Page 85 of The Blessing

Twenty minutes pass by before Ronnie pulls up to the bar. I can’t even look at her. I feel too ashamed of myself. I’ve never felt so fucking weak. I hear her get out of her car. I feel her walk towards me, but I don’t look up. I keep my eyes down, staring at the sidewalk, not wanting to see the disappointed look that must be on her beautiful face. I wanted to make her fucking proud of me, but here I am now, curled up and pathetic in front of her.

“Babe, are you ready to get going? You can sit in the backseat with Grey. He missed you so much today.”

I frown at this and rub the tears from my eyes. She reaches down to take my hand but pauses when she gets a look at my bloodied hand that’s still wrapped in the dirty bar towel. She reaches for my other hand and helps pull me up off the sidewalk to a standing position.

I take a step away from her, feeling too emotional to allow her to touch me. She reaches for my injured hand and questions, “What happened, Trev?”

“I got angry and broke a glass… and I punched a wall,” I say, holding up my other hand to show her my bloodied knuckles.

She takes a deep breath and I can hear the sympathy in her voice as she says, “Well, let’s get you home so I can clean you up.”

“I’m sorry, Ronnie,” I say as I follow her dutifully toward her car.

“Don’t apologize, Trev. Whatever happened—well, we can work through it together. Let’s just go home now.”

I nod in agreement. She opens the backseat and I find Grey kicking and squealing in his car seat, obviously eager to see me. My heart breaks as I look at him. I could’ve easily stayed at that bar and washed away my sorrows with whiskey and possibly destroyed my relationship with him. The thought of how close I’d been to doing that causes tears to prick my eyes.

“Dada!” Grey squeals, eager for me to slide into the car next to him. He’s my light when I feel like I’m surrounded by nothing but darkness. When he’s near, nothing else in my world matters. With the hand that’s in better condition, I reach out and allow him to hold onto my thumb. I watch him on the car ride home. I can’t help but wonder how my dad could look me in the eye and lie to me like that. Especially when I was little and depended on him for everything. I could never do that to Grey. I can’t even stomach the thought of doing anything to hurt him.

During the ride, he watches me, as well. He notices the scrapes on my knuckles as he plays with my hand and gives me an odd look before his eyes fill with tears. He touches the injury with his right hand and stares at it. I notice his bottom lip begin to tremble and if we weren’t in the backseat of a car, I’d take him in my arms and comfort him.

“Grey, Daddy’s okay. Don’t cry for me, buddy.” My soothing words don’t help, and tears begin to trickle down his cheeks. “It’s okay, buddy. I’m okay.”

I look up to see Ronnie watching us in the rearview mirror. She gives me a small, sad smile before her eyes return to the road. Turning to Grey, I bend down to kiss his forehead and wipe away the tears from his soft, chubby cheeks. I start playing with him, hoping that doing so will assuage this pain I’m feeling. He distracts me from everything else. Ronnie comes to help us out of the car once she’s parked. She takes Grey from his car seat and I follow them to her apartment. She instructs me to go to the bathroom so she can clean me up, while she puts Grey in his baby gym in front of the television.

I put the lid to the toilet seat down and sit on it, hanging my head while I wait for Ronnie to come to me. She doesn’t say a word as she comes in with a first-aid kit and a bottle of antiseptic. She cleans the wounds of my “good’ hand before bandaging it up. She kisses the top of my hand before moving to the other one. I can’t explain how her gentle touch makes me feel.

“You have some glass in this one,” she observes as she grabs a pair of tweezers from her bathroom cabinet. I cringe as she begins to pick it out. The glass prickles my wound as she pulls it from my skin. It reminds me of my days brawling back in high school. Of course, back then, I didn’t have a beautiful, loving girl to take care of me. Back then, my life wasn’t so wonderful, yet, incredibly fucked up at the same time. For every good thing, there seems to be something bad that always follows.

“Am I hurting you?” she asks after she sees me flinch.

“No, I’m fine,” I assure her, despite looking up at her long enough to give her a pained smile.

She gasps as she looks at my face and cups my cheek, “Baby, what happened? Did you get into a fight?”

“I got into a fight with myself,” I say grimly as I turn to look at the damage in the mirror. My cheek is bruised from where I smacked myself. Hopefully if I spend the night icing it, it’ll be gone by tomorrow.

“You fought yourself?” Ronnie asks, obviously not understanding.

“I was really angry at myself… and it just happened,” I say with a useless shrug.

“You were angry, so you lashed out at yourself?” she asks, bending down so she can see my face better. “Trev...”

“I’m fine.” When she doesn’t look convinced, I add, “Really, Ronnie. Everything is okay now.”

She pauses for a moment before quietly going back to work on my injured hand. As soon as she gets the last bit of glass out, she cleans it with antiseptic and bandages it up. After she kisses the back of my hand, I pull her onto my lap and hold her tightly against me. She sighs and rests her head on my shoulder before wrapping her arms around me.

We sit in silence for a long time, when she finally asks, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but what happened with your dad, Trev? I thought you went to smooth things over with him.”

I don’t say anything for a long time, allowing the rise and fall of Ronnie’s chest calm me down until I’m able to speak. “That was the plan, but as soon as I got there I knew something was wrong. When he started talking… God, I was so fucking upset. I’m still fucking upset. He lied to me my entire life, Ronnie.”

“About what?” she asks, raising her head to look at me.

“Evelyn isn’t my mother,” I say with a bitter laugh.

“What?” Ronnie asks, her beautiful eyes widening in disbelief. “Do you know who—”

“I ran into her that day at the grocery store. You introduced yourself to her…”