Sins of Aiden

13

CHAPTER 13

When I was little, and could barely reach the door handle, I would always bounce down the stairs to greet my father home from work. I remember it being the best time of my days. It was the only thing I looked forward to. To hear the clicking of those silver broad keys twisting inside the lock, and I instantly knew it was him.

I would race down the stairs, inevitably getting a sharp yell from my mother in the kitchen cooking dinner to 'slow down'. But I couldn't help it. I was so happy seeing him.

The first thing I would see was his broad figure ducking through the doorframe, instantly taking up the entire hallway with his vast shoulders. I would shout "daddy!" so loud the whole neighborhood heard my shriek. But I didn't care. He was my sun. That ray of streaks embracing me with warmth and coaxing my nightmares away with blinding light.

His shadow would walk inside the house, and he would never have time to close the front door or put down his brown leather briefcase before I came tumbling into him. A strangled chuckle always fluttered out of him when my tiny arms snaked around his neck and squeezed as hard as I could. Perhaps I did that so he wouldn't have to let go. Possibly forever.

My father always wore his infamous navy blue suit on his broad body, his ebony hair was repeatedly slicked back and fastened into a tight bun at the back of his hair. He was my number one person I looked up to, possibly because I couldn't even reach up to the kitchen counter but because he was also my hero. To be him when I got older.

He still is my hero. My sun.

My father would straighten up his form once I was glued around his neck and my tiny legs would dangle in the air. He would let me hang around him with his arms hanging by his sides before he wrapped them around me when I was squealing too hard, afraid I would fall (knowing he would never let me). He would laugh at me and then squeeze me so hard I could barely breathe. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

I would snuggle close to him, embracing the transparent cologne hanging in the air—the warmth of the spices producing dried fruits, choco, and wood notes swirling in an eternal caress, filling my nostrils. He would tell me that he missed me and rubbed his hand up and down my back—each time nearly putting me to sleep from exhaustion in which I'd been waiting for him all day.

Around this time when I desperately wanted him to be with me, created a time when my father would frequently be gone for a longer period of time. I noticed it, of course, and would often question my mother as to where my father was. She would sigh, crouch down to my level, and tell me how my father needed to travel to another city for a business trip. I would often cry, because again he needed to be away from me. All I wanted was him. I wanted to share my dolls with him, tell him all the different stories I've made for them, and then he would pretend to be invested in their stories to make me feel so smart to come up with such an awesome story. I wanted him to lay with me in bed, to have my head lay on his chest and tell me how my mother and him fell in love with each other, again and again, until I fell asleep and wanted to do it all over again the next day.

But there came a day when my mother rubbed my shoulders in a soothing comfort, in order for me to calm down, when she would tell me he had had to leave for a couple of days again. I could hear it in her voice. The strain underlying her tone. The slight flicker of a tremble. The sigh at the end of her sentence. I could taste it on my tongue. Her lies.