“Apologize?”
“Yes.”
“I doubt it.”
“I know. It won’t cost more than a couple minutes to sit and talk with me. If you still want to leave by the time the waiter comes for the order then so be it.” Jen said, looking for some kind of compromise between the two. The longer Aoife stood above the table, the more straying eyes fell upon her. More for the sake of her own comfort, she took a seat back at the table to dissuade any further monitoring from the other customers.
“I can’t exactly trust you. You lied to get me here.” Aoife stated, pulling her purse into her lap, rather than placing it over the back of her chair as it had been before.
“Would you have answered if the messages came from me?”
“No.” It didn’t take Aoife long at all to answer. While she still hated her father, he felt more genuine in his disagreements than Jen ever did. When presented with two less than stellar parents, she would choose the one that was at least her actual father. It had always been difficult for Aoife to reckon with the changes that had undergone her family. Her relationship with Peter had been a roller coaster ever since her mother passed.
For a few months at a time, they’d get along like cheese on rice. The very model of a perfect family you’d see immortalized in portraits on plastered walls. Then, without warning, they would clash with each other in a volatile orbit. If you asked Aoife if she loved her father, it would depend entirely on how old she was when you asked. If you asked Aoife if she loved her step-mother, the answer would always be no. From the very moment she had entered Aoife’s life, she was kept at arm's length. Aoife wasn’t willing to lend any sort of vulnerability towards a woman who came in to replace the memories of the only time their family had ever felt functional.
“So you see, the lie was necessary.” Jen said.
“Why couldn’t he just send a message? Would a text have been that hard for him?”
“Hospital, Aoife. He’s not able to. Not right now. I don’t relish in deceiving you, Aoife. But it was important for you to know. I figured you’d want to see him again. In case things get worse.” Jen made uncomfortable pauses throughout her sentences. Chinks in the armor of her resolute seriousness.
“What happened?” Aoife asked, fingertips flicking across the surface of her purse in rhythmic circles.
“A stroke. The doctor’s are currently trying to determine if there was a specific cause. Or if he’s at risk for another imminently.” Aoife caught the glossy shine of Jen’s eyes as she spoke. The discovery felt like a wet slap to the face. Jen had never shone such emotion. Aoife used to joke with her high school friends about how her step mother was practically a porcelain doll brought to life by a cruel wizard.
“So that’s it? He’s scared of dying and wants to tie up loose ends before he goes?”
“Ale-” Jen choked back the name before it had been fully spoken. A swift correction, but one that didn’t go unnoticed. “Aoife! Your father is dying, and you’re talking about him like a stranger!”
“Oh, right. Is this where I need to break down into tears or something? Tell me, Jen. How should I react?” Aoife challenged, leaning forwards in her chair to apply pressure to her step-mother.
“Not like that, for God’s sake! Are you so callous you don’t care about your own father?” There it was. Aoife was waiting for those words. She knew that it would inevitably come down to some variation of ‘he’s your father, don’t you care?’.
“Is he so callous that he doesn’t care about his own daughter?” Aoife replied.
“He loves you! I do too, if you’d ever let me show it.” Jen huffed.
“Does he? Because the last time I checked, he told me to fuck off. He sure as hell hasn’t cared for the past two years. I’m supposed to believe he means it now because he’s dying?” Aoife was finding it difficult to juggling the emotions that bounced around her mind. She hadn’t even begun to process the feelings surrounding her father’s condition.
“That was two years ago, Aoife.”
“Exactly. If he loved me, why am I only hearing about it now?” A growing agitation gripped Aoife’s voice as she spoke. The only thing that restrained her from speaking louder was the ever present crowd of nosy guests.
“He thought you wanted space! For God’s sake, so did I, Aoife. The night you left was such a mess. We wanted to reach out, to say something. But we didn’t want to hurt you any further.” Jen explained.
“Convenient.” Aoife wasn’t convinced. Perhaps it was callous, but she had enough time to put up walls in the past two years, and they weren’t coming down easy.
“He really does want to apologize. For what it’s worth, so do I.” A remorseful lilt in Jen’s voice caused Aoife to hesitate before responding. Apologies from the both of them were at the bottom of her list of expectations. It was something she had long since disregarded as a possibility. The idea that it could come true now was just as tantalizing as it was terrifying.
“It’s a little late for apologies. I’ve moved past the need for family, and I don’t need to regress just to appease a dying man.” Aoife spoke coldly, holding her purse to her chest like it was a bulletproof vest. A habitual reaction to the words of her step-mother.
“I gave him plenty of chances, I’m done chasing a childhood I’ll never have back.” Aoife threw the strap of her purse back over her shoulder and prepared to stand up. Before she could do so, Jen cut her off.
“He read the note, Aoife.”
Aoife froze. One hand on the chair and another on the table just before she pushed herself up to her feet.
“He read it?”
“I thought he got rid of it.”
“I convinced him to keep it.”
An oppressive silence lay over the both of them like a weighted blanket. The subtle pressure of words unspoken. Bodies tensed with emotional strings pulled to their tightest margins. If not for the interruption of the waiter, the two of them could have stared unmoving at one another for hours.
“Jen Allanach, Aoife Allanach? Are the two of you ready to order?” The waiter asked politely, referencing the reservation that must have had their names. Curious that Jen had made sure to use the correct name, Aoife thought. She hadn’t seemed to care about it the last time they spoke. Jen looked to Aoife with an expectant stare, the unspoken question of if she was willing to stay and talk for the remainder of the meal. After a couple seconds of careful consideration, Aoife cleared her throat.
“Sure.”
* * * * *
Go nuts. The advice that Castle had given to Owen was fairly straightforward, but intimidating in ways that Owen hadn’t even begun to consider. How might one even “go nuts” exploring their gender? Was there a handbook? A wikihow article to go nuts on one’s identity until it unravels before them in a simplistic array? As it would turn out from a quick google search, there was not in fact a wikihow article on going nuts on your gender. Figures.
It left Owen in an awkward situation. He would need to figure it out by himself. There wasn’t anyone else to talk to about it. Aoife was gone for the day, and even if she weren’t it wasn’t like Owen would dump the question on her lap with how she’d been lately. Castle, the only other person who knew what Owen was talking about had already offered their advice on the matter. That left only a single option before Owen, an option that he wriggled with in his bed as he considered every minute detail of the plan. After an hour of agonizing, Owen finally pulled himself up from the muddled waves of his tangled blankets. To act on lingering feelings felt like tickling an agitated volcano. They’d been lying dormant for so long. Pulling them to the surface felt like Owen was egging on an imminent explosion of feelings. But it needed to be done. There was an itch in the back of his mind. Insatiable and impossible to ignore. There’d be no relief until it was scratched.
It was settled then. Owen slinked off of the edge of his bed with his mind set on the first step towards the door. The first step towards a terrifying exploration that threatened to erupt the bubbling feelings in his chest. The first step towards the nearest thrift store. Repressed feelings or otherwise, Owen didn’t have the money to drop by a branded clothing store. New chapters come out on novelping(.)com first.
* * * * *
“What did he think?”
“It hurt him. But he said it hurt in the right way.”
“Please. He’d never say something so irreverent.”
“Believe it or not, that’s what he said. He said your words stung and that he deserved it.” Jen confessed as she took a sip of a decadent red wine. It swirled within her glass, blood red liquid spiraling at the whim of her gentle motions. Jen made the consumption of such an expensive drink look so casual. The way she sipped at the wine would make you think the bottle that sat between the two of them was fetched from a gas station shelf. In reality, each of her sips most likely cost the equivalent of a fast food combo meal.
“Fuck your Ripley’s, I’m not buying any of the sweet sacharine shit you’re making up. God, I can’t even believe I’m still listening to any of this shit!” Aoife stifled a growl in her throat, choosing instead to dull the anger with a hefty swig of her own wine glass. Even her anger could not keep her from noting how rich it tasted compared to every cheap bottle she’d had in the past. Was it worth anywhere near the price? Absolutely not. But that usually wasn’t the point of this kind of luxury. It was a statement more than it was a drink. Something that didn’t go unnoticed by Aoife.
“I understand your hesitation, Aoife. But what can I do to make you trust me? Is there anything I can do?”
“Can do? It’s everything that you did do! How the fuck do you expect me to trust someone that’s done so much to me!”
“Like what, dear?” Jen asked, a tenderness in her voice that felt entirely unfamiliar to Aoife. It sent her mind racing to determine if the genuine tone was simply an elaborate conjuration or if it was honest for the first time.
“You took my fucking dad from me for starters!” Aoife raised her voice for a moment. A shiver tickled her spine as she realized the nearby tables had gone silent, like they were eager to hear the next part of the performance that they had made themselves privy to. “You’re not my mom. You never have been. You can say it all you like, but it doesn’t make it true.”
“...I know.”
Her acknowledgement dispelled the furrowed eyebrows of Aoife. An entirely unexpected response had suddenly put Aoife on the backfoot. Jen seemed content to sit in the silence, washing down the subtle embarrassment on her lips with another sip of wine. Aoife felt like she had slipped into some kind of alternate dimension. She was on the verge of accepting she was in a visceral kind of dream. A chaotic murmuring in the back of her mind told her to just stand up and make a scene in order to wake up. A more sensible part kept herself sat.
“What’s the game here? What are you playing at? My dad doesn’t apologize. You’ve never apologized. I’m just supposed to start believing that the two of you got a visit from the ghost of Christmas past and now you’re better?”
“It’s been two years, Aoife. People can change.” Jen said sweetly, like she was auditioning for Mother Mary in the nearest nativity play.
“You didn’t think people could change. Not me, at least. Or did you forget what you said to me?” Aoife hissed, her eyes locked with Jen’s like a vicious challenge of some kind.
“I… You’re right. I did think that.” Jen conceded, sending the conversation into yet another lull. “I was… I think people can change, Aoife. I really do.” It sounded like Jen was moments away from saying that she was wrong before changing the wording. She might have made a first by apologizing, but admitting that she was wrong seemed as difficult as ever for her. “I want to believe that if you’re still sitting here with me, you believe that as well.”
“Oh.” A brief giggle slipped out of Aoife’s lips before she could stop it. “Oh, Jen, did you think I was staying for you? I’m only here to learn more about my dad.” Jen’s face immediately fell as Aoife spoke. The tender smile she’d had just moments before faded into subtle shock. Aoife had bit back with her words to plug the gap between the two of them. Every step that Jen had metaphorically been taking towards Aoife had to be met with another two steps back for Aoife. The closeness that Jen was seeking caused Aoife to shake. It felt poisonous, despite Jen’s every attempt to sound genuine. Aoife caught herself wondering if it really was genuine, only to put those feelings aside as soon as they reared their head.
“I… understand. We can discuss your father instead, if you like.” Jen conceded, audible disappointment in her tone as she spoke. Oddly, the disappointment did not seem directed at Aoife. In a rare reversal, Jen seemed to be chiding herself.
As if to cue their change in topic, the waiter from earlier descended upon the table with a tray of intricately prepared entrees, garnished with a plethora of colorful foods. Or… they looked like food. Aoife had a hard time distinguishing what was decoration and what was edible.
* * * * *
Thrift King. Owen’s one stop shop for all of the graphics tees that he could ever want. Sure, it was absolutely the stump of the fashion tree, but what else was there for him? Men’s fashion had felt like some kind of inherent oxymoron to Owen. His options were t-shirts, buttoned shirts if he wanted to look like a business major, and sweaters if he wanted to look like everyone’s uncle that visited for the holidays with a tub of twizzlers. There had never been any options that stood out to him as interesting or fun. Those words really only felt like they were meant for women’s clothing. As Owen steadily paced through the racks it became all the more obvious that women’s clothes had the level of variety and styles that he’d always wished he could explore. He’d only ever worn jeans, sweatpants and the occasional khakis when he was forced to go to church on Sunday’s. Now he was gently flitting through skirts, shorts, rompers, leggings, dresses and more types of jeans than he ever thought existed. Was this how it felt when astronomers discovered the vast expanse of the universe? The realization that earth was but a drop in the bucket to the ocean of possibilities out in the stars? Probably not, Owen thought. None of Saturn’s moons had skorts. When Titan produced something more bizarre than jeggings it could get back to him.
The amount of options on display was ridiculously overwhelming. Owen felt like he was barely treading water in the sea of clothing around him. Which options were best to “go nuts” with. He eventually decided that since it was all an experiment anyway, he should just choose whatever caught his eye and tugged at his curiosity.
A little bit of this. A touch of that. Maybe this skirt? Was that pattern too much? Those shorts could not fit any human on this earth. Owen had been amazed at the presence of fake pockets on nearly every single set of jeans he could find. If they had gone through the effort of stitching a fake pocket, how much harder would it have been to give it actual depth?!
The buzz of Owen’s phone was the first thing to break him from the almost hour-long rotation he’d been doing of the aisles of clothing.
[Richie?: reminder yall! We got a practivce tomorrow plz dont be late!]
Owen gave a small laugh at the misspelled word. The clock that rested just above the message notification took Owen by surprise. Had he really spent that long in the store? The longest Owen could ever bear to spend on clothes shopping had been twenty minutes. He’d spent more than double that time, and felt like he could easily keep going. Maybe he could even drop by a couple more stores? He felt like an entirely alien person to himself. An Owen that enjoyed the chore of shopping for clothes. Or… not chore? He had to admit, it was sort of fun to look through the options, and he had yet to even start trying any of the clothes on himself. Not that he could do that here. Every glance he took towards the changing room made him feel utterly sick. He had only really managed to feel comfortable putting clothes in the small cart because he had laid his very own coat on top of the cart to hide the majority of what was inside. He had even gotten so conscious of onlookers that he went to the men’s section to pick out a couple or incidental shirts to cover the other clothes that his coat could not cover.
After a full hour of exploration, Owen finally decided to cut himself off. He was enjoying himself, but that was part of the issue he sought to resolve by cutting himself off. Owen told himself it wasn’t really healthy to be buying so many clothes that he could never wear after tonight. He’d be able to try on everything in peace with Aoife out of the dorm for the night, but after she came back? These clothes would most likely stay in the back of an underwear drawer, piled under enough clothes that they’d never be seen again.
The problem he now had to confront was checkout. How would he possibly explain all of the clothes he was buying? Especially when some of the clothes were obviously in contradiction to the way he presented. He had even thrown a swimsuit into the cart, since it was the closest he could find to a bra and underwear in a thrift store. Owen didn’t even want to think about how he could excuse purchasing a women’s swimsuit in the middle of winter.
After taking a deep breath and steeling himself for the embarrassing task before him, he pushed the cart up to the front of Thrift King’s checkout.
“Owen, right?”
Malik was the headlights, Owen was the deer.
“It is Owen, right?” Malik asked once more, feeling as though it was the only reasonable thing to do after a couple of seconds of lingering silence.
“Yup.” Owen responded quickly as he white knuckled the clothes that he held in his hands. Malik was on the UMDK team. Someone who Owen had seen on the day of tryouts, though never really spoke to.
“Oh, good! I was worried I mixed up your name with someone else’s, that’s all. Fancy meeting you here!” Malik flashed a smile, the kind of smile that becomes second nature in customer service work. Out of everyone that Owen could have encountered in this Thrift King, it had to be one of the people involved in the Everett UMDK team.
“I should say the same thing. How long have you worked here?” Owen asked, a pulsing heat spreading through his cheeks like a virus as he spoke. With subtly shaking hands, he began moving the wads of clothes onto the register’s desk. The entire experience was enough to make Owen want to simply disintegrate on the spot to spare himself from the imminent conversation.
“Oh I’ve worked here for years. My parents are friends with the owners so I was kind of given the job.” Malik indulged in the small talk as he began to lift each item of clothing to scan the tag. With each following item, a growing confusion spread across his face, though he made no outward comments. Owen couldn’t bear another second of the awkward silence that blossomed between the two of them and dared to come up with the best excuse he could manage. “It’s for a friend. She’s starting a new job tomorrow and she needed clothes but she was busy tonight so she talked me into coming to get her some more outfits.” The words tumbled out of Owen’s mouth like a swathe of junior gymnasts. Was it too much of an excuse? Owen hoped it sounded even the smallest bit believable. It was in the strange niche where if Malik could tell he was lying, it would look even worse than if Owen had just been upfront and truthful to begin with.
“Oh, that explains it.” Malik flashed another smile and finished scanning the remaining items. Owen didn’t feel good about the interaction, but nothing mattered more in this moment than getting out of the store and back to his dorm room.
“$37.23 is your total.”
Owen fumbled the card into the chip reader as fast as he could. The moment it accepted the transaction, he stuffed the card back into his pocket and started threading his arm through the handles of the plastic bags to pick them all up with his left arm. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, Owen! It’d be nice to get to talk a bit more.” Malik spoke as Owen drew away from the register.
“See you tomorrow.” Owen quickly responded without turning around to look. His eyes were entirely fixated on the double doors of the Thrift King. Pressing his body into the left door, he bounced off of the door without it budging even a little. Panic sunk into his veins like a snake’s bite as Owen backed away from the door. Every subsequent second Owen spent inside the Thrift King doubled the sound of his heart throbbing in his ears.
“Oh, the left one is locked! Try the right.” Malik called out from the register.
Owen quickly moved towards the right door, shoving it open with a relieved sigh. All he wanted was the warmth and safety of his dorm room.
* * * * *
“Have you had a heart before?” Jen asked.
“No. Never have, and never planned to.” Aoife replied, looking down at the entrees that had just been served.
“Beef heart is my favorite. The way they prepare it here is truly something special.” Jen had already unfurled her silverware to begin slicing into the smoke beef heart on the plate before her.
“It just looks like a low poly render of a steak.” Aoife said as she cautiously pushed her fork into the beef heart. It looked as though she was prepared for the beef heart to leap up from the plate and attack her. Eventually, she gained the nerve to begin slicing it into strips like her step-mother across from her had already done.
“Low… what?”
“Low poly. It’s… it’s a game thing. You don’t need to worry about it.”
“Was it supposed to be a joke?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sure it’s a good joke.”
“You don’t even understand it. How can you say that?”
“Just a feeling, I suppose. You’ve always been good with jokes, Aoife.”
Aoife furrowed her brow at Jen as she finished slicing the beef heart into equally sized ribbons on her plate. Most of what Jen was saying tonight had thrown Aoife off, and that short conversation was no different. She had always scolded Aoife for her jokes when she was younger. There was always some sort of reprimand for a joke, either for vulgarity or being all around inappropriate.
“You don’t even feel like my step-mother.”
The statement took Jen off guard. A face full of confusion looked back at Aoife as Jen finished swallowing a bite of the heart. “I’m sorry? What is that supposed to mean, dear?”
“You don’t feel like Jen. Usually, you’re finding every little thing wrong about me that you can obsess over. You’ve always been a pioneer of cruelty towards me. None of this kindness feels genuine.”
“I see.”
Three minutes passed. The only sounds shared between the two women were the soft clinks of forks and knives against the plates. The unspoken words between the two could fill the pages of a short story in those three minutes.
“Did I ever tell you why I fell in love with your father?” Jen asked, pushing her fork through a slice of beef heart, the metallic utensils piercing the meat with no resistance.
“Sure. You two had a date where you went on a hike and he worked some magic to smite you then and there.”
Jen smiled at the odd retelling of one of her first dates with Peter. “Not really, no. Part of it was his charm. The other part was something we shared between the two of us. We wanted so badly to be parents.”
Aoife instantly drew back as Jen started her story. She didn’t like the idea of where it might go.
“My first attempt at having a child was… unsuccessful. I had gotten my hopes higher than the heavens before everything fell apart. When I lost the child, my marriage went along with it. When I met your father, it felt like I was getting a second try. He was terrified of raising you alone, I was too afraid to try to have another child of my own, so it felt almost perfect. Everything lined up so perfectly for a second chance.” Jen's voice quivered slightly as she retold her story, something that pulled at Aoife’s heartstrings despite her reservations.
“You sure didn’t treat your second chance very well.”
“I tried, Aoife. I tried so hard to get you to love me. I gave you so many gifts in hopes they would give me a chance to make a connection with you. You didn’t want any of it. Every hand I reached out with would be bitten faster than the last.”
Aoife squirmed at Jen’s words. As much as her reaction was to spit back a denial, she knew there was truth to her words. Aoife had pushed away every attempt for Jen to get closer to her. She had no interest in getting a replacement mother, and made it strikingly obvious.
“It felt like you were killing my second chance at motherhood. I know it wasn’t the right thing to do, but after long enough of being pushed away, I just gave up on trying to get you to like me. Some… resentment certainly took hold.”
Family was just as messy as the beef heart that Aoife pulled apart with her fork. The dripping blood that accumulated on the edges of the plate to stream down towards the center felt like a close approximation to how most experienced families. It was a mess, pushing everyone apart to the edges of a plate, only to eventually find themselves back together again in the center of the dish.
It felt too prescriptive to Aoife. Why should family come back together? There was no law that set it so. No tenets of nature that forced people to cooperate just because of some vague sense of ‘family’.
Did Jen seem apologetic? Sure. As much as Aoife wanted to say no, it was clear there was some sort of heartache in her eyes. Was her father apologetic? Who knows. Reading the letter might suggest he was, but why was it Aoife’s responsibility to participate in a family she had already severed herself from?
Aoife wanted to cry. Aoife wanted to leave. Aoife wanted a family. Aoife wanted to leave the past in the past. Her stomach felt like it was being securely fastened to her spine with barbed wire. A sickening indecisiveness took hold of her as she sat across from Jen and stared at a half eaten beef heart.
“I regret turning sour towards you. I wish I had more patience back then. The patience to give you the time you needed. The patience to see you grow up into the stunning woman that you are without trying to interfere. I believe you’ve made me into a better person, Aoife. I hope I haven’t done the opposite for you.” What had started as a subtle choked tone for Jen had fully developed into steady tears that painted the wrinkles of her cheeks with her vocalized regret.
It had finally become too much for Aoife. The tears that had started to well up below her eyes had become almost too much to see. Aoife abruptly stood up from her chair, speaking slowly to avoid her voice cracking or quivering.
“I need to go.” Aoife raced out of the restaurant, purse clutched to her chest and eyes squinted just enough to let her see. Her head tilted down to hopefully prevent any of the hosts at the front of the restaurant from seeing tears dripping off of her face.
Despite how much of it she had eaten for dinner, Aoife didn’t have the heart to continue the conversation.