I lay wide awake in my bed with my head resting against a sleeping Harry’s chest, I knew he was sleeping because of the snores coming from him. I hadn’t been able to fall asleep because I kept thinking about my gramps request, to at least forgive my father. Why not my mother too? And what did my gramps mean by my dad used to be different before he met my mom? There were so many questions I had running through my mind that I hadn’t been able to sleep. Deciding I wasn’t going to fall asleep anytime soon I tried to peel myself away from Harry but he held onto me tightly as I moved.
“Where ya goin’ love?” Harry sleepily mumbled, I smiled as I rested my hand on his cheek.
“To the bathroom,” I told him and kissed his nose as he let me go. I climbed out of bed and pulled on one of Harry’s hoodies and exited my room. I quietly fleeted down the stairs and walked into my gran’s spacious kitchen, knowing exactly what I needed. I walked over to the fridge and looked in one of the drawers, there sat a carton of vanilla icing, my weakness. I grabbed it out the drawer, shut the fridge door and got a spoon out of the dishwasher, I took a seat on one of the breakfast bar stools. I peeled the icing lid off and tossed it on the counter, I’ve been doing this since I was little, eating icing on nights that I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know why but icing is so addicting and it just tastes so good when I can’t sleep. I pondered what was keeping me up again, I never really did hear stories about my dad’s childhood, I saw photos but they were the standard kid photos, you know school portraits, the classic kiddy soccer photo, and so on. How could my dad be different than how he is now? Now, in the present time, my father is a strict lawyer that cares about his reputation and how people see him, he wasn’t the dad that gave his daughter information on the birds and the bees, or the father that would lecture any boy she brought home and he wasn’t the father that had a ‘daddy’s little girl’ because he was never close with me. Growing up I used to think I was always doing something wrong to not deserve his approval of me, but I would grow frustrated when I couldn’t figure out what it was that I did. All a kid ever wants is to please their parents and do as they say, and that’s all I ever did, I never acted out and brought any bad to my family name. As I ate the icing I played with my hair, something I did when I was deep in thought when I heard a pair of familiar footsteps coming down the stairs. My gran appeared around the corner in her pajamas, glasses over her eyes and a smile on her face.
“Hi sweetbaby, can’t sleep I take it?” My gran said, motioning to the container of icing sitting in front of me.
“No ma’am,” I said as I shoved a spoonful in my mouth and watched as my gran began to boil water. “What are you doing up?” I asked, spinning around in the chair I was occupying.
“Can’t sleep as well. What’s bothering you Jet?” My gran asked, not turning around to face me, she always knew when something was bothering me.
“What makes you think something is wrong?” I asked.
“Jet, I’ve known you for your entire life and I know when something is bothering you. You don’t eat icing for no reason and you don’t play with your hair for no reason.”
“Okay you caught me, you know how Gramps wants me to make amends with dad?” I asked and my gran nodded in understanding. “Well, why not both of them?”
“Because, whenever I tell you your parents call it’s always your father calling. He wants a relationship with you sweetie. Your mother on the other hand, she couldn’t care less about you and it’s sickening,” my gran spat as she prepared two cups of tea.
“Why did he wait 3 years though?”
“Hun, he realized right after you dropped out of college that he messed up and that he was never there for you. He felt that if he would have supported you, he would still have his daughter in his life, he loves you, he really does. He just isn’t good with confrontations and when he walks away from something it’s hard for him to go back, just like you. He’s all about pride.”
