Ember || B.E

39|| how could you?

"I don't want you going by yourself."

"Billie," I placed my palm on her cheek, soothingly rubbing her cheekbone with the pad of my thumb. "I promise I'll be okay. I need to do this on my own. I need to face my parents and stand up for myself. Plus you need to be here when Elodie wakes up," I explained softly.

She let out a sigh but nodded in response. "Please be careful and call me if you need anything, anything at all."

"I promise," I leaned forward pressing a passionate kiss to her lips. Her hands laced behind my back, hugging me tightly against her body. The feeling of her ignited a passion inside of me and only made me feel more confident about what I'm about to do.

"I love you so so much," she whispered as I pulled away before anything could escalate.

"I love you more," I placed one last peck on her lips before fully pulling away to grab my bag. "I'll call you on my way back," I informed her, opening up the front door and making my way to my trashy car.

All I could do was rehearse the lines in my head as I drove. The lines I would tell my parents. I planned to be calm and collected, to have a decent humane conversation with them. I'd tell them how I felt and how what they have done to me affected me every day. But all of that flew out the window when I was met with my father's menacing eyes.

My mom sat on the couch, her hands folded in her lap, one of her legs bouncing up and down as she stared at the floor. My father stood. I had a feeling that he thought sitting down showed less dominance and he was too prideful to let up.

The anger inside of me continued to boil and I could hardly stand still, let alone sit down.
It was silent for a few moments, my hands balling into fists at my sides. "How could you?" I spat with disgust. "All these years you treat me like shit, expect me to be someone I'm not. Expect me to be this picture-perfect daughter but not even put in the time or effort or love to raise me."

"Ember, settle down. We're here to talk about Elodie," my father claimed with a frighteningly calm voice.

"You wanna talk about Elodie? Fine, let's talk about her. Why the hell did you think it was okay to leave your eleven-year-old daughter on her own, terrified and confused for days?!"

"Listen, your mother and I went out for dinner and while we were out we decided to go on a spontaneous trip for the weekend. We called your aunt to come babysit and though we only left her a message we were positive she would come. We maybe got a little caught up in the moment and should have double-checked to make sure she got the message. We weren't thinking," he explained and I was shocked to see his head hang low as he continued to speak.

"Yeah," I scoffed with a humourless laugh, "Clearly you weren't thinking! I don't get it. It doesn't make sense. You just forgot to be parents?"

"Well, I-" dad began to speak but I cut him off, still needing to get things off my chest and out in the open. "Kind of like how you just forgot to parent me at all? Do you not realize the emotional damage you've caused me by practically abandoning me at birth? You didn't want me and I get that grandma forced you to have me but after she died you should've stepped up. Stepped up and fucking raised me or put me into the system. Y'know, until a few months ago I didn't even know what being loved felt like. I didn't know that a hug could be so goddamn comforting because you didn't even care about me enough to give me a fucking hug!" I ranted, angry tears streaming down my cheeks.

"And-and then you tell me I can't even see my own sister?! Where's the logic there? Tell me, dad, tell me, why do you not want Elodie to speak to me? Because I have depression? Because I'm struggling to find a job? You think that's fair? You think that her seeing someone struggle a bit is going to mess her up?! No! What's going to mess her up is her parents spoiling her and then suddenly disappearing on her!" I cut myself off, practically breathless at this point.