07 | BLACK HOLE
a region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation can escape.
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WHEN I WAS A KID, Dad and I used to go out into the backyard and see how many stars we could spot through the city's light pollution. Our neighbourhood was quiet and dim, so sometimes when it was really clear, we could even find Mars.
The tradition dampened as I got older. Kids grow up and find "better things" to do than hang out with their parents, and it didn't take long after twelve for me to start chasing boys with Luna. But I remember the last time Dad and I stood in the backyard together; I was eleven, the age childlike dreams become eclipsed by questions like What is time? What is life? Why am I here?
Cool, damp spring air had surrounded me, and there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. Dad had a beer in his hand. He's always been the type of person who can just have one. Of course, I hadn't discovered booze. Not yet.
"Someone in class told me that aliens aren't real," I told him.
Dad squinted at the moonlight beneath the rim of his baseball hat as if it were as bright as the sun. "Well, I don't believe that, do you? If every star is a sun just like ours, don't you think it's likely there would be other planets like ours?"
"That's what I told her!" I exclaimed. Of course I was quoting what he'd said to me so many times. To me, Dad was the smartest person in the world.
"But you know," Dad went on, "just because we can see a star in the night sky, that doesn't necessarily mean it's still there."
"What do you mean?"
"Well nothing travels faster than the speed of light, yet it still takes eight minutes and twenty seconds for the Sun to reach Earth. Our next closest star is Proxima Centauri, and it takes four years to reach us."
"Four years?" I gasped.
"Yep. And every other star we see is even farther, some of them millions and millions of lightyears away, so that means they could already be long dead by the time we decide to map them as a constellation."
My chest sank. All the other worlds I liked to dream about suddenly vanished. "Oh, but that's sad."
"I don't think it's sad. It just means it's possible, in at least one way, to look into the past."
"So it's like time travel?" I said, clinging to hope that the planets I envisioned were still alive.
He laughed and sipped his beer. "No, not quite like that. Well, maybe a little."
I laughed with him, but the smile slowly melted off my face. Sure, it was fun to dream about other planets, but a lot of the time when I looked up at the stars, I also wondered if my mother was looking up at them too, here on Earth. Not Donna—Donna was inside watching Real Housewives. I was thinking about Trudy.
Dad had told me about my birth mother, but I'd only ever seen one picture of her from when she was eighteen. She'd worn a nice white dress and smiled at the camera with her caramel hair straight and silky like mine, so it was easy to fabricate images of what kind of person she was based off that. I imagined she was just like me, fascinated with the stars. I imagined we had so much in common, and we'd get along great if we knew each other.
I had no idea the parts of Trudy that really existed within me until I discovered booze and partying a few years later.
And I didn't know that night would be one of the last nights things between Dad and I would ever feel normal.
* * *
I wait on the side of the road by the gas station for Dad to pick me up, leaning my palms back on the damp grass. It's taken more time for my tears to dry than it has for this side of Earth to rotate away from the Sun's gaze, and now stars emerge through the lilac twilight above my head.
How the hell didn't I see this coming? This is what Trudy does. I'm such an idiot.
Truth is, I'm not even hurt or surprised, just disappointed in myself. Trudy was able to weasel into my life last time just like this. Acting like she cares, then she's gone with the wind.
Wiping my eyes with my bare wrists, I check my phone.
Luna: You called your dad??? What'd he say?
Me: Just that he's on his way. So he's prob pissed
Luna: Yikes :| offer still stands, I'll pay for your cab home if you need
Me: No, don't worry. Save your cash so we can still go out later. I need to get drunk after this. I'll deal with my dad.
Luna: Okay babe. We're getting wasted tonight no matter what. Fuck Trudy!!!
And that's the only thing that makes me feel better. In a few hours I'll be at a bar, buzzing to good music, drinking until I'm happy as fuck. Yeah, that sounds nice.
But the darker the sky gets, the more regret curdles inside me. Facing Dad after I screwed up is never easy. I can already feel his judgements.
When his pine green hatchback appears up the road, my chest tightens. I take a deep breath and stand. Dust sprays from beneath the wheels as he parks so fast the car jerks forward. Even the way he rolls down the window is pissed.
Shit.
Dad sits behind the wheel, and the moonlight gleams off his glasses. His dull brown hair is unkempt, his blue eyes are tired, and he forgot to change out of his checkered pajama shirt before he left the house. "Aria. Get in."
I do.
Textbooks and folders of his students' coursework are piled into the backseat. Silence and the familiar, papery smell of Dad's car engulf me. As soon as my door shuts, he starts driving. I sink into the plush seat. Every short, irate breath he makes, every erratic motion of the car, tells me he is fuming.
"For Christ's sake, Aria," he eventually says. "I keep waiting for you to grow up, but it feels like nothing ever changes. I can smell the alcohol on you. You could've stayed for dinner last night, but instead you went to the bars again, didn't you?"
My nails dig into my palms. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Because it impairs your judgement. I told you not to trust your mother. I told you to stay away."
"She wasn't going to stop coming around. I didn't know what else to do."
"You should know better than this by now."
"She's fucked you over before too, Dad."
"Yes, she has, but I learned. How many times have you let her in? Even after you promised you never would again?"
I can't believe him. Okay, I can. Because he always blames me. "Why are you so mad? She stole from me!"
"Because I thought you were smarter than this!"
I clench my teeth so hard my gums hurt. Anger coagulates in my veins, hot and bubbling. "It has nothing to do with being smart. She's my mother. I wanted—I don't know what I wanted. But you're in no place to judge me for giving her a chance—you're the one who knocked her ass up in the first place."
Dad's eyebrow twitches, but he says nothing as he drives. The tension simmers between us, both of us pissed off as hell. Cool air fans out from the AC, and light pollution camouflages the sky the closer we get to town.
Eventually, Dad says, "What are you doing with your life, Aria? It's a serious question."
Whenever we fight, it always goes here. But I've had a hell of a weekend, and Dad doesn't need to know about what happened with Ryan at The Inlet. I'm tired. My bottom lip trembles, but I won't cry in front of him. He already thinks I'm weak.
"Why do you even care? You kicked me out when I was seventeen."
"You pushed us to that point. And it was years ago. You said yourself we should try to move past it."
My eyes burn. I've heard that trauma freezes you. Maybe that's why I haven't moved on; maybe that's why even though I'm an adult, some days I still feel like that same immature kid he and Donna kicked to the curb because I refused to obey their rules.
"I got promoted to assistant manager at work," I say and try to sound confident even though it's such a pathetic accomplishment in his eyes. "I am doing shit with my life." I'm getting by.
"You could've gone to college," Dad says. "We had an education fund saved up for you, but you barely graduated high school."
"School isn't for everyone."
I used to want so badly to grow up and be an astronomer—hell, maybe even an astronaut. But as a teenager I quickly realized you have to be really god damn smart to get into a field like that. I can remember all kinds of facts about the stars, but astrophysics? That's a whole different ball game.
I don't know what I want to do with my life. I'm taking it one day at a time, just trying to survive. And normally I'm okay with that—except for when Dad judges me. Then I become small, stupid, and worthless.
"There's this girl in my program, and she reminds me so much of you," Dad says, and my anger flares up like a volcano. I try to keep it in as I listen. "She loves astronomy, but decided to get into meteorology instead because she felt it promised a better career. You could do something like that. Doesn't have to be scientific, it could be anything. Just something that lands you a job."
My blood boils at the image of this perfect college girl who Dad probably wishes was me. "Great. Cool. Comparing me to some random girl I don't know. Real nice, Dad."
Dad stays quiet. Eyes stinging, I think about what Ryan said to me at the hospital. His casual optimism, his kindness about my job. "At least you're making money."
"Not everyone in the world is judgemental like you and Donna, Dad," I say, my voice quiet and resentful. "Some people get that it takes time. Just because I'm not in school, or I don't have a really good job yet—that doesn't make me some loser. I just haven't figured out what I can do yet."
Not sure how I can say these words and mean them yet inside, I still do feel like a loser. Probably because Dad's judgements are leaking out of his pores and drowning me. I can feel what he's feeling—sense what he's thinking.
Your life is going nowhere.
Before I even realize it, we've pulled up in front of my place. Dad parks the car and sighs. "You don't need to get an education, Aria, but you need to do something with your life other than waste it drinking. I'm not trying to personally attack you, but you need to start thinking about your future. Otherwise, you're going to end up just like your mother."
My heart jerks against my ribcage. "She's a horrible person, Dad! How could you think I'd end up like her?" I get out of the car and slam the door shut, but look at him through the open window. "All I wanted was for you to at least try to understand what I went through today. I didn't ask for a lecture. I just wanted you to—I don't know—be a parent."
Dad pauses. He takes off his glasses and rubs his eye with an exhausted sigh. "This is me being a parent, Aria. I want you to succeed in life. And I've tried to teach you not to trust people like Trudy because you and I both know that once upon a time, I trusted her, and it was the biggest mistake—"
He stops himself, but the damage is already done. A cluster of emotions build inside my chest until I'm so mad and hurt that I turn numb.
"Your biggest mistake, huh? Yeah, you're right. Trudy was a mistake."
"Aria, wait, I didn't mean—"
"Yeah, Dad, you did."
It isn't the first time he's said that word when describing my mother, and it isn't the first time I've felt it directed at me, whether he intended to or not. Because when it comes to Dad's past, Trudy and I are one in the same.
Still, it's a knife through my heart. I don't want to shout at him; I've learned from experience it only makes things worse. But I want him to hurt the same way he's hurt me. Damn right he deserves it, so I say, "You know, you were in your thirties when you knocked-up some eighteen-year-old stripper, so are you really in a place to judge me for the choices I make at twenty-one? I don't need to remind you how you ended up with her in the first place, Dad. Maybe you think you're helping when you chastise me, but it only makes it clear that when you look at me, you see her. Your biggest fucking mistake."
I wait for him to say something—anything—but he just stares at me for a long, hard moment before he looks at his lap. I can't tell what he's thinking, but the shame is obvious in the way his blue eyes mist over like they always do when he messes up. But I don't want him to just sit there like he's been kicked; I want him to tell me I'm wrong, tell me I'm not a mistake.
But he'll never say that, because it wouldn't be true.
"Nothing, eh?" I say. Tears sting my eyes again, so I scoff and shake my head. "Forget it. Thanks for the ride."
I storm up to my house and don't look back, trying to appear stronger than I am. But inside, all I can think is that maybe Dad's right about everything.
Maybe by twenty-one, I should have everything in order, and maybe my life is nothing but a black hole; every opportunity I'm given is sucked into a vortex, ruined by my own self-sabotaging behaviour. Just like Trudy. And if I'll always be like this in his eyes, is there even a point in trying to change?
So as always, when I get inside, I do what I'm good at: I drink to forget.
* * *
A/N: Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little story arc about Aria and her family...
Do you feel like you know/understand her better as a person now?
Any questions about her past you're hoping to get more answers to?
Okay Ryan will be back in the next chap. :-D
Don't forget to vote if you're enjoying the story! <3