my time making more things that are good for myself.

But that sounds worse, to be honest.

"Fuck me," I curse under my breath when I notice that some of the ash of my cigarette fell on my jeans.

With my free hand I try to wipe it off but of course that only creates a big mess.

Before I have the chance to keep trying to clean them, my phone starts ringing so I quickly grab it from the pockets of my brown sweatshirt.

"Hello?" I answer, and I already know it's my father asking where I'm at.

"Lily, where are you?" My father answers, but his words are slow and almost slurry.

I take a moment before I finally answer him. "At the beach, why?"

"Because I'm out of beer," He automatically tells me over the phone and I hear the sound of the refrigerator door being slammed shut in the background of the call.

"Dad, I think maybe you should get some sleep instead of worrying about getting more beer,"

His voice instantly goes higher in response to my words and his following words hit me like a hammer to my heart.

"That's for me to worry about, not you. Always getting into other peoples business's even if they don't ask you, huh?" He sighs but adds. "Forget I called, just don't get home so late,"

He hangs up in a second and doesn't even give me the moment to answer or tell him at least sorry.

"Well shit," I say, throwing my phone to my side.

I bring my cigarette higher to my lips and inhale it.

My father wasn't always like that, well that's what I like to tell others and myself.

I promise there was a time when my life wasn't so fucked up, I swear.

I promise there was a period of time where I was genuinely happy with myself and with life.

My mind drifts away to the latest happy memory that I shared with my parents when we came to this same very beach where I'm sitting at. I was eleven years old and I had just won my first lacrosse game since I was so bad and it took me a while to get good at it but both, my mother and father had gone to the game and they decided to take me for ice cream by the beach after it ended.

My father got simply vanilla ice cream in a cone, my mother and I both loved mint chocolate chip ice cream so that's what we ordered in cones. I remember we laughed so much when the ice cream scoops fell from my dads cone and right into the sidewalk by the beach.