The answer didn’t surprise me, Patrice had never been unfair. But there was something there. Tonight had been the second time he’d ever mentioned his father. Once again he’d made it very clear that there was no love lost there. And there was so much hurt in those fierce eyes whenever he looked at me and told me his secrets. The need to show me he wasn’t ashamed of who he was. I remained quiet, hoping he’d feel safe enough in this small haven we’d made, to tell me more. To finally let me see some of his scars, like I’d let him see mine.

“I know what it’s like to feel responsible for the actions of your father, and yet know you’re helpless to make him change.”

I moved so I could lay on top of him, my head on his chest and his legs spread wide, holding me between them. I turned so I could kiss him, my lips brushing the spot where his Haitian-American heart tattoo was.

I nodded and tried to respond as honestly as I could. “I wish I could just walk away, but there’s my sister, my grandfather, family obligations. I feel like turning my back on them after they gave me so much, would be ungrateful.” He brought his hands down then and ran them across my back, and if you took away the fucked-up conversation topic, it was pretty perfect.

“My mother always tells me to be grateful. To think that my father could’ve been like a lot of other wealthy men who father children they have no intention of taking responsibility for. That at least he helped us get out of Haiti. Helped me with school.” His voice was hard and his hands, which had been so gentle on me a moment before, stopped moving. “As if every cent that my father gave us, my mother didn’t pay for tenfold. As if she didn’t have to humiliate herself many times over.”

I tightened my arms around him as much as I could, wanting to let him talk, but also needing to comfort him. Because I knew this was not something he shared very often.

He let out a long exhale before he spoke, and when he did his voice was almost detached. “The last time I saw my father I was a junior in high school. He came to New York with his family for Christmas, and somehow sent my mother word of where he was staying.”

I tried to use the most soothing voice I could manage when I spoke. “Was that the first time you saw him since you’d left Haiti?”