Vibrations

Chapter 12

I sat alone in the dark of my trailer. I wanted very much to lie to myself. To tell myself I was sorting through my thoughts.

To tell myself I was making plans for my future. Lie, and claim I was trying to figure all of this out...

The truth was, I was feeling sorry for myself. I didn't want the truth. I didn't want to figure this whole thing out. It was all too much for me. All I knew was that I wanted to feel sorry for myself. I wanted to sit, and think about every moment I had lost. All those firsts in Roo's life. Every moment I had ever missed...

I heard the knock on the door and lifted my head from where I had thrown it back on the couch. Panic surged through me for a split second as my panicked mind screamed that it was Casey. That she had come to confront me about how I felt. What decision I was going to make...

My common sense kicked in as I realized the knock was way too hard to be Casey...

My heart also told me the secret truth of Casey. There was no way she was ever going to confront me. If I grabbed my bag right now, got in my truck and headed back home, never to return, she would never say a word to me about it.

I stood up and turned on the lamp, throwing some light on the room. I felt a moment's shame as I thought about how pathetic it was for me to be sitting in the dark, feeling sorry for myself.

Then I realized how little I really gave a shit what anyone thought, least of all myself...

I turned the porch light on, and opened the door to find my dad standing on my porch.

He was blinking in the sudden light of the porch light as he laughed; a short, humorless bark. "You look like shit kid..."

I nodded slowly, feeling so many of those old grudges fall away...

"Fuck you old man... I'm having a bad day."

He smiled, "Drunk yet?" he asked.

I shook my head slowly, "Nope..."

He raised a bottle of whiskey I hadn't noticed he was holding, "Want to see how fast we can fucking fix that?"

My mind latched onto that like a port in a storm, "Fuck yes."

He handed me the bottle as I let him in. I looked at it, Johnnie Walker Blue Label, good stuff...

I chuckled, "I don't think you needed to splurge on the good stuff for how I feel right now... Wild Turkey would have done just fine..."

He smiled at me as he plopped himself down on the couch. "You say that now, but you don't know the history of that bottle..."

I threw the bottle up, letting it flip in the air before I caught it again... "Enlighted me."

He raised his eyebrows, "Well, see. When I had the birds and the bees talk with you... I went out the next day, and I" He pointed at the bottle, "bought that bottle. I told myself that the day I had my first grandkid you and I would pop that fucker open and get good and drunk..."

We stared at each other for a few seconds...

Then we both burst out laughing... "How'd that plan turn out for you?" I asked between snorts.

He shook his head, "Nothing in life is ever as easy as we make it seem, is it?"

I shook my head as I looked at the bottle, "Ain't that the truth?"

We stared at each other for a few seconds, not an uncomfortable silence, just one where both of us tried to sort out what we were thinking, what needed to be said, what was better left to silence...