Conflicted; Camron felt conflicted and confused and completely unsure of everything happening around him. Why didn't he feel overwhelming sadness like his sister, who was sitting across the crowded and cramped living room while bawling into a distant cousin's shoulder, or anger like his younger brother who'd punched a hole into the wall of their mother's kitchen the night before; why was it so easy for him to feel absolutely nothing for his father?
Scanning his mother's living room, eyes glossing over the countless family members he hadn't seen in years as they mourned for a man they didn't know, he felt numb.
Would these people be so heartbroken if they'd known what he knew? What if they had saw what he'd saw growing up? The drunken, violent man coming home in the early hours of the morning; belligerent fist fights at the dinner table and the horrifying screaming matches in the middle of night. Would it be as crowded as it was? He doubted it.
"Daddy," Adelina's small voice woke him from his thoughts. "I don't want this."
Looking down, his daughter stood in front of him with her plate of Hangi held out for him to take from her. She was a picky eater and that was his fault; since the day she was born, he'd been bending over to cater to her every whim.
"Did you even try it?" He knew she didn't have to; just looking at it would've made her not want to eat it. The expression on her face only confirmed that.
"It smells," she whined, jerking the plate in his direction. "Please, Daddy, I don't want it."
Camron didn't have the energy to fight with her. It wasn't the time and it wasn't the place, so with a heavy sigh, he took the plate from his daughter and set it on the coffee table in front of him. It wasn't like he could be angry with her; she had never met any of Camron's family and now she was surrounded by all of these strangers, so he expected her to act a little uncomfortable.
"Why don't you go play with your cousins? They wanna get to know you," he nodded towards the group of kids playing loudly outside. Adelina watched them apprehensively through the open window. They were a little rougher around the edges compared to his daughter; dirty clothes and untamed hair, wild expressions on their Kool-Aid stained faces.
"I don't wanna get my dress dirty," she quipped quickly after witnessing one of the larger kids body-slam another. "Can I just sit with you?"
"Yeah," he sighed, patting the empty cushion next to him. She climbed onto the couch, scooting closer to her father's side before smoothing out the fabric of her black dress. The big bow in her hair matched her dress perfectly.
"How come we never seen these people before?" She was a little loud with her question, causing a few family members to glance over at the two of them. Camron glared back, silently daring one of them to say anything negative to—or about-- her.
"Well," he started, turning his attention back to his daughter. Her big brown eyes full of curiosity stared back up at him, waiting for his answer. "Daddy doesn't normally like to come around this side of the family too often. Sometimes your family can be not so good, you know?"
"No," her reply was simple, and he was grateful for that. In her world, her family consisted of just Rebecca and Camron; mommy and daddy. And they had tried their hardest to be for her what their parents had failed at being for them. "I like my family."
Camron's momentary feeling of pride vanished at the sound of his sister's scoffing. Glancing upward toward where his sister sat across the room, surrounded by unfamiliar faces of familial ties, her glare cut right through. His expression mirrored hers; they had never been close, none of them had that strong sibling bond he'd heard so much about, but Camron and Mali were more like enemies than rivaling siblings. It'd been that way since he could remember.
"You got a problem?" It wasn't the time or the place for one of their infamous arguments, but Camron couldn't care less.
"Yeah," she snapped back, garnering looks from nearly everyone in the room. "Why the fuck are you here?"
He could feel his already thinning patience beginning to snap under the weight of her bullshit. The eyes of everyone in the living room stared at him, silently asking the same question.
"C'mon," he turned his attention to his daughter, who was staring up at him with those big brown eyes. "Let's go."
"There he goes," Mali shouted, shooting up out of the chair she was grieving in just moments before. "Running away like he always does."
"Shut the fuck up," his voice, deep and broken, shouted back. Standing from his place on his mother's uncomfortable, stained couch, Camron grabbed onto Adelina's hand before heading towards the front door to leave.
If it had just been him, he would've ripped into her right on the spot, but he had his daughter who was like a little sponge—soaking up everything that was happening around her—and the last thing he wanted was to subject her to the toxicity of his family. So, he bit his tongue as he damn near dragged her out of that house.
"Where the fuck are you going?" His younger brother, Kai, shouted from behind them as they stomped down the cracked and chipped brick steps. "You're just gonna fucking leave?"
Camron fought to stay quiet, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he nudged Adelina forward toward his beat-up truck. Swiftly, he swung the passenger door open and hoisted his daughter into the seat before buckling the seat belt around her. The sooner they could get away from this mess, the better.
"I'm fuckin' talking to you," he felt the palm of his brother's hand come into contact with his back, shoving him forward and into his daughter who let out a screech of fear.
Without saying a word, Camron spun around to face Kai; the look on his face was the spitting image of their father. He was angry and beyond broken, but Camron couldn't register any sympathy for his brother. The only thing he felt was red-hot anger.
"You don't get to run away this time," Kai spat at him, taking a step closer to his older brother. They were even in height, but Kai was a bit bulkier than Camron; their faces were nearly identical except for the scar on Kai's chin from a scuffle the brothers had years ago.
"Back the fuck up," Camron warned, not once flinching when Kai stepped even closer. Chest to chest, the brothers stared one another down as the guests of his father's funeral began to flood the yard around them.
"Where you gonna go? Back to that bitch; she's the one who kept you from us. Kept you fr-," before Kai could finish, Camron had wound his arm backwards before swinging and clocking his brother in the jaw.
Camron's mind went blank during the chaos; all of his frustrations and bottled up aggressions were released through the fight with his younger brother. With every swing of his fist, he envisioned his backstabbing best friend. Every time his brother's fist connected with his face, he felt the twang of pain from his girl's betrayal. It was the physical manifestation of how he'd been feeling and now that it was coming out, he didn't think it'd ever stop. One of them would've been dead if it weren't for the ear-shattering pop of a gun being shot into the air.
They fell backward onto their asses, shocked and confusion painting their nearly identical faces. The crowd of distant family members all turned toward the front porch, Camron and Kai's gazes following suit. There stood their mother, old black dress faded to a deep gray and clumpy mascara staining her cheeks from all the crying, with a shotgun in hand and a cigarette hanging out the side of her mouth.
"Y'all stop that bullshit," she shouted. "This is a fuckin' funeral and you two wanna make it all about yourselves. A shame!"
"Are you crazy?!" Camron screamed, jumping to his feet. "What if you had shot someone?!"
His mother was insane. There was just no other explanation other than that she was out of her mind.
Only then did he realize his daughter's cries. He was just following family traditions; traumatizing his kid before she even knew what trauma was.
"You get that baby out of that truck and y'all bring your asses back into the house," his mother continued on with no regard for her eldest son's questioning of her sanity. "We're not gonna turn this into a Jerry Springer special."
"A little too late for that," Kai muttered, hoisting himself off the ground and shooting a glare toward Camron.
God, he hated his family. He stood there, watching as everyone walked back into the house. He should've never come; what did his father ever do for him? A five-minute speech in prison and he was miraculously father of the year?
He kept his gaze low as he walked around his truck and climbed into the driver's seat. He couldn't even look at Adelina after that chaos. He'd tried so hard to keep that bullshit away from her-- that's why he never brought her around his family—and the first time she'd ever been around them she gets scarred for life.
"Daddy?" His heart squeezed and he looked over at his baby girl. Her big brown eyes, red from crying, stared up at him. "Can we go home?"
"Yeah," he cleared his throat, turning the key to start the ignition. His old, beat up truck rumbling and grumbling. "We're going home, Bug."
♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡ ♡♡
y'all lmao the semester has officially ended skjghkgh
idk how often imma update this so just hold onto ur wigs and be patient pls