The rest of the day was a complete and utter fog for me. My parents would speak to me and I'd just grunt in response. Running into Mike at the store was the last person that I expected to run in to. He looked good, great even. That wasn't really the thing that bothered me in all of this. The fact that he was with and apparently had been with Megan this whole damn time blew my mind.
"Dee, what in the world is on your mind?" My father's snappy tone make me blink quickly and look over at him.
"I'm sorry, Dad. I saw Mike at the store earlier. It just threw me off." I smiled lightly at him and he smiled back apologetically. My dad knew what had happened to me on my prom night but had never asked me or bothered me about it, unlike my mother. She asked me daily for over a week about it and I had to blow up at her one night at the dinner table in order for her to finally stop asking me about it.
"You know I talked to him a few months back. He actually apologized to me for your prom night." My eyes grew twice their normal size as my head snapped in his direction.
"He what? What did you say?" My heart was pounding so loud I didn't doubt that my father could hear it. My hands were sweating and I moved to sit on the couch next to him.
"It's not nearly as exciting as your thinking. I played it off as if I had no idea what he was talking about. He said to tell you he was sorry the next time I spoke to you but I remembered your face from that night and didn't feel like actually saying anything in return." He paused a moment and finally looked down at me. "I didn't think you'd care after all this time."
Damn my father and his carefree ways. He knew damn well I cared.
"Are you- How could you?" I stopped my sputtering and took a deep breath, readjusting myself away from my father. Man he could be so exasperating sometimes.
"Daviny, why would you even care about someone who hurt you so badly?" There was a tenderness in my father's voice that made me sign.
"It's because of what he did, Daddy and how he hurt me that I care. Mike was important to me once upon a time and I'd like to know he has been miserable all these years without me, not happy with the tramp who he cheated on me with." As I spoke my words sounded angrier and loud. My father's confused look changed to confusion as he listened.
"Baby, Mike isn't-" I held my hand up to stop him and a second later I was on my feet.
"Please don't defend him, Daddy. If you take his side in all of this after all these years I don't think I'll be able to live with myself. I'm going to lay down." I walked up to my childhood room with the same feelings I had all those years ago on my prom night. How in the world I allowed Mike back into my head was beyond me but I wasn't going to let him occupy one more moment of my mind or time.
As I laid in bed that night I couldn't fall asleep. The thing that kept running through my mind was Mike's face all those days after prom as he tried to talk to me. He'd try to corner me at school, even coming into the girls bathroom to try and talk to me. I'd finally broken down and spoke more than two words to him and said that I couldn't take the lies anymore and if he wanted someone else that he could go. I wasn't going to stand in his way. Mike came by my house after that and tried to talk to me again but my mother ran him off, telling him he should be ashamed of himself.
I took a deep breath and decided that I needed to talk a walk or something to calm myself down. It was only after eleven in the evening and I was a grown woman. I could go out after dark if I wanted to.
I threw the covers off me and got out of bed quickly. I searched my suitcase for jeans and a sweater, then tip-toed down the stairs so I didn't wake my paranoid mother.
