Love Consequences (Season 2 of Nata & Phillip's Romance)

12. Let me be the judge of that

Phillip

I pull the last-but-one cigarette out of the pack and light it from the one still hanging between my fingers. I inhale and let the cloud of smoke burst out of my mouth. The tobacco rushes through my head. My throat burns with the cigarette number...I lost count. It burns with bitterness of the tobacco and life and the loss I can't quite articulate. I put out the stub of the previous cigarette next to the small hill of them in the ashtray. The loneliness slips from my head into my gut: slimy and acrid at the same time. I make the next inhale long, so the smoke goes into my lungs, and I can almost feel it in the middle of my chest, soaking the pain I can't seem to get rid of, no matter how many of them I smoke.

"Phillip?" Nata's voice is close.

I jerk my head to the left and by the light of her porch see her figure appear from her side of the duplex. My fingers shake.

I take another drag.

"What's going on?" She comes up the steps to the dark corner of my side of the deck.

The flickers of fire on the end of my cigarette are the only lights on my side of the deck. I blow the cloud of smoke into the space between us, and she waves it away. "Your dad called."

"You mean Tom?" My voice is low and grave.

She puts her hands on her hips. "He told me what happened. Do you want to talk about it?"

"Interesting." I inhale one more lungful of smoke, hold it until I run out of breath, and unleash the bitterness. "He told you what happened, but he didn't bother to tell me."

"Apparently it was new. He was going to tell you, but you walked in on them." Nata takes a step to my chair. "I understand you are upset, but they are adults."

"Oh. Tom fucking Rachel? Yeah. That's the least of my concern. He might sleep his way through the entire Chicago, I won't care." I scoff. "Although now it makes perfect sense why he was so calm when I was sleeping my way through the female population of the country." I extinguish the cigarette on the wood of the table, punishing the wood, because I cannot punish the person who actually caused the hurt thrashing between my ribs. "He did it himself too. He just didn't want me to know, in case I stop thinking he was the perfect person, and I was the only shitshow in my family. Now I know we both are shit." I flick the butt across the deck. "Oh, well. We can't all be saints. Right?" My intonation challenges Nata to contradict me.

She takes a step back. "Are you drunk?"

"I wish." That would numb the pain and make me forget even if for a little how much I hurt. The ache inside me intensifies and I regret extinguishing my cigarette. I set the heel of my shoe on my knee and lick my lips. "We don't have any alcohol and once I got home, I didn't want to drive anywhere again. Not sure there's enough gas left in the car either." I pull the final cigarette out and locate the lighter next to the ashtray. "Getting stranded in the middle of the street somewhere in his car would be a fun little thing, but...solves nothing."

"So you are just back to smoking because your father has a sex life?"

I light up, take a drag, and spend as long as my lungs allow me blowing the smoke through my pursed lips. "I'm back to smoking because Tom Van der Heuvel is not my father."

"Not..." Nata covers her mouth with her hand.

"Yep." I roll the cigarette between my fingers. Telling her these words is like vomiting again after all you have left in your stomach is acid. "You were correct. My blood type and his can't be those of a father and son because we are...not."