The List

chapter 23

I loved my father, despite all the things he had put Angelica and I through. I knew, I just knew he wanted to be more for us and he wanted to be the father we wanted him to be but he just couldn't. Every time he saw us, he was reminded that he was alone in the world without his girl, the love of his life.

My heart softened then, at his figure on the couch huddled under a blue blanket, the hue of the TV illuminating his bony facial structure, eyes shut against the world and all that had brought him pain.

His body looked unusually small under the blanket, as though there weren't a person under it and it was just a blanket casually laying against a couch.

He had lost weight, again.

My father went in phases of losing and gaining his weight, an after effect of never truly coping with my mother's death. For a long time after my mother had died, my father sent Angelica and I to our grandmother's and though I was just barely a year old, I understood why when I was older.

He had been dying.

He wasn't actually dying, but I knew my father spent weeks in bed, barely moving, crying, not crying, vomiting. I'm not sure what roused him one day to retrieve the two of us from our grandmother and make vain attempts to raise us, but he did.

And he often fell into this pit over and over.

But in this moment, he looked calm, free from all the stress and anxiety and unhappiness that he had found so often in his life. His face was relaxed, lines running on his forehead and skin sagging off of his cheeks. If he were healthy, I supposed my father would be a very attractive older man, but he just wasn't.

Turning from his peacefully sleeping figure, I pulled my suitcase from the entryway toward the stairs, halting when I heard the softness of his voice, "Alice?"

I pivoted on my foot, eyes landing on his now risen body, a white t shirt wrinkled and pulled back, exposing his hollowed ribcage. I swallowed.

"Did you eat today?"

He shrugged. "I had a PB&J after my pills this morning."

"Dad," I frowned. "That's not good enough. Come into the kitchen I'll make you something."

I retracted the handle from my suitcase, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear so I could watch his hunched figure rise from the couch and follow me into the kitchen, swaddled like a baby in the warmth of his blanket.

He sat at the island, avoiding my gaze, pointedly staring at a pattern in the tiled countertops. I grabbed a Tupperware box of pasta from the fridge and pulled out a pan, with the intents to quickly reheat it and plate it before heading to bed, because damn—

A bitch was fucking tired.

"How was San Francisco?"

He filled the silence with an even awkwarder question, for if he knew my motive for wanting to go to the city, he would've never asked me.

"It was nice," I said. "Foggy and cold and busy. I really enjoyed myself there."

I felt heat creeping from my face, pounding my cheeks slightly. San Francisco although vast in it's beauty had scarred me with the reminder of anything I had felt for Eros could not live, it must be stifled because we were friends, and that's what we were always supposed to be.

Which is why I supposed, I spent more time talking to Henry. To avoid the blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy I found myself more and more keen on.

"Did you guys visit Twin Peaks? That used to be your mother and I's favorite place to visit before we left."