Fate Interrupted

21. Dad's Confession

"He told me not to, and I didn't want to disrupt what you had going on in New York," he says sincerely.

Somehow, that stings.

"How many times?" 

"I don't know..." he shrugs. "Maybe a dozen times over the years."

"A dozen? Oh my god!" I'm absolutely reeling from finding out my dad and Gio had a secret relationship.

"Don't be mad, honey. Life's been really tough for him sometimes, and he's missing someone, a father figure he can talk to," he explains with a pained look. "But tell me, how was he? Is he doing all right?"

"He seemed fine... well, sort of," I say the last part nearly under my breath, then begin to feel angry, "What do you know about him, Dad?"

"I don't know if it's my place to tell you."

"Dad, enough. Tell me."

He scratched his head nervously. "Well, like I said, just after you left, he went through a really... hard time. He was very depressed and was skipping school again—abusing drugs and alcohol. We got him through that, though."

"We?" 

"His mom and I," he discloses, his face calm and serious.

"What?!" My brain is exploding.

"Anyway, then years later, his mom died, as you know, and he was even worse than before. His sister called me one day on the phone for help. She said he trusted me. Your wedding was in a few weeks, I didn't want to say anything and you had so much going on. Anyway, your mom and I got him into counseling."

"MY MOM!"

I am beyond. What reality am I in right now?

"Honey, she's the psychologist. She knows about those things, not me. She has connections and knows stuff I don't. Believe me. It was not an easy decision to involve her."

"Wait, you got him into counseling? Like his job or..."

"No. To see a... psychologist. He wasn't leaving his house, honey. He... went on medication and regular therapy and seemed to be doing much better, but that was a few years ago. I haven't talked to him since."

I don't know what to say. I drop my head into my hands in absolute overwhelm. I start to go a bit numb.

"I'm sorry to tell you all this. Um, are you sure you won't see him again?"

"No," I manage to mumble, thinking of Gio's last words to me.

"Okay... um, but if you do ever talk to him again. Please be mindful that he might not have wanted me to share all that with you."

"Okay," I respond, my head still firmly planted in my hands.

This is all suddenly making more sense.

When Gio and I were together, he shared with me something traumatic that had happened to him when he was fifteen and had just moved back from LA. He had experienced a major form of depression, and he went on medication. But for the year-and-a-half we were together, he wasn't on any medication, and he was fine.

But it had been my worst fear, actually, that Gio would fall into depression again. Let his plans for college and his potential slip by him. I remind myself that he does have a good office job now and a fancy car. He can't be doing too badly, but this new information puts what he said over the phone in a new light.

"Damn it, Dad, I've always sorta worried about him, and that, and now I feel..." I didn't really want to finish that sentence once I knew where I was going with it.

"You feel what, honey?"

"Guilty."

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As I drive home, I just can't get my stomach to unknot itself from the awful empathy I feel. It's bringing back a familiar feeling. Deja Vu. Back to how I felt during my first few months at university.

When I arrived at school in New York, I didn't know anyone yet, and my roommate was always gone on the weekends with her boyfriend. I tried calling Gio a few times and wrote him some emails, but he never returned them. I felt utterly alone and adrift... questioning every choice I had made. He just completely cut me off... and it broke me up inside even more—as if he hadn't just a few short weeks ago been the one person who knew me the best in the entire world and who I still loved with all my soul.

My heart just kept crumpling in on itself, becoming tighter, heavier, and more painful with each reminder that he was out of my life for good.

For a while, I hid my pain as best I could. I answered my mom's questions cheerfully on the telephone and smiled and laughed with my roommate. Went to dorm events. But inevitably, when I found myself alone, I would cry so much that I hardly remember any specific moment...

Except... I do remember having my first full-fledged panic attack all alone in my dorm room about a month after I started college.

I didn't even know what it was then, and I was so scared. My eyes couldn't focus, a colossal invisible weight seemed to push on my chest, making it hard to breathe. It frightened me, and I thought my heart might never stop racing like that—like it might just wear itself out or even explode. I feared something was wrong with my body, and I might die right then, all alone. I called my mom, curled into a ball at the far corner of my dorm bed, in tears, frantic, begging her to get on a plane and come to get me. She talked me down. Stayed with me on the line till my heart rate finally came back to normal. The unexplained panic subsided a bit, and the pressure eased.

After that, they became a sporadic part of my life.

Gio never liked pictures taken of him, so I only had two to remind me what he actually looked like—I already felt like details in my brain were beginning to fade away. I kept a small wallet-sized school picture of him his mom gave me and one of us at prom tucked in with the many images I had drawn of him over the years in my favorite worn-out sketchbook. When I was alone on the weekend (which was often), I would get them out and stare at them—like I needed proof that he even existed and how good it felt when he looked at me.

Every guy I'd ever been together with always ended it before I was ready to—my first boyfriend, Ryder, then Gio, then my boyfriend in college, Justin, and most recently—Alex. I naively thought my marriage finally protected me from that—that I would do better than my parents.

It seemed to me that guys had some magic boy "love switch" they could just flick off and be over me. I believed that maybe girls just love harder than guys. That we are wired differently. Gio just flicked his off, and I was the one still hurting.

Had Gio really been a wreck over me? What's happened in his life over the last eleven years? Is he okay? I need to talk to him. How can I get him to see me again?

Maybe I'm thinking about all this way more than I should. 

Damn, I miss him, though.

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