Your mom always resented him. It wasn't like he was there to tell the other side (if there was one), so at first you learned to resent him too.
You could never understand why she named you for him. It seemed unfair: like you had to shoulder some of the blame for him running off and leaving her. Then, when she thought you were old enough to take it, she'd reminisce (over beer she'd sometimes let you share) and between the sons-of-bitches and assholes, it began to slip out that, once, she thought he might be the love of her life.
By the time you were fourteen, you had an image of him in your head. Young, hot, blond, moves in bed that made a woman's toes curl (your mom didn't know the word appropriate), funny, charming, sometimes sad, arrogant, too classy for a girl like her. He was still the ass who left your mom. But you kind of liked him (the idea of him, anyway); wondered if he'd like you. He was your dad, right? And sometimes, when she was really pissing you off, you kind of got why he didn't want to be with your mom.
Because you always figured he didn't really leave you. You were almost nothing when he was around. Just that lame phrase: a twinkle – probably, in his case, a scowl – in your dad's eye. If you'd been more than that, if he'd known you, you think he might have wanted you.
Well, that's what you figured. You have your doubts now, because your baby's father doesn't want him (or her) and that kind of rubbed in the reality of your story. It's crossed your mind more than once to have an abortion, but you can feel the baby, almost alive, inside you, and making that not matter is too close for comfort. ('Cause, yeah, your mom's latest? The golden, hot guy she was dumb enough to love would've have preferred you didn't exist as long as it only cost two-hundred bucks.)
You've never been a crier. And maybe that's because you've never had much to cry about. Outside of your mom being a pain in the ass, life pretty much went your way. You were the hot girl: the one all the boys wanted and all the girls wanted to be.
Until, one night, out on the football field, you forgot all your rules. Until the asshole dumped you for a girl who wasn't close to your level of hotness, but wasn't carrying his kid. Then you cried. And for the first time in your life, you really understood your mom.
It didn't work the other way around, though. And when she was kicking you out and you were begging her (and begging is new for you too) to let you stay, you said, "Are you fucking blind? Can't you see I'm you?"
But all she did was sort of sneer. "No baby," she said. "You're not me. You're your father. He just had the good sense to be born with a dick."
She didn't mean it as a compliment – You're your father – but you kind of took it as one. You kind of took it as a connection and that's when you decided to track him down. Maybe, if you're like him, he'll want you now. Maybe you and the kid can make some kind of a family with him.
And, if not, well, after eighteen years of not caring if you're dead or alive, maybe he kind of owes you one.
