Liberation [completed]

Golf- Mia

I felt myself processing things each day. 

On the first day, I was numb and still acting like everything was fine, despite the constant replay of the stories my father had told me. I wanted to believe that I could just move on. But the softness in my heart was wearing off and I was starting to analyse things clearly and in more detail. I was reacting to them and my brain was processing it against my will. 

On the second day, I was already separating the good memories from the bad ones. I didn't think much of the good ones, but the bad ones- the ones where my father had made a mistake or did something that didn't sit well with me- replayed in my head. How could he just leave his daughter at a park alone? Didn't he stop to think that something bad could have happened? Did he care if something bad happened? Did he regret leaving me the minute he had done it? I knew the answer to the last question- he didn't regret it. He made something of his life and forgot about me that whole time. 

On the third day, I was angry at him, I hated how he could just leave and hate me for something I had nothing to do with. I loved him as a father but he was just that a father and nothing more. I had held on to those memories of him so dearly, I think I might have altered them to suit my preferred perspective. As I try to recall the fine details again, I recall beer bottles littering the tables and the house. I recall days when he wouldn't be home till late at night and I was crying from hunger. I doubt I wanted more from him or could trust him with more.

"I'm not ready to begin a relationship with him," I say out loud to Asher who was sitting behind his desk in his office. I was sitting on the sofa pretending to read, but that was a comfort I had lost the day my father spoke to me. My mind refused to let it go. 

He looks up at me and I look at him conflicted, "I'm not" I say sadly, "Does that make me a bad person?"

Asher gets up from the chair and comes to the sofa to sit with me, he pulls my legs so that they hang over his knee and I sit closer to him. He snakes an arm around my back to support me and I look at him. 

"I just can't trust him you know...I don't know" I say confused and annoyed at this whole back and forth that has been going on in my head for the past few days.

I rest my head against his chest and wait for his reply, "Okay, I'll ask you a series of questions and you think them through then tell me an answer"

"Okay" 

"If he asked you to go out for dinner with him would you go?" Asher asks me.

"Will you be there?" I check.

"No"

Dinner alone with my father in a public place seemed too quick. I wasn't ready to spend time alone with him. It would be really awkward and I don't think I wanted him to have the privilege of getting to know me, even if there wasn't much to know. Every time I saw him or thought of him, I still harboured a small amount of resentment towards him for what he did. 

"No" I reply.

"If he asked you to come out in public that you were his daughter?" 

That would never happen. That would tarnish his career and if he ran away cause I reminded him of my mother, he'd completely hate me for ruining the life he built after her, "He wouldn't ask me to do it" I say confidently.

"If he did" Asher persists.

"No, I don't think I want to do it either," I admit, everyone would know about me and I doubt I was ready for people to know anything about me. I just didn't want to be anywhere near the spotlight. 

"Okay, if he volunteered to pay for college?"

Buy my love for him? "No way!" I say immediately and instantly.