What Happens in the Dark

Chapter Two

I woke to early sunlight peeking through the curtains of my childhood room. My body was sore from the previous night's activities and I stretched like a cat, enjoying the soreness that pulled in my core and on my abused nipples. Blinking my eyes repeatedly against the harsh rays, I sat up languidly and swung my legs over the bed.

My old room was the same as it had been since I left for college two years ago, filled with soft, light, dark, heavy blues. Of course, I had made short visits since then, but nothing approaching even close to this extended summer stay.

I had originally planned on hanging out with my friend Genevieve for the better part of the summer, at her family's beach house in California, a state I had yet to visit in my wild traveling desire. I say my desire, but it was mostly my dad's, for he bought a school bus only two months after he and my mother divorced and renovated it into a tiny house for himself and the girlfriend he had apparently been fucking for years before my mother found out, to travel full time.

I would spend a month out of my summers with him during my late middle school years and well into my high school years, and we would constantly be on the road going from place to place, state to state, to see all the sights and visit all the diners he could find on the map. My father was an older man, who hated GPS's with a passion. He was much more of a find it on a paper map and do it the old fashioned way kind of guy. That was only one of the differences between him and his much younger girlfriend.

It wasn't like in the movies. Me and his girlfriend, Harper, got along just fine, because even though she had been sleeping with my dad long before my parent's divorce, I knew that their marriage had been over even longer before that. I was a huge factor in them staying together apparently, but eventually I couldn't take the fighting and said to hell with it and sat them down to tell them that I'd rather they be happy and separate than not happy at all and stay together. The way I saw it, I was going to get the best of both worlds anyway. My dad was the free bird of the two, always wanting to be on the move. I knew staying in my home town for years on end ate at him, and yeah, it ate at me too, seeing as I was always begging him to take me on his out of town business trips.

Later in life I knew why he didn't take me with him most of the time, having a mistress and all, but I still loved it when he did take me.

My mother was the more grounded of the two. She had always been more family oriented than fun, seeking stability more than anything in the world. This was great for me during school and when I wanted to just chill for the foreseeable future, but it wasn't like being with my dad, who made everything more fun. Don't get me wrong, though. I adore my mother and there isn't a damn thing I wouldn't do for her.

Well, I can think of one, but I'll get to that in a minute.

It wasn't until my mother remarried two years after divorcing my father did she become more open to the better things in life, like taking a vacation, or hell, staying out past nine o'clock at night on a weekday. Her new husband, Gerrard, was a man who liked to do things. He reminded me of my father in some ways, but not with the caged bird personality of someone staying resolute for months at a time. He liked his fair share of travel, but it was more of an extravagance than a year round thing. He liked to go out for dinner often and treat my mother like she's a queen who deserves to have her feet kissed everywhere she goes.

I'd never seen my parents as happy as they are now with different people, and that was really all that mattered to me. Being an only child, I didn't care much for being the reason the two most important people in my life were staying in a loveless marriage. That's why I shall never regret sitting them down and basically telling them to get their heads out of their asses and start living for themselves instead of me. I was a fully capable person, after all.