Holding On To Happy | ✔

11. Admit It

My fork poked at the waffles on my plate. The waffles I couldn't eat because my appetite was gone. When I woke up this morning my resentment towards Dad still boiled inside me. He made it even worse with these apology waffles. This is not how his waffles are supposed to be used.

Looking up from my breakfast I catch Dad peering over his newspaper at me. His brow furrowed as he frowned at my untouched food.

"I thought you would've grown out of that by now," he remarked. "You need to eat something."

Pushing my plate away from me, I glared at him, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because," he started, folding up the paper and setting it aside. "Keisha wanted to share the news. You would have known sooner if you weren't being so difficult."

"I don't like her," I spoke slowly to make sure he didn't miss a single syllable. "What's so difficult about that?"

"Mia," he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Did you cheat on mom?" I blurted out. The question had been burning at the back of my mind since Jasmine brought it up.

"Of course not," he replied. "Why would you think that?"

"You got remarried, like, two months after the divorce."

"I didn't-" he took a deep breath, exhaling before continuing. "Our marriage fell apart long before we decided to get a divorce."

"But you were in love, you should have fought to stay together."

"We did," he retorted. "We tried to work it out for months. We even tried marriage counseling."

I scoffed, "So, you just gave up?"

"There was nothing to give up on," he said solemnly. "We weren't in love anymore."

"How can you just fall out of love with someone?"

He silently thought about my question before he shrugged, "We grew apart. Wanted different things. It happens."

I sulked back into my chair, nothing he said made any sense to me. How can someone wake up on morning and no longer be in love with someone they've been with for so long? How could anyone voluntarily give up the comfort of their own little world and start all over again? The thought scared me to death. So many things could go wrong entering the unknown.

"Mia, I know the divorce was hard for you," he acknowledged. "But your mom and I are better for it. I have Keisha and your mom has Shawn. We're happier apart than we were in the last few years of our marriage."

"Wait," I looked up at him. "You know about Shawn?"

"Yeah," he chuckled. "You're mom and I still talk."

Of course. She'll talk to her ex-husband, but not her daughter.

"What could you two possibly talk about?"

His eyes narrowed as he ponders this, "You mostly," He replied nonchalantly and my eyes nearly popped out of my skull.

So, she talked about me, but not too me. That made perfect sense. Curiosity got the best of me and I had to ask, "What about me?"

He stole a piece of sausage from my plate before answering, "Well, recently she's mentioned that you've hanging around a boy." His brown eyes examined me intently and I broke under his stare, looking down at the patterned place mat on the table.

A burning blush crept up my neck as I thought about Calvin. He had to be the boy Mom told Dad about. Honestly, I didn't even realize that she noticed him around. Her random surge of parenting energy seemed to make sense now.