Operation Sal | Sally Face x Travis Phelps

29

    "Where are we going?" Travis's voice was uneven and frazzled, his heart thumping firmly inside of him.

   Kenneth pulled him to the car with a solid grip around his wrist, practically pushing him down into the passenger's seat with his hand, "Patience," he warned.

   Travis gulped as his father slammed the door in his face and began walking around the car in order to sit himself in the driver's seat.

It seemed as though Kenneth was beginning to re-adhere to his usual personality, his goofy smiles and bizarrely sweet words fading away, replaced with the scowl that Travis had always known.

   He balled his clammy hands into fists upon his lap and kept his head down as his father got behind the wheel and pulled the car out of the driveway.

    There was silence between them for several moments as Kenneth drive down the street in front of their house, flashing his headlights in the otherwise dark and gloomy neighborhood.

    Travis stared out the window, craning his head rightwards, watching the black trees and quiet, sleeping households pass by.

    "You always look so helpless," his father said very suddenly, wrapping both of his rough, calloused hands around the steering wheel. His voice was calm but his eyes were just as sharp as ever.

   Travis swallowed apprehensively, glancing at him for a split moment, and then back out the window, unsure of what to say, unsure of how easy it would be to anger his dad.

   Kenneth sighed briefly, "Andrea, she always told me that I was too cold towards you." His gaze was lost somewhere in the dark, concrete road pavement.

   Travis stiffened at the mention of her name, biting the inside of his cheek.

    The gloom of his father's words filled the air like a thick cloud, surrounding both of them and overtaking any semblance of joy that Travis had managed to conjure up earlier that night.

    "She realized all of her coddling would not be enough to change what you're meant to be," Kenneth continued bluntly, "I suppose that's why she took off."

   Travis's brows furrowed at the equivocation of his tone, and he felt his face become hot upon hearing such hurtful accusations about his mom.

   His body tensed up and unexpectedly, he lifted his head, still not daring to look in Kenneth's direction. He took his lower lip between his teeth and blinked a few times, breathing deeply, "My mother loved me," he asserted, his voice louder than he'd anticipated.

   His father was quiet for a long while, a sort of numbing quiet that made Travis want to throw himself out of the car window, a quiet that made him think, for a moment, that Kenneth may not answer at all.

   But of course, he could never be so lucky.

   "Yes," the man mumbled, staring at him out of the corner of his eye. His voice was chillingly even and relaxed, "she certainly did love the parts of you that were hers."

   Travis gritted his teeth, sucking in a weak breath through his nose, his shoulders quivering slightly as he fought to compose himself.

   He wanted to rip his hair out, to scream out into the night sky and make sure that Kenneth knew that no one could ever love the parts of him that were his father's.

   "She was never willing to accept it," He said, turning a corner suddenly, "that you're mine as much as you are hers, even if you do take after her visually," Kenneth mumbled, tracing his thumb along the black, leather steering wheel. "I thought the blonde hair might help you look more like a Phelps," he said pausing for a moment, "but back then, and even now, facially, you've always been your mother's."