“Wasn’t talking to you, girl.” I saw the derisive curl of his lip as he glared at her, and it pissed me off.
Normally, I’d have been up in his face about it, but I didn’t want Becca to see us fight. “Please just leave us alone, Dad. Don’t do this. Not today.” I’d never, ever asked him for anything before.
“Shut the f**k up, boy. Don’t tell me what to do in my own home.” He took a step toward me, and I was instantly on my feet, fists curled, ready. He stopped, though, and gave me a long, hard look. “You know how many friends I lost? How many buddies I watched die? You think I ever f**kin’ cried like a pu**y about it? I don’t think so. People die, and it f**kin’ sucks. Man up and deal with it.”
“This wasn’t a war. I’m not a soldier. I’m not you. I’m allowed to be upset about my best friend getting killed. I’ve known him since f**king kindergarten. So how about you just shut the f**k up and leave me alone.”
I heard Becca’s harsh, terrified breathing. If she didn’t have to go past my ass**le old man, I’d tell her to go.
“I ain’t leavin’ till she does.”
I stepped closer to him, staring up at him, fearless and ready to snap. “I don’t want to do this in front of my girlfriend, but I will. Fucking leave. Just leave my room. That’s all I’m asking.”
His nostrils flared. “Yeah, you don’t want your little friend seeing you get your ass beat, that’s what.”
“Why are you s-s-such a bastard?” This was Becca, and my dad and I both stopped and stared at her. “What have I ever done to you, except love your son? Do you know how many times I’ve fixed up his bleeding face after you beat him up? What is your p-problem? Wh-why do you hate your oh-own son so-so m-much?”
My dad gave me an incredulous look. “You’re actually dating this stuttering Ay-rab bitch?”
Becca hiccuped in shock, and then sobbed when I hit him. I saw white, blinding rage. He didn’t have a chance. He got some hard knocks in, but I was unstoppable. I hit him, and I hit him, and I hit him until he stopped moving, and then I kept hitting him. I felt a hand on my arm pulling at me.
“Jason, stop! Stop!” She was hysterical, nearly unintelligible. “P-please! Please just stop!” She screamed the last word in my ear, and it finally broke through the wall of rage.
I came back to myself, shaking, feeling wetness covering me. Warm, sticky wetness. My hands were coated in blood. I was sitting on Dad’s chest, his face a wreck. I felt blood sluicing down my face, felt my jaw aching, my ribs protesting, bruised. Becca pulled me away, choking on sobs.
I lunged to my feet, grabbed her by the shoulders, and pushed her out of my room. “I’m sorry you saw that. I’m so sorry I let you come here.” As I spoke, a glob of bloody saliva dripped out of my mouth, and I spat it onto the carpet, beyond caring. “I’m so, so sorry, Becca. You need to go. I have to deal with this.”
“I’m not leaving you, Jason.” She jerked out of my grip and spun around to face me. “What are you going to do?”
“Call an ambulance.”
“Won’t they ask questions?”
I shook my head. “They know better. This won’t be the first time.”
She didn’t get it. “But…don’t they have to report domestic violence?”
“Report it to who?” I gestured at the badge on the table, the formal picture of my father in his captain’s uniform. “He is the police. He can have the report buried. Besides, I’d be the one arrested in this case, which would lead to questions neither of us want answered.”
“But, Jason—”
“NO!” I hated that I was yelling at her. I forced myself into calm. “I’m sorry, but no. There’s nothing to do. I’m leaving today anyway. I’m done with his bullshit.”
“Where will you l-live?”
“I don’t f**king know, Becca! My truck? A hotel? I don’t f**king know. I don’t care right now. I just can’t stay here another day.”
She nodded her understanding, knowing I just wanted her to drop it. “Let me get you cleaned up.” She turned away and ripped the hand towel angrily from where it hung off the microwave door handle.
She dabbed it gently on my lip, wiping away the blood, folding it and wiping again, then wetting it under the faucet and scrubbing at my chin. She hiccuped, sniffed, blinked hard, and licked the tear away from the corner of her mouth. I sighed, angry with myself for losing it at her.
I wiped at her face with my thumb, and she flinched away. “Beck, I’m sorry. I know you don’t get it. I should report this. But if I was going to, I would have, should have, years ago. It’s too late now. I’m eighteen, I’m legally an adult, and I’m moving out. I’ll never see him again after today. You’ll never have to see this again, okay?” She nodded, but didn’t answer, scrubbing at the blood crusting on my cheek. “Talk to me, please.”
I tried to wipe a tear away again, and she flinched. As if…as if afraid of me now. “And s-say what? I was so scared. For you. Of you. You weren’t…you w-weren’t you. You were…so violent. You were hitting him and he wasn’t fighting back, and you were still fighting him. It was so-so terrifying.”
“You heard what he said.”
She shook her head. “He can say what he wants about me. He’s a monster, and I don’t care what he thinks of me.”
“I won’t let him talk about you like that. He’s got no right. The last time you saw me like this? He’d said something just like that.”
The first thing Dad did every day when he came in from work was click on the radio, tuned to 99.5 FM, the country radio station. “Please Remember Me” by Tim McGraw was playing, and I was reminded all over again that Kyle was dead. I’d almost managed to forget for a moment.
It hit me in the gut harder than my father’s fist ever had. Kyle was dead.
I collapsed onto my hands and knees, sobbing. I’d never cried, not ever. Not since I was a baby, not for anything. I couldn’t have stopped it, even if I’d tried. I don’t know how long I cried, but I felt Becca beside me, still with me, touching my shoulder, letting me cry.
I heard a wet, choked coughing from my bedroom, forced myself to my feet. “Shit, he’s gonna choke on his own blood.” I stumbled into my room and shoved my father onto his stomach, and he sputtered, vomited, and coughed again. I dragged him away from the mess and left him on the floor, half in my room, half in the hallway. I noticed shattered picture frames, broken trophies, my desk cracked in half. I had no memory of the fight itself, and I hadn’t realized how bad it must have been. There was a huge hole in the drywall next to the door, another in the wall kitty-corner. My desk chair was tipped on its side, one of the casters snapped off.