I retrieve my cell and open my messenger app, seeing all are still unread, even though the last one I sent over an hour ago. My father uses his cell for business, so there’s no way he’s not seeing them and knowing I am trying to get hold of him. He has one phone.
I hit dial instead and put my phone to my ear, holding my fork midair and staring pensively at Dane. My eyes naturally stray that way when he’s facing me, but somehow, his presence gives me courage.
The atmosphere is thick with static around us as I listen to the endless ringing, and my heart deflates and withers in my chest. My whole demeanor sags along with what’s left of my mood, and Dane must sense it. He glances up at me for a second, frowns at seeing me on my cell with eyes locked on his head, and goes back to eating and reading simultaneously with no visible reaction.
Like every call this week, my dad's cell rings out and eventually goes to voicemail. I had avoided leaving one as it’s harder to conceal my disappointment that way, but I have had enough. He has no idea how much of a wound this inflicts when he dodges me and won’t outright tell me he doesn’t want to see me. It’s always an excuse of how busy he is, even though I fly there, get to his apartment, and do everything for him. I learned to cook for that exact reason. It isn’t a hassle for him for me to go.
Maybe my heart would stop clinging on if he were honest and told me he didn’t want me to keep looking for him.
“Dad, can you please reply to me or call me back? It feels like I haven’t heard from you in weeks, and I’m worried about your lack of response. Please, Daddy, we have a break coming up in school, and I wanted to see you….. call me back.” I hang up and stare at my cell for a moment, a lump lodging in my throat as emotions rise to make my chest ache. Then, I face it down on the table and calm myself with a deep breath. Trying not to let this get to me or show my broken disappointment.
I realize Dane isn’t continuing the motion of lifting his fork or turning pages, and I glance up to see him watching me silently. His eyes dart away, dropping his head back to his previous focus when he sees I noticed but doesn’t say a word. He acts like he didn’t hear me, even though I know he has before, and flicks to the next page. Embarrassing me that he sees it so clearly and silently judges me, probably calling me pathetic and a loser in his head.
What does he know?
He has never had to deal with this because his mom begs him to visit as often as possible.
“Are you going to see your mom in London this break?” I ask to deflect the focus from my call, making out it was just a casual call and not my sad stalking of my own father. I’m humiliated that I almost begged in front of him and get a shrug in response. Not even eye contact.
It riles that inner anger only Dane can trigger, and my stomach tightens in frustration.
“Are you really going to be like this?... This ignorance even when sitting at dinner together. This is stupid, Dane, and immature.”
Dane sits up straight, locks his gaze back on me, sniffs, picks up his water bottle to take a drink, and then returns to what he’s doing. Making a good go of clearing his plate without complaint, even though he criticized my cooking. It’s a very big ‘leave me alone’ move that he does so very well, and I swear, for once in my life, I wish it wouldn’t kill him to be a little bit nice to me.
Can’t he see I need someone to care right now, even if it’s him?
In this house, which isn’t all that huge, he has been acting as though we don’t walk right past one another. He actively blanks me here, at school, or outright avoids me. This weirdness since we argued on the drive is driving me crazy. At first, I thought he was sulking and it would pass, but now, after two days, I want to punch him in the throat and smack him about his dumb head for being like this.
It’s been irritating me and making me mad as hell, and now sitting facing him, he’s still acting like a prized asshole. He has no shame.
When he still doesn’t look at me or answer, I lean forward and forcibly slam the pages shut of the damned comic he’s using to ignore me and slap my hand on top of it. Almost trapping his hand if he hadn’t moved it at the last second to reach for his water.
Dane doesn’t flinch or react.
“Stop being a jerk. Say something, anything….. even if it’s some shitty remark about chasing after my father and acting like that. I hate this.” I spit at him angrily, disrupting my bowl and spilling my glass of water on the side of my plate, but I don’t care. My dad and Dane combined have made me feel like shit these past two days, like I'm invisible and worthless, and I want to scream at his stupid head. All the bubbling internal frustration and angst needs an outlet, and with him acting this way, I aim it at him.
Dane leans back and fixes his pale grey gaze on me with an expressionless stare while sighing like I'm an irritating problem. Picking up his water, he takes a long, slow drink. His eyes never leaving mine for a second, nor even a blink. He moves his tongue inside his mouth to clean the food from his teeth, swallows, then pushes his chair back and picks up his bowl with the fork balanced inside. Sliding the comic out from under my palm, he picks it up, too, then turns and walks off with both towards the sitting room off the kitchen. A total non-reaction to me that normally would get something, maybe sarcasm or an argument, and he disappears from view.
Just a blank look, a nothing interaction, and he leaves me sitting here like I am some crazy banshee ex who won’t leave him alone. He swaggers off with that cool boy walk and ‘don’t care’ attitude, making me want to scream.
It wounds me as much as my dad ignoring my calls and makes me feel worthless. Clenching up my insides, my chest aches, and my throat constricts like he’s strangling me. My heart accelerates like I’ve run a marathon and pounds so hard it feels like it might explode from my chest.
“I hate you sometimes.” My voice croaks and breaks at how he's abandoning me, and despite not even wanting his stupid company, it feels like he’s stabbed me in the chest. I loathe how, even though Dane is the absolute bane of my existence, he has this weird power over me and can make me feel invisible without doing a damned thing. I always crave his reactions and attention, even while telling myself I wish he would stay away from me.
I wait, tilting my head towards the door, and listen because I know he heard me. The cozy is close enough, and the house is quiet, yet he doesn’t bother to retaliate. There’s the faint sound of him laying his plate on a table, the scrape of a chair, and then silence again.
My eyes well up with moisture, and I swallow down the crazy, insane need to storm through there and throw my bowl at his head. I don’t know why I am like this today, but maybe my father has me sensitive. Perhaps it’s being made to feel like I don’t matter by someone who is meant to care about me so that Dane’s behavior, which isn’t all that out of the ordinary, is way more hurtful. Getting under my skin.
I just want someone to give a shit about me, for once. This stupid house sometimes feels so huge and so empty…. I sometimes feel like I could disappear, and no one would notice.
I can’t believe there was a time, long ago, when I used to look forward to Dane coming here, thinking we would get through this together. That my loneliness wouldn’t run as deep if someone was going through the same as me and could be here to lean on. Back then, I was happy that of all the kids in school that I was forced to be siblings with, it was Dane.
I can’t believe I was ever stupid enough to think that just because we were friends when we were little, we would be something closer as siblings as we grew. That my fondness for him back then would become the toxic mess it is now. That I mistook our closeness as something positive, only to have him end up hating me and my mother for what we did to his family. Treating me like the enemy added to my loneliness and hopelessness growing up.
I didn’t gain a brother. I lost a friend… one I used to wake up happy to see at school every day. It’s never stopped being a scar on my heart and left me asking myself why it had to be him, of all people.