“Talk about good timing,” he points out.
“I know, right? Almost too good.” I’ve often wondered if it was all some sort of arrangement for my mother. My life changed in the blink of an eye. Barely a week after the lady came by, the twenty-one-year-old partying every night was trying on wedding dresses and getting a job.
“I’m so sorry, Winter.” He grabs hold of my hand.
“It’s not your fault. Hey, look on the bright side, there’s no one she hates more than my dad.” A sharp edge of pain crawls up my throat.
“Harry?”
“No. My real dad. You know, the one who left.”
I tell myself that crying won’t change a thing, that a tear shed over someone who doesn’t care is a monumental waste. Still, my feelings spill down my cheeks one by one.
Go away, tears. Nobody invited you.
“Baby, don’t cry.” He holds me tighter. “He’s an idiot. He missed out on knowing the best person in the whole world.” He plants a kiss on my forehead. “And you have Harry. He loves you to the moon and back. You do have a dad, Winter. Biological or not.”
The tears lessen until they stop altogether. He’s right. I have a dad, and the best one by far.
Silent, I draw small circles over his shirt.
“What would you do?”
I look up at him.
“If you met your biological father, what would you do?”
The question rings out in my head.
“I’d ask him why,” I whisper. “Why we weren’t worth it. I get that he was young, and he probably didn’t plan on knocking someone up, but still, he could’ve tried. I just want to know why he didn’t try.”
“Would you want him in your life if he showed up?”
“I don’t know.” I admit.
My resentment wants me to say no, but in all honesty, I have no clue what I would do if I were to see him in real life. If he were standing in front of me, begging me for a second chance, I’m not sure I could blow him off the way I convinced myself I would.
“You know what my mother used to say to me? Before…” Haze pauses. “Before Desiree died.”
My heart aches.
“When life denies you what you want, it just means you deserved better.”
We don’t speak again after that. We don’t feel the need to. We just lie there, in each other’s arms. I listen to his heartbeat, he plays with my hair: It’s the perfect escape.
I think about what he said. That I deserve better. People used to say that about him all the time. They said “better” wasn’t Haze and it would never be. Because they all know so much about being a good person.
I think being good isn’t always doing the right thing without a second thought. It’s not having the right choices, the right words, the right moves on speed dial. In some cases, it’s being tempted by the darkness, lured in and completely immersed. It’s getting hurt over and over until finally, the darkness spits you back out and leaves you to make a choice. Fight or fall. It’s having lived through the worst of the worst and surviving it. And after you survive it? After you’ve had your soul picked apart piece by piece? It’s lifting yourself up and choosing the light. Again. One last time. That’s being good. Haze taught me that doing the right thing doesn’t come easy. It might just be the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do in your whole damn life, but that’s how you know it’s worth it…
That it’s real.
When his breathing becomes regular, I reach for his jacket, that he’s using as a mini blanket, and walk to the beige couch in the corner of the suite. Haze didn’t pay this much money to sleep on top of the covers. I’ll have to wake him. I drop his jacket on the sofa and frown when a piece of paper slips out of his pocket, floating all the way down to the floor. It’s small, crumbled. For all I know, it could just be an old bill, but my curiosity gets the best of me. I pick it up, glance back at Haze, who’s still sleeping like a baby, and unwrap my discovery.
An address.
32 Holland Avenue.
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