When Love Goes Well...

Chapter 11

That night Michael came to my house, much to my forecasting. What I was certain of was that Michael Gregory wasn't going to let go of the astounding detail that he had a son, whom he had once thought to be dead. I had wanted him to suffer from selective amnesia, but that concluded the last straw as to how I was fooling myself by creating preposterous make-believe stories. But somewhere deep down, a dark side of me wanted Michael to be aware of the power that I had in me, the power to keep him from his flesh and blood, because I sure as hell wasn't going to let him see Malcolm as long as I lived. He could play House with my son over my dead body.

"What is it that you want?" I asked brusquely, clearly noticing how exhausted he appeared to be standing on my doorstep.

For the hundredth time, I perceived how he looked like he wanted to cry me a river, and not sarcastically. He literally seemed devoured by thorough melancholy. "I want to see Malcolm." He replied.

With steely resolve, I closed the main door behind me and stared at Michael sternly. "Not happening!"

"Don't take this from me, Georgia. Hate me all you want but..."

"This has nothing to do with hate!" Antagonism beseeched me at his accusing words and I spoke with annoyance in my voice. "This has to do with how you don't actually love Malcolm. How you never wanted him in the first place. I don't even know why you care all of a sudden."

"Because I do care! I care about him and if you knew why I left you six years ago..."

"I don't want to know about why you broke up with me all that time ago. I don't even care, Michael. You're not that important in my life anymore the way you used to be." That was a big fat lie. I definitely cared about why he'd made it his sole mission to evict me out of his life of leisure. I wanted to know with all my heart, but letting him know the same would be like treason, which I had no intentions of committing.

He vomited out a chuckle which contained no humour at all. "You don't possibly hate me that much, do you?"

"You have no idea, do you?" A derisive smile crept up my lips as I watched him rowing a sinking boat. "I never wanted to take this P.A. job. I took it because of Malcolm and because I was broke at that time. Still am! This job is my necessity, but tolerating your antics and melodrama is most certainly not. So why don't you just get off of my property right now?"

I might as well have accused him of murder right then and he would've looked the same, devastated and floundering to stand lucidly on his feet. The girl from six years ago would've sympathised with him, felt the worst for being incredibly ruthless to the person who was once the love of her life. But I wasn't that girl anymore. I was a single mother, who'd changed because she had had to shoulder a mountain of responsibilities all of a sudden, at a tender age, without any prior notice. The struggling man in front of me had changed my personality from top to bottom. I couldn't say that I didn't like the new me, but the old me was better by a long shot.

"When did you get so bitter?" He queried after a moment's silence.

"Tell you what! Take responsibility of a child at the age of nineteen all by yourself and then we'll talk. Oh wait! Those days are long gone and I didn't see you shouldering any responsibility of your son when you were that age. You were too busy banging other chicks in London!" That had to imprint a lasting mark on his tainted conscience, I thought with a superficial sweet smile. I was right, because my biting words shut up his mouth within seconds. However, I found him staring massive hole through my entire face. By some means, I knew that he felt like I had deceived him. He might also have been feeling like strangling me for all I knew, but I wanted him to pay at the end of the day. Maybe I'd let him near Malcolm someday, but that day would not come any sooner. Not until I'd see him rot in a bottomless puddle of desolation.