Three Months

Chapter Seventeen

“A divorce?”

            Are my ears hearing right or am I just imagining everything? Did my father really just tell me that him and my mother are going to get a divorce? I haven’t really been on speaking terms with her lately, so I don’t really know what’s been going on their non-existent relationship, but a divorce? Isn’t that a little extreme? They’ve been together for so long, and a divorce just seems so…sudden for some reason.

            “Yes,” my father says. “A divorce. You’re familiar with the term, right...?”

            “Yeah,” I snap, a bit on the defensive side. Can anyone blame me though? I’m shocked to say the least.

            After so many years of him following my mother and doing whatever she asked of him, he’s finally grown a pear and opened his eyes to reality. That’s a good thing, right? See, that’s the problem. I’m not so sure that I think that’s a good thing.

            “We just aren’t compatible,” my father tells me.

            “You think?” I say smartly, crossing my arms over my chest. It only took him seventeen years to figure out that him and my mother just don’t match.

            This morning started out normal. It really did. I thought that I would start my soon-to-be good day by texting Jude and asking him if he wanted to meet up so that we could go over my bucket list again (he still doesn’t know), but my father had different plans for me. I might still get to hang out with Jude, but it’ll have to be delayed.

            He had found me at in the kitchen as I was popping a piece of toast into the toaster. Then he dropped the whole ‘your mother and I are getting a divorce’ bomb onto me.

            “What do you mean?” he asks.

            The toast jumps up. I quickly grab it and drop it on the paper plate. Taking the butter knife, I smear butter all over the piece of toast. Then I put jelly on it too. A piece of toast isn’t edible until strawberry jelly is on it.

            “You know,” I say, shoving the toast into my mouth and taking a bite. “You two just never clicked.”

            “Obviously we clicked otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten married.”

            “You sure about that?” I ask, pointing my toast toward his direction. “You were high school sweethearts. Everybody expected you to get together.”

            He doesn’t even pretend to think about it. “No.” He sounds sure. “I just made a big mistake, alright? I didn’t mean for things to get this messy.”

            “You mean to say that you didn’t mean to have a kid with your high school sweetheart?” He tries to talk, but I ignore him. “You didn’t mean for that kid to get cancer either, did you? You didn’t mean any of it. Nothing at all.”