Requisites Of Life

Chapter 4

Amelia

I sat on my bed, laptop on my lap and boxes of packed items ready to be moved surrounding my bed. Adding to the collection of tabs on my screen, I logged into Facebook and checked my messages. I usually see only one notification for unread messages, almost always from Dolan sending me loads of memes every few days. As expected, Dolan had sent me some memes, and I made a mental note to look at them later. 

There was a message request as well, which wasn't that unusual because of all the random foreign dudes asking everyone if they could be friends. I wasn't prepared for what I was going to read as I clicked on that message from Ron Coles. 

My heart sunk further and further into my chest as I scanned the words I read, and the lump in my throat grew larger and larger as I processed what they were saying. Eyes lingering on the last letter of the last word of the last sentence, I tried to think of what this meant to me, and what I was going to do with it. 

Why now? Why did they contact me and tell me this now? 

Does grandpa know about this person? 

What do I do now? 

Should I write back? What do I write back? 

I wanted so badly for someone to answer these questions for me. I didn't feel comfortable telling my family about this right away, mostly for fear that they wouldn't let me decide what to do next. But I couldn't think of anything better to do. So I let go of my curiosity, and took the chance of discomfort. I set my phone on my bed and went to find grandpa downstairs. 

"Hey, grandpa?" 

"Yeah?" he called back, giving me clue to where he was. I followed the sound of his voice into the kitchen, where he was doing the typical grandparent thing of squinting at their phone while trying to figure out something on there. 

I was straight and flight out with my question. "Do you know who Ron Coles is?" 

I swear his heart skipped a beat, with the way his face contorted and he immediately stopped whatever he was doing. Taking off his reading glasses and breaking any separation between our gazes, he look me dead in the eye and asked, "How do you know who that is?" 

"I don't," I raised my eyebrows at him expectantly. "That's why I'm asking you." 

"I meant, where did you hear that name?" he said rather impatiently. 

I crossed my arms in front of my chest. He was getting snappy, which meant that I started getting even more defensive. "You didn't answer my question." 

"Don't try to change the subject, young lady. I'm gonna say it one more time, and I'm not going to say it again; where did you hear his name?" 

I let out a huff through my nose before giving what he demanded. "He messaged me." 

He looked between my eyes, trying to find any indication that I could be lying. Of course, there was none, and he was left wide-eyed and trying to swallow the hard truth that made itself a lump in his throat. 

I took this as my opportunity to press my question. "Who is he?" 

"What did he say to you?" Deflecting the question after getting his answer. Sometimes I swear we could be related. 

"He said that he looked up my last name on Facebook, hoping to find me," I answered. I narrowed my gaze at him. "He also said that my mom and him were dating around the time she got pregnant with me, and thinks he might be my father." 

"Don't respond to him," he demanded. 

"I didn't," I snarled. "Why didn't you ever tell me about him?" 

"Because you had no reason to." 

"He could be my dad!" All my temper what lost at that point. "That's reason enough to me, don't you think?" 

"Well, maybe I didn't want you contacting him, did you ever think about that?" 

Funny that people can start to sound like sassy four year olds when arguing. 

"Why?" 

"Amelia, you don't know this man's past, and I don't understand why he's trying to talk to you." 

I cocked an eyebrow. "And you do?"

"And I do what?" 

"You know about this man's past?" 

"Of course I do." He rubbed his tired eyes, sighing, "Why do you think I didn't want you knowing about him? Because I know the stuff he's done!" 

"It's not like it could get much worse than what my mother did, while pregnant with me!" 

He shook his head. "You don't even know." He sat back in his seat, leaning with a defeated slump, his face resting in his palms. That doesn't seem like something out of the ordinary, but for a chiropractor who often stressed the benefits of good posture, it meant that something was probably up. "You don't even know the start of it. And I don't want you associating yourself with a man like him." 

I tilted my head to the side. I couldn't understand what in particular he was talking about. 

"I don't want you thinking that you're anything like that man." His voice was serious, but broken all the more broken.

"What did he do?" 

He contorted his lips into a sad smile. "Just please don't talk to him."

My nervousness was building up, but my patience was running out. "What did he do?"

"When they dated, he acted like he owned her--like she was property." He let out a sigh before continuing, "His addiction started around the same time as your mom's, and dropped out of school a little while after she did. When he couldn't get his hands on drugs because he lost his job, he would...have her do favors to get them some more."

It took me a second, but it eventually clicked in my mind as to what he was saying. "So he was her pimp?"

"Well, I don't know if that's the right term--"

"So my mom was an addict, and my dad's a pimp who got her hooked on a shit?" I cut him off.

"Millie, language, please. And we don't know that, neither does he."

"So it's either someone who pimped her out, or someone who bought her?" I was trying really hard to control my temper, but that's a hard thing to do when you've just found out that your mom was a whore for not only herself, but someone else. Someone she seemed to care about more than her own child.

He seemed conflicted about what to say, but I didn't give him the chance to even try to comfort me or make ammends.

Instead, I went back to my hollowed out, box-filled room, picked up the laptop again, and messaged the man back.

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Hey guys! Sorry for the slow updates, I've just been struggling with finding inspiration and motivation to write.

I know I've said it before but, do you think I should start doing readers for the next chapter?

What are your thoughts on this chapter?

Thanks for reading. Love ya.