Page 79 of Floored (Frenched 3)
It wasn’t, but it felt sort of good to just let fly whatever I felt like saying. “Just be honest for once,” I snapped. “Do you or do you not have a daughter? Were you or were you not married to her mother?” Against all odds, that little piece of me prayed he’d say this was all a misunderstanding.
He hesitated too long.
“Answer me!” I yelled.
“I don’t see why I should,” he yelled back. “You’re just going to stand there and judge me like I knew you would.”
I shrank back. “Judge you! Is that what you think this is? I’m judging you for having a child? For being married and divorced?” But I was drunk, so it came out more like juszhingoo than judging you.
“For making mistakes! For being less than perfect, which we both know you are. You’ve never done one thing wrong in your life, Miss Perfecty Perfect Homecoming Queen with her clean floors and her ABC spice rack and her fake scented Christmas tree that doesn’t drop any needles. We can’t all be as perfect as you are, you know.”
“Fuck you!” I shook my finger in his face. “I did make a mistake, and that was letting you into my life. You had every opportunity to tell me the truth, and you didn’t. You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie to you!” Charlie’s blue eyes blazed. “I chose not to share something with you at this point in our relationship. It’s my personal life, and I get to choose when I share things!”
“It’s not a fucking thing, Charlie! It’s who you are—you’re a father!” Why couldn’t he see that having a child wasn’t something you got to choose to share or not share, like an aversion to cilantro or an affinity for hot chocolate? It was an essential part of his identity. “I feel like I don’t even know you at all, like I never have.”
Charlie inhaled and exhaled, and I could see him trying to keep his temper in check. “I told you right from the start there were things in my past I wasn’t proud of.”
“You could have been a little more specific,” I spat. My lips were so numb, I garbled the word specific.
“I also warned you not to get attached, didn’t I? I told you that I mess up every good thing in my life.”
“Well, congratulations! You were right.”
We stood seething at each other for a moment.
“So that’s it, then. You’re ending this?”
“That’s all you have to say?” I shrieked. “No real explanation? No actual reason why you’ve been lying to me? Don’t you think you owe me the truth?”
Charlie seemed to struggle with the answer. Finally he stood taller, chest rising. “I told you the truth, and you didn’t believe me.”
“Ha! How do you figure that?”
“The truth is, I’ll never be who you want me to be. It was stupid of me to even try.” Then he turned around, shoved his feet into his boots, and stormed out.
Grabbing my wine glass off the island, I threw it at him, cringing at the ear-splitting shatter when it hit the door, and bursting into tears when I was alone again in the silence.
I fucking hate messes.
A miserable Christmas came and went, and I heard nothing from Charlie. His gifts sat under my tree, wrapped and gathering dust, sad reminders of what should have been our first Christmas together. I couldn’t bring myself to even touch them. Mia was my saving grace, including me in all her holiday plans, keeping up a cheerful stream of chatter about the baby, and listening patiently whenever I wanted to wallow in my misery. I’d told her about Charlie, and she fully supported my decision to break it off.
“A child is not something you just spring on someone,” she’d said. “He didn’t even tell you why he hid this from you!”
Coco and Nick returned from their honeymoon in Hawaii with tans and new tattoos and happy smiles on their faces. I felt bitter every time I saw them, and then horribly guilty for it. They deserved their happiness and had fought hard for it. It wasn’t that I begrudged them their happily-ever-after—I just wasn’t in the mood to see it that much. So when they invited people over to their house for New Year’s Eve, I faked a stomach bug and stayed home alone, eating ice cream, drinking the whiskey I’d bought for Charlie, and nursing my broken heart. I watched five episodes of Breaking Bad, nodding and crying like an idiot when Pinkman went to rehab and learned who he really was—the bad guy.
“See? Why can’t you face it and admit it?” I gestured wildly with my big spoon at the TV, although I was talking to Charlie. “Pinkman can face it. How can you let Pinkman be a bigger man than you are?”
But I guessed Charlie identified more with Walt, who was still in denial about who he was. He thought he could do horrible things and still be a good person. But he couldn’t, could he? I started to feel sick. I put the ice cream back in the freezer, poured another glass of whiskey and switched to Sex and the City. I needed something light and fluffy.
But halfway through the first episode, my phone pinged with a text. Hating myself for hoping it was Charlie, I snatched it off the coffee table and read it.
It was from Mia. Happy New Year!! We miss you so much tonight. Here’s a big hug and kiss, hope you are feeling better! XOXO
Was it midnight already? Another day had gone by without hearing from him—that made thirteen. I sniffed, imagining my friends and their husbands at a party, kissing and laughing and toasting their infernal happiness. For the millionth time, I wondered what Charlie was doing tonight. Working? Home with his daughter? Out with friends? Out with a date? My stomach heaved. Would he go home with someone tonight because he was lonely, like I was? Did he miss me? I hoped he did. My only consolation was imagining that he was just as miserable without me as I was without him.
I wrapped myself up in the blanket on my couch, missing his warm body next to me even more, and finished the rest of the episode. When it was over, I was drowsy and figured I might as well go to bed when I saw headlights out my front window. Was that a car slowing down in front of my house? Ever since the burglary, I’d been a little jumpy whenever that happened. Relax, it’s probably just someone driving slowly because they’ve been drinking. But just in case, I darted into the kitchen and double checked that I’d locked the door and set the alarm. I checked the front too. Everything was secure.
