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𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒂 𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒅. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒓𝒖𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒅 𝒎𝒆.
Antoine's Perspective
Because there is nothing else for me to do, after probably about two hours of just sitting on that empty curb, being sorry for myself, I walk back to my mother's house, in the middle of the night. I'm not going inside there, because Louis made it pretty clear that it probably wasn't a great idea to do a thing like that.
I wonder how much I'm going to pay for this one. I shutter, willing myself not to go back to crying, when I think about my coach, and what he'll think of me if he hears of this, and if I ever really will see football ever again. If I keep having issues like this, I'll never be a pro, like I've always wished to be.
The idea of not being a pro footballer is depressing, because it has been the only clear thing to me, in all this fogginess, all my life.
I get my car, unlock it, and slip into it. I'm freezing, and I feel sick. I'm sure I'm going to get an awful cold from this. I turn the heat up full blast, right away, and just sit there for a few minutes, staring ahead, feeling kind of empty.
Sitting in the headlights.
I turn the key, pull the lever, and start driving in the rain. There is no where for me to go but Papa's house. I don't want to, but I don't have enough money to get myself a hotel for the night. I can't go back inside Mama's house. So where else do I have to go, but Papa's?
As I drive, I think about how mad Papa will be for me to be there. He'll yell at me, saying it's not his weekend, and he doesn't want to see his son. I think he'll still let me stay there, though. Hopefully.
I think about Mama's trembling, at my shouting angry, awful words in her face. I was victimizing myself, when everything that is coming to me I deserve. Much like I remember Papa used to do, when he still lived with us. He would scream at her just like that. So would her boyfriend after that. Just screaming, making himself seem like the victim, as she could do nothing but tremble and sob.
She shook in the same way she used to, at her boyfriend, and at Papa. Before the breakup. Or before the divorce.
I get so mad at my father, but I'm just like him. I am just like my awful father. I hate him because we're so similar. I see myself in him. I blame it on him, for raising me that way, but Louis isn't like that. Louis is soft spoken and sweet. He's righteous and protective. He's not messed up like me.
So it might have to do with my father, but I can't blame it on him. I have a choice over my bad behavior. I just have always chosen to embrace it, not reject it.
Louis is so much better than me.
And I punched him. I made him bleed. I screamed at him.
I pull up in my father's driveway. The lights are on in the living room. I can see that through the curtain. Which means him and his friends are probably drunk in there.
I have to walk right into that. Well, I do. I turn the key in the lock, and push open the front door, the only door in the house. If there were a side door, like Mama's house, I would have used that.
My dad and the two friends with him stare at me. "Why the f*** are you here, Antoine!?" he shouts, chucking a empty bottle at me. He's uncoordinated, so I easily dodge it.
"I had no where else to go," I say simply.
"This isn't a place for you to be either, then! If everyone else finally rejected you too, it doesn't mean all the sudden I'll love you again or something! Get your a** out of my house!"
"Inaki," one of my father's friends, Sergi, says to him. "Let your damn son stay. As long as he leaves us alone, why do we care about some kid? As long as he won't be a nuisance."
My father considers this, before saying, "I guess... And he won't be a nuisance," he says, locking his blue eyes with my identical ones. I'm so much like him. I even look like him. Minus the beer belly. I've seen pictures of him young, though. I look too much like him. I am too much like him. "Got that, Antoine?"
I nod, and rush passed, them, to me and Louis's room.
There are so many things I want to do. I want to write a letter to Louis, saying sorry. I want to do the same for my mother. I want to skip town. I want to do some other things.
But I can't. I'm too tired. This has been too much. I lay down in my bed, and in seconds, I'm out cold.
By Sunday morning, I have been staying at my father's, because me, being the coward that I am, was too much of a coward to go home and say sorry to my mother and brother. I'm too scared of their reaction at the mere sight of me. Will my mother tremble? Will Louis punch me back? I don't want to see the extent of the injury I gave to my little brother.
I realise that I'm self-projecting on Louis. Louis isn't awful, like me. I'm sure he'd hug me after I apologized, despite how much he was bruised, or how much blood was bleeding into his gauze. He'd say he forgives me. He'd say, let's start again, Antoine. He'd say, now you should go say sorry to Mama, because she's really the one who needs that.
Even though I know Louis is better than me in that way, I still can't bear to go back to my mother's house. I'll have to wait for in two weeks, when we go back to her house, to apologize to her.
And I'll apologize to Louis when I see him this week.
For now, though, I need to think about football. I put on my number 7 and my shorts, and get ready to drive to school, where the bus will be, to drive us to the game.
