𝐁𝐔𝐍𝐍𝐈𝐄

35

The next morning I roll over in my bed, sighing and immediately letting all the weight on my shoulders suffocate me. Everytime Dieson and Ali adjusted their plans, I had to fine tune my own. Make him believe I'm on his side, then make him believe I'm on his side. I'm exhausted. I sit up, rubbing at my face and sighing again. Maybe today I'll wash my hair. If things go great with the dinner we have planned for tonight, Ethayn will see me and Dieson all happy and want to close the deal then.

"You're beautiful when you're sleeping."

My eyes snap up to Dieson's, at the end of my bed on his knees, laying on his arms with his head laid to his left. I pull my legs up closer to me, but not to my chest. "How many girls have you said that to?"

"Enough. But this is the only time that I mean it."

I don't bother believing him, but I do raise up one of my pillows in a threat. "Get out."

"Courtlynn. We've played this game before," he tells me, his tone very light but his eyes not showing any emotion. Dieson approached my side of the bed and I move away. "I'll call my brother if you do anything stupid."

"And he'll do what? I see the way your 'step brother' looks at you, Courtlynn," he laughs. He climbs into bed besides me, wearing an old T-shirt and his boxers. "I just wanted to lay down next to you. I miss your body."

"That's all you miss?" I counter.

"That's all I had got to know," he paused, "Let me know your brain. Let me know your intelligence. Your beautiful heart, Court."

"I don't think my heart is beautiful. I've had to make too many difficult decisions," I tell him softly. We settle into bed besides each other, both staring.

"We all have. And you'll have more difficult decisions to make soon," Dieson tells me. "That doesn't make your heart ugly, little bunny."

"It does to me. I've done a lot of things my auntie wouldn't be proud of."

"Ahh," he nods his head like he understands, "You value what this aunt thinks more than your father."

"She raised me. He...didn't," I sigh helplessly. "And I don't know why. I don't know why he couldn't come back for me. And sometimes I wonder if I would have wanted a life with him in it at all. Living with him, when I know that he wasn't doing the right things for money. Little me imagined," I stop myself short, realizing that I'm talking too much.

"Go on," Dieson whispers, bundled up in my sheets.

You're laying with an enemy, Courtlynn. Remember yourself, my brain warns. Anything you say could be used against you.

"I always imagined a happy and whole family. But would he have been able to fulfill that? I wondered a lot if he was just letting the Black stereotype that, you know, fathers don't stick around to get into his head. I wondered if he really had love for me. I wondered if no one would want me like he didn't seem to want me. How could I know the love a man could give me if I had never gotten it from the first man in my life?" I pressed my lips together, licking them, then looking away from Dieson and his gaze.

"But I had to forgive a lot of things. I need to move on. I can't dwell on somebody else's mistakes, even if they affected the entirety of me. I had to let him go. There were so many days my father didn't even come to mind when I was having fun with the family that was there for me. There were so many times when life was too great to be sad. I had to let my past go. I had to let myself grow into a woman and let go of trying to look good for this and that nigga, or one-up bitches that could never be better than me, or try to be in the center of everything for attention."

"You've grown a lot," Dieson summarizes.

"I have. But I still feel..."

Hopeless? Weak? Useless? Like no one will ever want me?

"It's like people can see a sign on me that says 'this bitch doesn't have a father'. That says that I'm useless. Everyone has a dad, but I didn't have a father. I wonder if he regrets it. I wonder if things would have been different. I wonder how he could be apart of someone else's family, get another woman pregnant, and forget about his first child. I wonder how Hadassa could even want to be with a man who doesn't take care of his other children, just the ones he has with her. She's just as bad as he is. Why would you want to be with a neglectful father?"

"You consider that neglect?" Dieson studied me, his expression only open, no judgment there.

"He wasn't around. As far as I know, he wasn't giving anybody money to take care of me. I rarely got to see him, so we didn't have an emotional connection. And so much other shit. So yeah," I calm down, exhaling, "I consider him being absent as neglect. I didn't even know my own father. And my mom...she left so early in my life, I hardly knew her either."

Dieson nodded, patient and quiet.

"It's time people stop seeing absent father's as just apart of life, as something cool or funny to do. Like a child's life is only on the mother's shoulders. It is neglect when you don't know your own parent and they're still alive. And when they do pay child support, half of them never build a relationship with the kid because they're too pissed that the mothers are making them pay for the kid, because the mothers know the dads won't pay them otherwise and the moms will have to do it all on their own."

"That's true," he agrees.

"Going your whole life feeling unwanted is an affect of that neglect. Would that count as emotional abuse, too? Feeling an absence, that lack of support, the fact that you hardly have anyone to lean on. That support and that love is gone for you. But I gotta man up and do something better. I can't focus on a man who couldn't be one. And there...I said it," I say seriously, "But I still have love for that man, and it makes me feel so stupid."

"He's still your father, Courtlynn," Dieson reminds me. I shake my head, sighing. He's made so many mistakes and so have I. My biggest wish is just that I want him to know that I'm sorry too. For pushing him away, for having to erase him from my mind to move forward in my own life because the pain is too great.

"So you see why I can't kill Cerbey then, right?" my gaze pierced into Dieson's. "I can't let Cerbey die."