“I don’t,” I answered, as though it was a simple statement when it was anything but. I wanted to believe I didn’t need him, that I didn’t desire his pride, but I knew it was deeper than that. I wanted to tell him the truth, that it was impossible to erase my thoughts of decades of time, but that doesn’t mean I hadn’t tried. My life would never be simple, but I did wonder how much better it would be if I didn’t worry about what my father thought of me.

Just as there had been with Rosie, there were blaring sirens around Cal when his behavior began to change. Whether it was a conscious decision or otherwise, I once again ignored the signs, not wanting to believe the inevitable was coming. Cal had given me every opportunity to tell him I would join him, but I didn’t take the bait. Instead, I kept my head down and my fingernails buried in my palms, half-moons of anxiety indenting the skin, the mark of the weak.

It was Maks who first uttered the concerns aloud. “Cal’s been slow with the product,” he said on Thanksgiving while we sat in Igor and Millie’s living room digesting our turkey. “Is there something going on with him.”

“His friend died,” I said, not wanting to get into the details regarding the circumstances surrounding Rosie’s death.

“That’s horrible,” he sighed. “Did you know him?”

“Not really,” I replied, and it wasn’t a lie. Though I had lived with Rosie, I could not say I knew much more about him than I did any other acquaintance. I knew his background story through Cal, but aside from that and some day-to-day musings, there hadn’t been much shared between us. In hindsight, I wondered if I should have asked him more about himself. Things would have been harder if I had and they were difficult enough as it was. The distance between Rosie and me had allowed me to comfort Cal, who had deeply understood Rosie in a way I had never been able to.

“Well, I’ll give him some time before I give him guff,” Maks decided.

“You’re a real altruist,” I teased.

“You know me.”

I did, and I wanted him to know me too. I was tormented by so many thoughts I needed to expel, but I mustered every ounce of my resolve to hold them inside. The longer I kept them, the more toxic they became, rotting my organs and poisoning my blood.