Long road to go

Journey at the past

At the diner, I step up to the counter, where suddenly memories come to me from the past, little things like my first game of soccer, and my girlfriend whom I first had sex with. Then I feel a hand on my back.
"You have come," says the girl who first sat at the window. The girl I remembered in that weird dream in the cab.

I didn't want to hurt her, she seemed so vulnerable to me. "Yes, I have come," I say without thinking about my words, didn't want to hurt her even though I didn't remember her.
"Come sit down," she says with a shy red blush on her cheeks. I follow her to the table where I first saw her and take a seat across from her. "I can't believe you really came," she whispers, just loud enough that I can hear. She moves her lips, which makes my eyes go to her lips with their beautiful pink color. Not like other girls with their fake colors on them, no, she just had the naked pink that comes naturally on them.

"When I asked you, I was mad at myself for believing you would come, and I was so stupid to ask you." She's certainly not a strong person to think I would be so cruel as to just leave someone standing there, then things fell into place. Shit, I did this to someone in the past, in this past at this time.

Then I remembered her as our gazes cross, and I see behind the glasses her bright brown eyes that look like the leaves falling in spring, brown and yellowish. The only thing I don't remember is her name.

"You were so preoccupied with those soccer boys that you didn't notice me. Which made me feel even dumber when you just answered, sure," she says. She keeps talking to me and I keep thinking, trying to remember her name and why I had set her up. "I keep talking, sorry. I'm just so nervous to see you," she says with a shy smile, showing me her teeth covered in braces.

"I promised, right?" I ask her. Then I think about my answer to her question about going out with her, Sure, I said. Which makes me feel bad, feeling like I've turned into a jerk. "What do you two young teenagers want to drink?" A friendly middle-aged waiter asks us.

"For me a Coke," I say, and she asks the same as I ask for a drink. "I saw you train for the first time this week, which you did really great. How you defended the ball and shot into the goal. If you keep this up, you will definitely go to an Ivy League college," she said to me, keeping her gaze on me.

I feel very insecure and so happy to hear her words. Nobody said anything to me about my performance, they didn't even come looking at me. Not my parents, not my friends, no one, and she is the girl I haven't known for so long is so nice to say those things to me. I want to beat my head for why I didn't accept her invitation in the past.

We spent the whole time talking and laughing. I haven't laughed like I did this evening in ages. This girl is so special, I feel bad that I have to leave her to go home. I had another stupid phone call from Mom that I had to go home or Dad would do things I remembered as terrible.

I'm a man, I'm a big man now. A business-rich man, why am I thinking of going to my parents? It's like the past is dragging me back to this moment. I remembered everything from the last five years when I repressed the rest. Slowly, the memories continue to fade.

"I'll see you later at school, Hunter. I had a nice time with you tonight," she says as she kisses me on the cheek, which made her head turn red with blushing again. She is so sweet with those big glasses of hers. "I had a great time, Stephanie." With a wave, I leave the diner to go home. Did I just call her Stephanie? Yes, I did.

The walk to my childhood home was in silence, still figuring out, why I went back to this time. What had even happened between me and Stephanie that we were no longer friends?

I came home and went to the living room, where my father and mother were sitting across from each other reading. When they noticed I was home, Dad immediately made a comment about the time and me being late. I knew denying it wouldn't work. He is a very stubborn man who lives by his rules and if someone broke the rules, he got the consequences. Dad came up to me as my teenage self felt his hard stare inside and remembered his belt going up and down my back every time I broke a rule of his.

Thirty years old, and still I felt his anger as a sixteen-year-old who had done nothing wrong. Looking at the clock on the wall above the fireplace, I saw that I was two minutes late, two minutes!

Each blow hurt terribly, and with each blow, he placed on my back, he hit harder. Mom heard me moan but did nothing about my pain. She was always a selfish woman who didn't care about her son.

After my father finished punishing me, I get into the shower. Where I let the hot flow over me. Water that is turning red at my feet from the open wounds in my back.

This was one of the reasons I never wanted to come back. He is the worst, and when I was old enough and had made some money with my ideas for businesses, I made my way out of Louisiana to go to the Big Apple. Where I could build a new life.

In my bed, I couldn't catch sleep from back pain. The only thing that made the pain go away was to think of that sweet girl in the diner, which finally made me fall asleep.