Chapter 718: The Better Man
Dim and nippy the night had more beco.
After suffering the severe whipping of Irene’s ruthless tongue, Mr. Collins hadn’t the faintest idea what to think of anymore.
For the remainder of our ti alone, he just kept to himself, thinking to himself, and when he got bored of that, he got up from his chair and wandered about the apartnt... his fancy suit stained with spilled wine, his once tucked gray hair now frazzled and unkempt from an egregious amount of scratching and ruffling... all in all, he was pretty much a soulless husk of the sleek and elegant man he once was.
It was kinda hard to see him, and not feel an inkling of sympathy for the poor man. Probably woke up one fine winter day only to then have his entire world flipped upside down with my unceremonious appearance. The bundle of joy he vowed to protect and cherish her whole life, now he has to willingly entrust to another, a stranger-to .
Can’t really fault the guy for scrutinizing and criticizing every breath I took, honestly.
“Y’know, all things considered, you’re a pretty amazing dad, Mr. Collins,” I said, watching him run his finger across the shelf brimming with his daughter’s many ntos and achievents. “Can’t have been an easy ti raising Amanda to how she is today.”
Beaten and battered by wine and exhaustion, Mr. Collins’ stony facade crumbled and allowed the slightest smirk to slip onto his face.
.....
“More accurate to say that she raised herself, really,” He muttered with great pride. “Still, indeed, wasn’t easy. Probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. That being said... I’ve enjoyed every single mont of it.”
“So take so credit. An amazing girl like her can’t exist without also having so amazing figures in her life.”
“You trying to flatter , young man?” He spun forward at , steadying himself from a stagger. “Not the right approach if you want to earn brownie points with .”
“I think we’re far beyond trying to make a good first impression,” I said. “You saw for yourself, heard for myself. How you think of is how you think of . Right now, I’m just being . You still wanna dissect then...”
I let my arm finish the rest of my sentence, flinging it up at him for the go-ahead, yet he didn’t go for it for so reason. He stared, he blinked, then he promptly hobbled away toward the closest window, seeming to simply admire falling flakes of snow piling atop the dazzling view of the cityscape.
“I’m not sure what alignnt of the stars I was born under for to be blessed with the fortune of crossing paths with your daughter,” I said, gazing at him through his reflection in glass that almost seed to be also staring right back at . “It’s sothing I think about everyday, everyti I see her, every mont I’m with her-the sa question as you-how the hell did I get here?”
He grunted, and briefly, I was unsure if that was the alcohol or acknowledgnt.
“She puts up on a pedestal, tells I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to her. It’s terrifying, the pressure... trying to live up to the person she sees when she looks at , to be that guy deserving of her. But it’s like every ti I do sothing that might even the score between us, she goes and does sothing stupid that just makes fall for her even more, and I’m back at square one again-trying to live up, trying to be the person deserving of the kind of love she holds for . The pressure...”
Before I knew it, I was rambling. I didn’t an to ramble, I started this whole thing off just wanting to say sothing, anything, because I don’t know-I felt like it. Oh well, guess I felt like rambling now.
“But it’s a good kind of pressure, honestly. The kind that motivates even harder to try, and one day, I know I’ll definitely get there. No matter what, I will. Because even if I don’t deserve her, at the end of the day, I still want her, and I’ll do anything I can to keep her. She says I’m the best thing-I want to be better. For her, I’ll be better.”
There was probably more I wanted to say that I didn’t say. Loads more. But it’s either I didn’t have the proper words or I simply had too many words.
“So with or without your blessing,” I muttered, reaching my end. “I’d like to be better.”
As usual, Mr. Collins was as unflinching as stone, wobbling, swaying, but deep inside ironclad. His glazed eyes remained peering toward the falling snow, and really I was beginning to doubt if he had even heard at all, but then he ran his fingers across his rumpled hair until they were spiked, and I heard him give a sigh.
“I told you already. Amanda practically raised herself growing up. At the age of six, she had more initiative and independence than most teenagers do at sixteen. And as she got older, learned more, experienced more, she had pretty much paved the path for the rest of her life. She had ambition, a lot of talent-honestly, apart from her incident, I struggle to even recall the last ti I was ever worried about the choices she’s made. Because my Amanda always knows what she truly needs, always knows what she really wants...”
Mr Collins drew himself away from the window pane, a brief lucidity swirling in his bleary eyes gazing straight at .
“And now she wants you,” He said, heaving heavily as if admitting a truth he’s always denied. “And much to my dismay... it seems that she also really needs you. So, really, young man, whether I like it or not, whether you think it or not... you already are better.”
For that one mont, that one second, it might be my imagination, it might just be the wine talking through him, but I think, I’m certain we might have just shared sothing with each other there for the first ti.
Shared what though-I don’t know. But it sure was sothing.
And it definitely was sothing nice...
Then, just as this mont between us showed signs of blossoming. In barged in a ruckus, a foul sll, and the front door was blown wide open, allowing in a walking, talking fumigator of tobacco in the form of Mrs. Collins, closely followed by a near-asphyxiated Amanda still wrinkling her nose.
“Well, well, I hear that a certain unheeding husband of mine was up to no good again,” Mrs. Collins declared aloud, catching sight of still snug in my chair as she strode deeper into the apartnt, wearing an invisible cloud of cigarette smoke around her body. “So far, no permanent harm done, I hope?”
“Sorry we took so long,” Amanda said, smiling warmly as soon as she saw . “It took a while to find her. Mom likes to round the block, bad habit from her drill-marching days, I guess.”
She could have been in the Atlantic ocean for all I cared. Right then, finally hearing more than just the hiccups and groans of a middle-aged man had swelling with enough relief to shed tears.
“Wasn’t so bad,” I replied. “We just talked a little, nothing too bad.”
At the sight of his sorely missed wife, so neuron signal must have fired up in Mr. Collins’ brain, because one second he was simply standing there completely lost within his head, and the next I knew, there was a fuzzy streak of fancy clothing dashing across the room that nearly sent Mrs. Collins toppling to the hard floor.
But instead of feeling the surprise that cos with the weighty impact of a fully-grown man, Mrs. Collins only looked the slightest flattered... as her ditz of a husband continued to pull her into his tightening embrace.
“I was looking for you...” He murmured into her clothes, his usual low imposing tone becoming as ek as a mouse. “I was looking out the window, you weren’t there. I missed you.”
So... this is what Amanda ant about her mom being the only one able to control him. This ... was not what I was expecting when she said that. If anything he seed to spiral even worse. From grouchy papa bear to a cuddly teddy bear in a heartbeat.
“You gotta look a little bit harder than that, honey,” Mrs. Collins cooed, affectionately stroking the matted gray of his hair. “Oh, just look at the state of you... and you promised you’d control yourself. So much for that, hm?”
Amanda pulled a face, carefully shuffling herself past her parents’ public display of affection, and gravitating closer toward .
“I don’t know how you can tolerate Dad when he’s like that...” She remarked, eyeing her mother with a mixture of awe and a grimace. “He gets so aggressive when he’s drunk...”
“Not necessarily a bad thing,” Mrs. Collins said, swinging her husband’s flaccid arm and mounting it over her shoulder in support. “Not to , anyway...”
“You like him like this?”
“Co now,” Mrs. Collins gave her daughter a faint smirk. “How do you think you were born in the first place?”
“Mom...” Amanda sunk her face into her palms, and I could feel her discomfort emanating off of her in rippling waves of cringe. “...ew.”
And here I thought my mom was bad.
“And as for you...” Mrs. Collins huffed, shambling and swaying her husband over to the nearest couch. “Take a second to clear your head, then we’ll head back straight back ho, alright?”
Mr. Collins flailed his head in response. I guess that was supposed to be a nod.
Seeing the husband and wife pair struggling to keep both pairs of legs steady had quickly spurring forward toward them and propping Mr. Collins up on his other side.
“Here, I’ll help,” I grunted, shifting his weight onto my shoulder.
“Sorry, you have to see him like this,” Mrs. Collins said, smiling apologetically. “I trusted him to hold his liquor... but it seems he was a lot more worried about you than I thought.”
I just shook my head, no harm, no foul, besides it was his conniving daughter that instigated this in the first place to help out... so really I felt partly responsible here.
With my aid, we managed to shift Mr. Collins over to the couch, but before I could fully step away, I felt a tug on my jacket-keeping in place. I tried pulling up, to no avail.
“Mr. Collins?”
“You know what? I agree with you, young man.” He muttered, his grip on my jacket pulling down within earshot. “I also don’t think you deserve my sweet little girl.”
More put-downs, more doubts. Sa old, sa old.
Silently, I began to pull away again, but he still wouldn’t let go.
Then as if the night wasn’t already bizarre enough, Mr. Collins flashed a smile. The subtlest, the barest definition of one, but a smile, nonetheless. He unclenched his grip, slowly raising his hand instead to give the lightest yet first pat on the shoulder.
His smile grew wider.
“Prove us both wrong, won’t you?”
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