30 Days To Fall In Love

Day Nineteen - Jake

Day Nineteen

***Jake***

Midday came and went and Dad wasn’t here. He said he’d be here at eleven. I wanted to laugh at Mum and tell her it was a stupid idea for her to even have invited him, but she was sat in the living room looking heartbroken.

She and Sapphire were sat on the same sofa but perched at two opposite ends, their posture perfect and their backs rigid. It was the first time I’d looked at them and seen a true likeness in them. There was something similar about the two of them, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it was the curve of their lips, the tip of their noses, their necks...

Animatedly, I looked at my watch, feigning surprise, “Oh! Isn’t he here yet? I thought he was meant to be here an hour ago...”

Mum stared at me, “He was always bad at time-keeping.” I wondered if it was true and if it was just another fact I didn’t know about my own father or if she was just saying it to reassure herself.

A silence swallowed up the house, dimming the lights and our hope with it.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Sapphire and Mum leapt off the sofa and to the door, scrambling around to find the key in desperation. It was like they were worried he’d leave if they didn’t answer soon enough.

“Hello,” Mum breathed as the door swung open. Sapphire burst into tears.

I couldn’t see anything; I was still rooted to the same spot in the living room. There was nothing all that exciting about going to see him, if I was honest. No. That wasn’t honest, that was a lie. I wanted to see him - I’d wanted nothing more for ages. But it’d been years. A few seconds more to prepare myself wouldn’t hurt... Was it even possible to be prepared for something like this?

“Jake,” a male voice, an unfamiliar voice, said. It was from behind me. This was it.

I turned around slowly, expecting to see the same man in the photographs, the one that blurred in the back of my memory, strumming a guitar to a tiny boy. He looked so different.

“Hi...Dad...” I said, stressing the ‘dad’ as I still wasn’t sure if it was him. It had been a few years, sure, but I hadn’t expected him to look so...old.

Long gone was his clean shaven face - it had been replaced by grey-blonde stubble. His eyes were surrounded by faded lines and his hair was greyed and receding.

“You look so much older!” Dad said, shaking his head in amazement.

I wanted to add ‘so do you!’ but decided against it.

“Well, it has been a million years since you last saw me,” I said. It was meant to come out as a joke, but it just sounded harsh.

He looked down at his feet and his hands found the pockets of his jeans.

Sapphire slinked into the room, hugging Dad tightly like it was the most natural thing in the world, “I missed you, Daddy.”

Daddy? What was she? Five?

“We all missed you,” Mum nodded.

I waited for him to say that he missed us too, but he didn’t.

“So, why’d you come back?” I asked, deciding to avoid the other question niggling at the back of my mind: why did you really go?

He shrugged and wandered back out into the corridor, “Who’s going to give me the big tour?”

Why was he acting so normal and so much like a stranger at the same time?