CLEMMY
Patrick grips my waist and gently pulls me into his body. His body is tense and I can tell that he’s making it known to the stranger standing on my front porch that I’m taken by him. Normally I’d be pissed at the show of superiority and possessiveness, but I actually appreciate it because I don’t know what to do, say, or think right now.
“Robbie.” Patrick greets him with just his name. No extra pleasantries needed. The look on Robbie’s face is one part confused and another part pissed off.
“I guess this is rather unexpected,” Robbie says with a slight influx in his voice and a small smirk.
“What are you doing here, Robbie?” I finally speak up and ask again. “And how did you know where I live? Oh god, you didn’t go by the ranch or anything, did you?” My heart is beating out of my chest and for a second I’m concerned that I might be experiencing a heart attack. Heart issues run in my family, so what might be a joke for some people is a rather serious condition for me. I take my free hand and grasp it over my chest, thinking that my hand will somehow calm my stressed-out heart.
“No, Jesus of course not. I guess if I had to I would have in order to talk to you, but I actually met this really nice lady at the diner and she said you lived over here by the park in a house with a red door.” He glances over at the bright red door that I’m holding open. “Super cute, by the way.”
“God, Robbie can you please answer my question? You can’t just waltz up to my house after all these damn years and not expect questions. Jesus, where have you been?”
“Around.” Just a one-word answer and it just pisses me off. I grab the door and start to slam it shut in his face, but he takes two quick steps forward and places his large hand on the door to keep it from closing. Patrick moves in front of me and uses his arm to move me behind him.
“It’s time for you to leave, Robbie.” Patrick stands as tall as he can, but Robbie still is taller than him. He’s also a lot bigger. He was always built, but he doesn’t look like the eighteen-year-old that I once knew. He looks like a full-grown man now and he is intimidating to say the least.
“I didn’t come here to talk to you, Patrick. I need to talk to Clementine. Please, just, ten minutes, and I swear I’ll leave.”
I place my hand on Patrick’s shoulder and gently pull him away from the door. We turn and walk into the house, Robbie trailing behind us after he closes the door. Sitting down seems too casual, so I stay standing, and in turn, both guys continue to stand.
“Ten minutes, Robbie.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry can we talk about this?” Robbie points back and forth between Patrick and I.
“You lost the right to talk about my dating life the day that you walked out of my life. Do you know how long it took me to recover emotionally and mentally? How hurt I was? How could you, Robbie? After everything we had been through and all the times you told me you loved me. You just….you just left me to be, how could you?”
I’ve fantasized about this moment many times in my life, but my emotions get the best of me and I end up just screaming and in tears more than making sense and saying all of the things that I really want to say. Robbie just looks at me like a deer in headlights.
“I messed up, Clementine. I know that. I should have at least told you that I had to end it. I just didn’t know how.”
“So you were a fucking coward instead?” I spit out with the venom of a million snakes.
Robbie’s head hangs low and he doesn’t even attempt to make eye contact with me. “Yeah. I was.”
“Well, at least you admit it. Why are you even here? I always thought this was the last place you’d ever want to be. Your parents don’t live here anymore, so I know you aren’t here to see them.”
He looks to Patrick, “Did you not tell her about Coach Perkins?”
“Of course I know about Coach Perkins!” I throw my hands up in the air. “Everybody knows about Coach Perkins, the question is how do you know?”
“Eli sent a message to the group text about it. He was pretty dead set on us coming back for the funeral and maybe have a little reunion while we were at it. Of course, he didn’t mention this,” Once again pointing between Patrick and me, “so I’m guessing you didn’t tell him either?”
“What group text?” I look at Patrick and he almost flinches back, so I look back at Robbie. “What group text?”
“The group text that Eli started after I ran into him a few years ago.”
“A few years ago?” My voice becomes a whisper and I look back at Patrick. “You’re in a group text with Robbie?”
“It’s just a text thing here and there. Nothing big, I totally forgot Robbie was even in it because he never responds.”
I hold my hand up and open my mouth, only to close my mouth again to figure out what the hell I was going to say to Patrick. The only question I could think of was the last question in the world that I wanted to ask him. “Are you telling me that the entire time we’ve been dating, you’ve had Robbie’s phone number in a group text?”
My eyes bore down on Patrick, praying and wishing that the answer he gave me wasn’t the answer that I felt in my gut. He began to open his mouth to answer when my front door busted open once again and my dad stood with Vivienne in his arms. The entire thing happened so quickly, I could even process it. He dropped Vivi onto her feet and made a beeline for Robbie. The look in my dad’s eyes was a crazed one that I have only seen a few times in my life. I found myself lunging for my dad, but Patrick’s arms wrapped around my waist and I couldn’t move.
It all happened in slow motion, Vivi was yelling for her grandpa, I was screaming my dad’s name, Robbie had his hands up in a defensive state and my dad’s fist hurled into Robbie’s jaw, dropping him right to the ground like a bag of potatoes.
“ROBBIE!” I exclaimed as I pulled out of Patrick’s grip and dropped to the ground next to Robbie. The bruise on his jawline is already forming and he is passed out on my living room floor. “Dad, how could you?”
“That fucker deserves more than just a punch to the face if you ask me. What the fuck is he even doing here, Clem?”
“That is none of your business, that is between the two of us. That doesn’t give you the right to barge into my house and punch somebody.” My head hurts and something snaps and I realize that Vivi is tucked into the couch cushions, barely peeking her head up to look at us. I climb off the ground and run to my daughter, pulling her into a hug.
“Did Grandpa hit a bad guy, Mommy?”
I reply “no” at the same time my dad replies, “yes” which accomplishes nothing to cure her udder confusion. “Grandpa was trying to look out for me, but it’s okay, sweetheart, everybody is safe here. How about you go to your room and play with your toys while Mommy talks to the adults, okay?”
She nods her head and begins to walk down the hallway to her room. I storm over to my dad and push my finger into his chest, “YOU need to go in with your granddaughter and make sure that she’s not freaking the hell out and you especially need to keep your fists to yourself.”
“He’s no good, Clemmy. You know this.”
“You don’t get to decide that. Regardless of how you feel about Robbie, that is her father and now her first introduction to her dad is this,” I motion my arms around the room. “How do I explain this to her?”
My dad scoffs off down the hallway behind Vivienne and I turn around and focus my attention back on the third and final guy in this house that I’m having strong negative feelings towards. I grabbed Patrick’s arm and pulled him through the swinging door into the kitchen and grip the back of my neck as I try to find the words to form the questions I have.
“Clem, sweetheart, let’s just take some time to calm down. A lot has happened in a short period of time and I think it would be best if we just…”
“Shut up, Patrick,” I interrupt him.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m so angry that I can’t think, but if you think I’m waiting for another second to get to the bottom of this, then you’re highly mistaken. Please, Patrick, please tell me that you didn’t actually have Robbie’s contact information this entire time.”
Patrick reaches out to try and touch me, but I take a step back. “Clem, it’s a little more complicated than that.”
“No, this is a yes or no question. Did you have Robbie’s number?”
“Fine, yes, I had Robbie’s number.”
“How could you?” I question him and cry at the same time.
“Because he didn’t deserve you two. He walked away from you. He ignored you when you needed him the most. Why did you need him when I was standing right in front of you? He was out doing his own shit and he didn’t care about this town, this life, or any of it.”
“That wasn’t your choice to make. It was my choice! How many nights did I pour my heart out to you over missing Robbie and hating that he was missing out on Vivi’s life? That entire time you had his number in your phone and I could have called him.”
“He didn’t deserve that call!”
“Not your choice!” I raise my voice a bit higher than I intend, but the fact that Patrick somehow thinks he controls this situation is making him angrier at him than the other two assholes I’m dealing with. He tries once more to reach for me, but I swat his hand away. “I think you should go.”
“Clemmy, come on,” he begs me.
“No, I can’t handle this right now, Patrick. You were dishonest with me and I’m not sure how to deal with this right now and so I think the best thing for you to do right now is go.”
“I didn’t lie to you, Clem.”
“Do not get into semantics with me. You don’t need to lie to be dishonest. Your silence and inaction were dishonest enough. It doesn’t matter how you try to spin this, you were so much in the wrong. Two years, Patrick, two years you kept this from me. That’s….I don’t know, I can’t process it right now.”
As he walks back through the house and out the front door, I follow close behind him. He stops at the door and turns back around, “I love you, Clem. I know that I kept something for you, but I did it to protect you. Just remember that.”
When I didn’t reply to him, he turned and left. I softly closed the door behind him and turned around to lean against it. So frustrated with everything, I softly knocked my head back against the door a couple of times. My eyes popped open once again when I remembered that Robbie was still in the house. I turned into the living room and didn’t see him on the ground, but then quickly realized he was standing in front of the collage of pictures that I had hanging on the wall.
I walked over to him, keep my distance, but getting closer and softly whispered his name, “Robbie…”
He slowly turned around and in his hands was one of Vivienne’s newborn photos. He moved his finger across the birthdate on the image and then looked at me with heartbreak on his face. “I have a daughter?”