nevertheless~

part 62

TESSA'S POV

“What’s wrong?”he asks me, as he assists me to the bed to sit with him.f

“I don’t feel good about this conversation you had with her. I need to know what’s the deal here. I’m worried…I’m worried about this woman and her intentions.”, I tell him.

“I know. I could tell”, he says.

“Hardin…what’s the deal with her? Why is she doing this? Why would she go to such lengths to hurt you guys? I mean, the case is over. Your father has Smith and you and I don’t understand why she would do all this. Has she not had enough of it?”, I ask him, genuinely not knowing what the matter is with his parents.

“I think that it’s time I tell you about this in proper detail so as to be fair with you. It seems to be only fair to you, you deserve to know.”.

“Right.”, I assure him.

“My parents have a weird turmoil in their relationship. You would think that after their separation, it would be over, this turmoil, only it clearly hasn’t. I like to call it a separation and not a divorce. Not to sound like a philosophical asshole, but…A divorce is a..a rather silly term for the end of a marriage. Separation seems about right when you think about two people growing apart and their differences becoming more important than their love for each other. You get a divorce when your husband cheats on you, divorce is an easy severing between two people bound by marriage. Two people separate because they absolutely can’t work it out anymore. My parents separated, they didn’t just get a divorce…they didn’t want to have anything to do with each other after it.”, the melancholy tone he starts off with tells me this is going to be an important afternoon in both of our lives.

“They loved each other deeply. I do not think that they…that they for one moment also in their marriage didn’t love each other with everything in their power.  My father would’ve died for my mother, killed for her, but it’s not the very same when the woman you would do such things cheats on you and ultimately becomes the reason you end up hurting yourself for the rest of your life.”, I hurt for Ken as I heard this incident from his life.

“My father, when I was almost old enough to understand all of this, used to tell me how much he wished he had the power to change time and make it go back to when they took the first tumble. He’d say things like…how he wished he did everything Trish asked him to do, if he could do what he hadn’t done enough of, that he’d do what she liked more often to see her happy, if he could everything that wasn’t enough to make him a better husband for her so she’d not cheat on him, or she’d not…kick us all out. I think the most he regrets is that…she didn’t care for me and Smith after she kicked us out of our own house. I think he hates the fact that…a woman he loved so much, who had his kids would do such a thing to the kids.”.

“The case is rather simple. They filed for Smith’s custody. My dad won because he’s not a runaway mother who cheated and started a new life with a low-life man who has not even gone to college and doesn’t earn decent. My father won because while he had his problems with alcohol, he had me. I was 10 when she left, and I was able to handle myself on my own from a very young age when I moved with Ken away. The court saw this as… Ken’s competency to raise a child on his own, despite the fact that..it here wasn’t the truth, so my father won because of me. Later on we three were totally fine. We started a good life in Seattle, I had a job, Ken had a job, Smith has a school to go to, we are doing poorly but it was enough for us, until the start of this year when Trish started to threaten us with appealing again.”

“Right, but why would she do that? She…hasn’t changed at all so why would she want to appeal. It’s not like she has grown a better woman?”, I argue, putting my question to him.

“You know for the longest time my father was still in love with that woman. I could tell even after these many years, that my father was still in love with her. He resented her, but that didn’t change his affections for her. Love like that doesn’t just disappear, right. I guess, Trish is playing at that now. That, she wants to get back to my father, by playing upon the soft place he has for her in his heart.”, he explains.

“Wow, she’s such a bitch.”, I exclaim, as I hear the story of his torn family.

“She was never a bad woman, ever. We just didn’t know what to do when things changed like this. We didn’t know how to feel, react, because the same woman.”, his voice breaks as he says the next words, and my heart feels empty for him.

“Hardin..”, I take his hands in mine as he looks at the ground so broken and fragile.

“The same woman, who birthed me, loved me once, provided me with so much love, she who…who was the center of my life and my fathers too, she turned so cruel that we started hating her. It’s not easy Tess.”

“It’s not emotionally easy”, his head falls into my lap as he inevitably breaks down in front of me, and for the first time in my life, I see how sensitive Hardin Scott can get.

The boy who walks into the hallways of our office with iron steps, who sits in meetings with the intentions of getting his way and points across looking so stoic and invincible, can also be this broken. I have seen my brother cry and my father feel upset, I am not inconspicuous of this, but I didn’t think Hardin could be so deeply affected with this.

“It’s alright, Hardin. You remember you told me, you can’t teach parents, parenting.”, I rake my fingers through his hair, feeling the silken strand of his hair and trying to untie the knots and the knot that is in my heart after hearing the sobs come out of him.

“I know, but I just wish this would go away. This…this fighting for who is the better parent, who deserves what and why, because it’s too much for one person. Can you imagine the kind of stress one has to endure when they are in a position like mine. Every court meeting we went to was a realization that I had the power of a lifetime of happiness for three lives in my hand.”, he wraps his arms around mine as he asks me a question so deep, I fear that this might be the awakening of something that he isn’t nearly ready to hear.

“I understand”, I mutter truthfully. If only he knew what all I know about this responsibility and how my entire life came to be with this.

Somewhere in the room, I hear a light buzzing turn into the ringtone of his cellphone as he jolts up from my lap, breaking the care nest I had built for him.

“That must be Claudia”, he says and gets up, going over to get the damn ringing device.

“Claudia?”, I ask.

“The launch party? Did you forget we were getting a call today to go. Have you gotten your call?”, he asks as he finds where he had left his phone on the desk and.

“No”, I say as he gets wrapped up in his conversation.

I feel calm knowing that this heavy morning, the rollercoaster of emotions we sat upon a little while ago is single handedly going to bring us closer to each other. There are parts of my life he still doesn’t know about yet and if we continue in this fashion, there might come a time when I feel vulnerable enough to speak to him about it.

“I’m done with this thing. Claudia is so exhausting.”, he says and throws his phone in a drawer.

“Sorry?”, I snap out of my daze and come to the realization that I’ve not yet received my own call for the invitation for this launch.

“Nothing. Forget about it. What do you wanna do today?”, he asks, changing the tone of the room a few notches.

“Are you sure you wanna do something?”, I ask, knowing well this is his way of letting some heat off.

“Yah! Just because we had a deep talk doesn’t mean I need to bring the whole day down. Let’s go  do something today.”, he says, flopping down on the bed.

“Do you have anything in mind?”, I ask, propping my head down in the palm of my hands, on my knees.

“Ugh…I think I do.”, he says, with a happy smile playing on his lips.

“And that is?”, I ask.

“Did your father teach you how to ride a bike?”.