Off Limits

47. I'm WHAT?

RILEY
GREENE

It's been an entire week since I've gotten drunk and I've yet to recover from it. I feel like I'm at my lowest point. The first two days, I couldn't even get out of bed. But I guess I have to if I said I'll show up and meet Daniel today. We're just meeting at a coffee shop to talk for a little, or at least until I start feeling like shit again.

As I stepped out of my car, everything rushed to my head. God, it felt like I was still drunk. It's been a week? What the hell? I nervously took a deep breath as a wave of anxiety swept over me. I'm a few steps from the coffee shop entrance and I felt a panic attack creep up on me. I haven't seen this man in YEARS, I mean, years. How am I supposed to look? Am I supposed to smile? Cry? What?

I gripped on the handle and swallowed before scanning the tables in the shop. Even though it's been such a long time, I spotted him out of the entire crowd. It's not like he changed, just got older. He nervously stood up out of his chair and watched me walk over to him. His face turned beet red as I scanned his appearance. He had a full grown, well-shaven beard that wrapped around his jaw. It matched my hair color and blue eyes. He crossed his large hands in front of his abdomen and smiled as I approached the table.

God, what am I even supposed to call him?

Our eyes met each other and I froze. Everything in my body stopped working as I hiccupped. "Thank you so much for this, Riley." He spoke with such a deep voice as he pushed my chair out for me to sit across from him. I remained silent. Joey was the one to push me to do this and I'm stuck.

Either way, he's not in my life anymore, so I need this for me. "I kept my promise."

When we sat down, we were both completely silent, pushing our lips together. I awkwardly glanced around the colorful shop and pushed words out, "Well, we should talk?"

He nervously swallowed the lump his throat. His eyes never left mine, "Uh, how are you doing today?"

I pushed out, "I've had better days. Not feeling too good."

"Why didn't you reschedule? I would've understood."

I relied, "You owe this to me."

"You're right." He nodded his head. "God, where do I start?"

I waited, feeling sick to my stomach. "Okay, um, when I met your mom, we were young and dumb. I wasn't always her first choice, but I loved her more than anything. We were both supposed to head to college right after high school, but she got pregnant. Of course we decided to keep you and it made me probably the happiest man alive. So, we both decided to wait for college and have you. I wasn't the most social or popular like she was and I don't even know why she chose me." He took a second to take a deep breath. "Well, after we had you, your mom got extremely depressed with her life. She wasn't where she wanted to be and I wanted to do everything I could to help her."

I cut him off. "How come I never knew that?"

"Maybe she didn't want to tell you what she was dealing with? She'd just lost her parents around the time you were born and she was going through a lot. She doesn't like talking about that stuff. Anyways, to make her happy, I told her that I'll stay at home and figure something out while she goes to school. We made an agreement. I wasn't happy about staying at home, but I would do anything to make you both happy. She went back to school and I dealt with it for years. Your mom kind of got aggressive and looked at me as if I was worthless. Like I couldn't do shit but watch my daughter and basically be a housewife. When she graduated from nursing school, I tried to go to school and she kept telling me how much she had to work and we couldn't afford a nanny at the time."