I can’t believe we’re here, that I’m with her… with them. Can’t believe I’m getting another chance to love her. Can’t believe I’m finally a father to my daughter.
Hell, I can’t believe I made it all night without being bothered.
I start to say something—to say just that—when a voice cuts through the silence… feminine, and familiar, and oh fuck. “Johnny?”
I turn, tensing, and see her a few feet to my right in the parking lot of the apartment building.
Serena.
“Johnny!” She runs, flinging herself at me, and I stagger a few steps as she wraps her arms around me, squeezing. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
Madison gasps. “Mommy, it’s Maryanne!”
“I know,” Kennedy says, her voice a whisper. “I see.”
Serena turns, loosening her grip, like she’s just now realizing I’m not alone out here. She plasters a smile on her face, zeroing right in on Madison. “Oh, who might you be, cutie?”
Madison stares at her. She looks conflicted, fidgeting, tinkering with her dandelions as she says, “I’m Maddie.”
“Well, hello, Maddie,” Serena says. “It’s always nice to meet a fan.”
Madison fidgets even more.
“Come on, sweetheart,” Kennedy says, grasping Madison by the shoulder to lead her into the apartment. “Let’s go inside so they can talk.”
Madison resists. She looks confused, like she doesn’t want to go, but she eventually gives in. Kennedy casts a look my way, and it only lasts a second, but it’s long enough for me to see the concern in her eyes, mingling with something else. Hurt.
The moment they’re gone, Serena’s expression changes, her smile dimming. She turns back to me, groaning, shoving against my chest. “Johnny, what the hell? I’ve been looking for you all night!”
“Why?”
She lets out an incredulous laugh. Her eyes, Jesus Christ, they’re like saucers—completely black. “Why? I haven’t seen you in over a month!”
“I know, but…” I shake my head, taking a step away from her as I run a hand down my face, trying to put a bit of space between us. “I thought you were in rehab.”
“I was,” she says. “But I couldn’t stay there. It was hell, Johnny, and those people didn’t get me. Not like you always did. And I missed you. I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to—”
“Don’t do that,” I say, cutting her off. “Don’t try to make you leaving rehab about me.”
“You were hit by a car! I was worried!”
“You’re worried now? But not worried enough to check on me the night of the accident?”
“You know I hate hospitals,” she says.
“So do I,” I say. “And I know rehab feels like a glorified hospital, but sometimes a person needs help.”
“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m better.”
“You’re high right now, Serena.”
She rolls her eyes. “So?”
“So how the hell are you better if you’re still using?”
“I can handle it,” she says. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this town is fucking depressing. I needed something. Honestly, I don’t know how you’re even surviving. I know Cliff sent you off somewhere to recover, but here?”
I’m having a hard time looking at her. My gaze fixes on the closed apartment door, at the splotches of yellow on the doorstep. Madison’s abandoned dandelions. “I have family here.”
She scoffs. “You hate your family.”
“I hate my father. That doesn’t mean I hate my family.”
“So, whatever, family.” She uses air quotes when she says that word, waving toward the apartment. “Is that who that was?”
“That was my daughter.”
“Your daughter.”
I can feel her gaze, piercing, judging. So damn angry. I don’t even have to look at her to know she’s fuming about that.
“I told you I was a father.”
“You told me you knocked up that girl from back home, that she kept the kid.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re a father,” she says. “So, what, while I was off suffering in some hellhole, you’ve been here, playing house?”
“I’m not playing anything. I got clean so I could be a part of her life.”
Serena lets out a bitter laugh. “No, Johnny, you did it because they made you.”
“They made me go to rehab, but that’s not why I’m still clean.”
She shakes her head, running her hands through her hair—still dyed dark for the movie. “I just… I don’t know what’s going on with you, but this isn’t the you I know.”
I shake my head. Even if I tried to explain it, she wouldn’t understand. “Look, I don’t want to get into this with you. Tell me what you’re really doing here, Ser.”
“I told you—I miss you. And since we’ve had some time apart, I thought maybe you’d miss me, too. Maybe we could give things a try. Maybe—”
“It would never work.”
“It could,” she insists.
“It wouldn’t.”
She looks hurt by that. “We were good together.”
“No, we weren’t,” I say. “We’ve been over this before. It was a fucking mess. When we got high, it was fine, but the moment we came down, we couldn’t even stand to be in the same room.”
“That’s not true,” she says. “I’m here right now.”
“You’re high.”
“Oh, fuck you! So, I’m high. That doesn’t have anything to do with how I feel about you.”
“It does,” I say. “It has everything to do with it.”
She glares at me.
This conversation isn’t going anywhere.
It never does. We’ve had this same argument half a dozen times this past year, ever since I stopped using. She doesn’t understand why things had to change, why I started treating her differently.
But she and I have a history that isn’t healthy. She’s part of the cycle I had to break. I was numbing myself, killing myself, but it wasn’t just the drugs and alcohol I’d been indulging in. Thousands of dollars in psychiatry bills taught me the real problem was my behavior. Go the same places as before, with the same people as before, and you end up doing the same shit you always did.
So I cut it all off. All of it. Even the sex.
Sober and celibate, everything felt different.
“Are you fucking that woman, Johnny?” Serena asks, her voice scathing. She’s losing her high. “Did you come here and start fucking again? Fucking her?”
“That’s none of your business.”
SMACK.
Stinging rips through my cheek as she slaps me, hard, my head jarring. I take a step back, moving away from her.
“I’m not doing this with you,” I say as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Call Cliff. He’s probably worried.”
I start to walk away, to head for the apartment, when she calls out to me, her voice cracking. “Wait, Johnny. Please.”
“Take care of yourself, Serena.”
I stall in front of the apartment and look down at the discarded dandelions, ripped to pieces. Sighing, I glance behind me and find the parking lot empty, Serena gone.
I feel like an asshole.
I can’t get anything right.
Strolling over to the patch of grass, I pluck a single dandelion from the ground. I’m grateful to find the apartment unlocked. Kennedy lingers right inside and eyes me warily.
I glance around.
I don’t see Madison.
“She’s in her room,” Kennedy says.
I head that way, finding her sitting on the edge of her bed, swinging her legs as she picks off the polish on her little fingernails. I stall when I glance in the trashcan beside the desk in her room. Usually full of paper from discarded drawings, I see a familiar doll on top. Maryanne. She threw her away.