Magnetic

Chapter Fourteen

At one o'clock in the morning, I was about to call Brady, just so I could talk to someone and not feel so alone. The house was still empty; my father still not here. I knew Brady was an insomniac. He told me that the night that my father was at a hotel somewhere and he slept on my couch. He couldn't sleep in the middle of the night, only a few hours right before the crack of dawn, so I knew he'd be awake if I called.

I wrapped my hand around the landline phone, about to dial his number, when I heard the garage door open from my bedroom. Only half-awake due to my exhaustion, I crept down the staircase, almost tripping on every other step. I laid on the leather couch in the living room, waiting for the garage door to open.

When it finally did, my father stumbled in, looking more groggy than I had ever seen him before. His usually-perfect gray hair was messed up and his formally tight clothes barely hung onto him. I hadn't realized how much weight he had lost until now.

He didn't notice me at first, and went to the kitchen to get a drink of water. When accidentally spilling a bit of it on the tile floor, he cursed and left it there, probably for me to clean up in the morning. He was on his way to the couch when I spoke up and said, "Dad?"

I obviously startled him, causing him to jump and spill a bit of the water on his shirt. "Nicki, you're supposed to be asleep."

"And you were supposed to be home over five hours ago."

This took him by surprise: I had never challenged my father like that before. I always felt like I couldn't, since he seemed like all I had left. In my house, it was just he and I.

He closed his eyes for a long while without saying anything. "I've been busy," he finally said.

"Doing what?" I asked, pulling my legs up to my chest. "You can't just say that."

"Nicki, stop pushing it. What I do and what time I get home isn't any bit of your business."

"It is when I have to go to sleep in an empty house. When I'm expected to cook each of my meals. When I never have any parents or guardians at home like I'm supposed to."

He sighed and leaned back in the couch, taking a small sip of water. "Nicki, we need to talk."

~~~

Nana had been re-diagnosed.

She was no longer diagnosed with Parkinson's. Now, they discovered that she had PSP, Progressive Supra-nuclear Palsy instead, which had a bunch of the same symptoms as Parkinson's. This new disease was much worse than before.

"I've wanted to tell you, Nicki. I just didn't want you to get hurt."

I just glared at my father. Throughout my life, I had dealt with a lot. Being rejected by peers and the death of people that I cared about only covered a fraction of it. I believed that I could deal with this, as well. "That doesn't explain where you've been."

"I was at a bar, Nicki. Is that good enough for you?" he asked loudly, as if he was making an effort to not scream at me.

There was a feeling, deep in my gut, that he had been there. I was positive that he'd been drinking that day he was at the hotel by the way he slurred his words.

When my mother died, he promised me he wouldn't ever drink again. Ever.

Someone who had been drinking had hit my mother's car. Somebody drunk. That was how she died. The day that she died, the very same day, I made an oath to myself to never drink.  My father thought it was a good idea, so he made the same oath. The same promise.

A promise he had broken.

"How could you?" I asked, my voice getting higher as it usually did when I was furious. Drinking could cause you so much pain. Someone else's drinking had costed me my mother, my father his wife. The reason why he would put that in his body dumbfounded me, especially after he had seen what could happen because of it. "Why would you do that to me?" The feeling of warm tears burned in my eyes, but I tried to force them back.