Untimely You Read Online Free

there?” Yvette, my full-time cook and maid, hollers down the stairwell into the basement.
    “Yeah,” I tell her with a grunt as I bench press the weights, the muscles in my chest blazing with a burn that doesn’t ever match the one of my charred heart.
    “I cooked you summa that red beans and rice you love so much, boy. Git yer hiney up here ‘for it gets cold.”
    “I’ll be right up.”
    She lets the door slam shut and I press through the burn. Every night for nearly the last twelve years, I’ve come here to escape it all. Sometimes for thirty minutes. Other times for hours. It’s the only time I feel as though I can physically release some of the pain that is burrowed so deep inside of me.
    Down here, I don’t obsess over pictures of her where her eyes twinkle and her smile is flawless. I don’t try to change the past. I don’t pray for things that just simply won’t happen.
    Down here, I simply exist.
    I lift the weights and focus on the physical pain, instead of what grips my heart in a prison death grip.
    Down here, for just a moment, I’m free.

    “I don’t approve of this Adrian!” Barbara screeches, sending a vase onto the floor with a crash. “You’re a bastard! There were plans. You’ve gone against everything!”
    It’s been two days since the accident and already, I cannot deal with this woman. I can hardly deal with my wife’s mother on a regular basis, but when she comes into my world spewing her goddamn garbage all over the place, I want to lose my shit. I’m barely hanging on by a thread.
    “There are no plans. Nothing was finalized.” The lie feels like truth on my tongue.
    The older woman, who appears to be a vicious form of her daughter, glares at me. “Where are you hiding it? Where?!”
    “Leave, Barbara. You’ll wake Damien. He’s already been through so much.”
    “BECAUSE HE LOST HIS MOTHER!”
    I snarl at her words and snatch the frail woman by her biceps. She struggles against me as I forcibly remove her from my home. The second I get her past the threshold I slam the door shut in her face and lock it.
    “I have a key, Adrian!” she screams through the door. “You can’t keep me away on this. You’ve crossed a line and dammit if I won’t have my lawyers crawling all over you tomorrow morning.”
    A bitter laugh escapes me. “I’m her husband. You’re her mother. Try fighting that one in a court of law.”
    “WAS, ADRIAN! She’s nothing now because of you! Nothing!”
    I sling the door back open and shove my finger in her face, spittle spewing all over her wrinkled face. “Fuck you, Barbara! Fuck you! Now get the fuck off my goddamned property before I call the police or get my gun to take care of this shit myself.”
    She swats my hand away from her face, and the anger simmers, her eyes giving way to tears. “Save the bullet, son. We both know who needs it.”
    As she storms away toward her Cadillac, I drop to my knees and a gut-wrenching wail rips from my throat. The guilt consumes me and I die, one body-wrenching sob at a time.
    It should have been me.
    I shouldn’t have been driving that night.
    I deserved this—not the mother of my son.
    “Daddy?”
    Sucking in a ragged breath of air, I swipe away the tears with the palms of my hands before turning to him. The staples along his hairline are visible, and it only serves to remind me of the fucking mess I caused.
    “Come here, Dame,” I choke out as my boy scrambles into my arms.
    I break down again and am only calmed when he begins patting my back with his sweet seven-year-old hands.
    “It’s okay to cry, Daddy.”
    And, boy, do I fucking cry.
    I cry for so long that he finally falls asleep in my arms. The entire way to his room, I cry. On the way to my bedroom, I cry. As I crawl into bed, inhaling her scent, longing for her soft fingertips touching my bare chest, I cry.
    And then I don’t cry anymore.

 
    D ress comfortably.
    What the hell does that even mean?
    I was dressed comfortably. Maxi