The waiter came and served us our food. It was spectacular. I ate every morsel of my butternut squash and roasted sausages with quinoa.
“You seem to like good food.” She watched me eat.
“I love good food and this is the best.” She ordered her fourth glass of wine and hardly touched her plate. “Aren’t you going to eat?” I wondered.
“I'm not that hungry.”
We finished our meal. Well, more like I had and she was now on her fifth glass of wine. “You don’t need to worry. I won’t make a scene,” she offered.
“No, I'm sorry I didn’t mean to make a face. I'm so sorry,” I choked out, nervously.
“It’s fine. I'm glad you made time for me. I wanted to meet you and to see who Daimon married. You are what he needs. I just hope he doesn’t do something to ruin it. Daimon might seem cold and unfeeling, but deep down, he’s loving and caring. He just doesn’t know how to show it,” she said sadly.
“Sometimes and I mean sometimes, I think I see it, but just as soon as it appears, it goes away just as quickly,” I offered.
“Give him time. My Daimon will open up soon, I know it.” She smiled confidently.
She walked me downstairs and asked the doorman to call me a cab.
“I'm glad to have met you.” She hesitated, but stretched out her arms and hugged me. I hugged her back.
“I would like to call you sometime and just check up on you two. If that would be okay?” she said softly.
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Addie.” She hugged me harder. “Thank you.”
The Truth
My quiet month had come to an abrupt stop when Daimon stormed into the penthouse yelling, “Who did you meet today?”
“Wow. No, hello. No, how are you. No, hey, haven’t spoken to you in a month, how are things?” I said sarcastically.
“Cut the crap, Addie,” he barked.
“I met your aunt,” I said carefully.
“My aunt?”
“Daimon, why didn’t you ever tell me?” I asked not standing up.
“What did she tell you?” he seethed.
“Nothing. She told me nothing. Daimon, she’s loving and caring. She wanted me to know you’re a good man and behind your asshole exterior, there’s a warmhearted person. I told her she was wrong, but she insisted.” I tried to make light of the situation, afraid of what he might do to her and to their already damaged relationship.
“You don't know shit,” he said gruffly.
“No. No, I don’t. But what I do know is she loves you. I don’t know what happened and I’m not going to say aloud who she is. But she is hurting and so are you.” My heart broke for him as I watched his face contort. I didn’t know what had happened to Daimon, but I wanted to fix it, to make it better for him, to ease his pain and take it all away.
“Never meet with her again,” he spat out.
“I’m not going to promise that,” I said calmly.
“Addie, she has nothing to do with us or me. So do me the favor and avoid her calls.”
“No. I like her and I know she likes me.”
“You don't even know her,” he snarled.
“No, but the woman I met today seems like a good person and I'm not going to write her off because you want me to,” I fired back.
“Yeah, an alcoholic who was cast away by my father. She never once came to get me. Not once came to see how I was,” he said roughly.
“Did you ever think your father may have a hand in that?” I said, trying to calm him down.
“She could have taken me with her,” he bit out.
“I'm sure there was a reason why. Daimon, she loves you completely.”
“Do you have any idea how it feels to see her drunk all the time,” he said as he threw off his coat and began pacing the living room. “Every fucking time I snuck around to go see her, she was drunk. Lost in her own little world, not once thinking about me and what her leaving had done!” he shouted.
“Daimon…”
“My father said he loved her, but then she got old and was useless. He threw her aside and got himself a younger woman. The one you thought was my mother. Not once did he ever tell me where my mother was. I had to find out by myself.” he began, beating his chest.
I stood transfixed as Daimon, the strong, dominate male who ruled my life with an iron fist, the one who tormented me all throughout high school, began to fall apart in front of me.
“Daimon,” I breathed.
“She left me!” he cried out. “She left me there to fend for myself!”
“If she did, she did it to survive.”
“Yeah, what a life she leads now, one bottle at a time. Do you know how many times I found her unconscious in her hotel room? I got so fed up of having her in my life that I cut her out. That’s what I want you to do. I want you to cut her out. You are to never see her again,” he pointed at me warning me.