Walking Tall Into My Future Leaving My Regretful Ex Behind

It had been three years since I walked away from Alma, and today, my father decided to mark the occasion by cooking her favorite meal: Wellington Steak. “Don’t start a fight with Max, now that he’s here, Ash.” Max Stone was the prized protégé—the scholarship student—my father loved like a son. Alma Vance was the girl I had loved for ten years. I sat in my wheelchair, silent. My father, Walter James, raised his voice, a desperate attempt to drown out his own guilt. “Max changing your college application was for your own good. But becoming a war correspondent? That was your choice. No one else is to blame for what happened.” I just offered a small, detached smile. “Right,” I said. “The past is over. But I still have to move forward, don’t I?”

1 My father was clearly unnerved that I hadn’t succumbed to the familiar, hysterical rage he expected. He pressed on, his voice a low warning. “Max and Alma are happily married. You are not going to be the wedge that breaks them apart. I won’t be embarrassed by my own son.” It was vintage Walter. Always siding with the outsider. Always treating his own flesh and blood like a potential adversary he needed to keep in check. Alma met me first. We were neighbors, the textbook definition of childhood sweethearts. We grew up hand-in-hand. I still remembered the exact spot under the blooming jacaranda tree where she’d kissed me and told me she loved me. She swore she’d marry me. But then my father, a high school guidance counselor, brought Max home. From that day forward, Max was everywhere—a permanent, uninvited fixture in the perfectly crafted world Alma and I shared. My father made sure of it. He’d insist I bring Max along to the library, to the mall, even to our quiet weekend trips. He even stood up as their wedding officiant. I tore open a bag of dill pickle chips, my gaze distant. “Dad, if you’re so worried about me, why did you pressure me to come back to Richmond to recover?” “You brat. You think you’re so grown up you can talk to me like that?” He raised his hand, the habitual gesture of violence he’d used for two decades, aiming for my forehead. I barely tilted my head, letting the air rush past. Then, the front door’s lock code beeped. Walter’s face instantly softened into a saccharine mask, and he rushed to greet them. 2 Max and Alma stepped inside, their fingers tightly laced. “Mr. James, I smell dinner already! I hope we aren’t too late to help.” Max’s voice was the perfect pitch of polite concern. “Nonsense, son, come in. I made Alma’s favorite Wellington Steak, and the smashed potato you love.” They finally noticed me in the living room. Max involuntarily flinched, pulling Alma back slightly, as if I were some creature he’d once thought extinct. My father glared at me, a sharp order to put on a polite face for his guests. I didn’t move. Alma’s eyes, however, immediately fixed on the thick, heavily bandaged cast on my leg. Her tone was tight with practiced care. “Ash. How is your injury? Are you healing well?” I gave a curt, formal nod. At the table, Walter strategically seated them both at the positions best for serving, then directed me. “Ash, get up and bring the lemonade from the fridge. Alma loves it.” Max shot me a look of feigned distress. “Mr. James, please, don’t bother him.” “Worried about his leg? Don’t be. It’s what he gets for running off to that godforsaken place. He brought this on himself.” “No, it’s not that,” Max rushed to correct him, a triumphant lilt in his voice. He gently placed his hand on Alma’s lower abdomen. “Alma can’t have anything cold, and she won’t be having any crab cakes tonight. We’re three months along.” My father was more excited than Max himself, bombarding Alma with attention and suggestions, practically insisting she move in to be closer for her prenatal care. “I still have Max’s old room here. Since Alma’s busy at the office, you should bring her over for lunch and a nap every day.” It was a small three-bedroom condo. The day Max moved in, my father, citing Max’s supposedly tough childhood, gave him the sunny master bedroom—the one that had always been mine. For four years of college, even when I came home, I stayed in the windowless den, while Max, attending a university locally, came and went as he pleased. When no one moved, Max cautiously addressed me. “Ash, you’re home for good this time, right? Mr. James pretends he doesn’t care, but he’s always looking at your photos on social media.” He paused, leaning into Alma. “I really envy you getting to photograph the scars of war in those Syrian ruins, chasing militants in the Libyan desert. Unlike me, I’m just Ah-Alma’s little house-husband. I feel so guilty that I can only be a pampered failure after all the special tutoring Mr. James and Alma gave me in high school!” 3 I used to be so easily provoked by Max’s particular brand of soft-spoken, self-effacing aggression. My father’s favor for him was a constant, sharp reminder that Walter had a capacity for gentleness and encouragement—a side he’d never once shown me. I’m severely allergic to onions. My father loves them. One summer, as a lesson in obedience, the menu consisted of only rice and various dishes cooked with onions. Even the normal meal had a few wedges tossed in. I was ten then. I was born to a single father and had never known my mother. Walter absolutely forbade me from ever speaking her name. The rule was simple: bring her up, and he’d hit me. So I learned to suffer my indignities in silence, only finding comfort in Alma. During that miserable summer, Alma’s parents were out of town. She’d sneak me out and her grandmother would make me comforting fried rice. I became her little beggar. Her pockets were always full of milk, strawberry shortcake, and candy bars, keeping me fed and sane. We made a pact: we would both go to Columbia, graduate, get married, and give her grandmother grandchildren. Then Max arrived. He was from a poor, rural town, and my father admired his grit. Walter canceled my art classes and extracurriculars, pouring all the savings into Max’s tutoring and tuition. I resented Max instantly—the way he played on my father’s sympathy. I refused to speak to him. Alma stroked my head and promised she would always be on my side. Until that day after school. She saw Max sitting alone on the bleachers, eating a cold slice of pizza and a can of cheap soup. Her expression was complicated: shock, followed by a heavy, self-righteous pity. Max was living with us, and my father was cooking him lavish meals. He wasn’t starving. Alma chose her words carefully, as if for my benefit. “Ash, don’t you think you’re being a little small-minded? Your dad is great to everyone but you. Maybe you should look at yourself?” Long years of my father’s verbal abuse had done their work. I actually paused to consider if I was the problem. Meanwhile, Alma began ditching me, claiming my father insisted she help Max study. She once canceled my birthday celebration because Max had never been to an amusement park. At the time, I was clueless, otherwise, I wouldn’t have spent four years in a long-distance relationship with her. The truth exploded on graduation day. I came back to Richmond early with my luggage and walked into Max’s sun-drenched room to find him and Alma, clothes slightly rumpled, tangled up on the bed. My entire world shattered. I cried all night, my faith—my foundation—gone. Alma had flown out to visit me countless times, vowing we’d be “graduates and spouses.” How had everything changed overnight? I screamed at them both, demanding Max leave. My father slapped me so hard my ears rang. He told me it was his house, and I had no right to tell anyone who could stay. In a white-hot rage, I broke up with Alma and applied to be a war correspondent overseas. My father didn’t even blame Max; he tried to legally adopt him. Only Max’s parents’ refusal stopped it. 4 I barely picked at my food, the taste like ash in my mouth. I wheeled myself back to the windowless den. Behind me, I heard my father’s familiar, angry rant and Max’s soft, almost inaudible words—the perfect, controlled amount of fuel for the fire. Alma eventually brought me a bowl of strawberries. I ignored her. “Ash, are you still mad at Max? If you don’t speak to him, you’ll just sit here and stew over it.” The old me would have screamed: Shouldn’t I be mad? He sabotaged my application, stole my girlfriend, and my father protected him, forbidding me from even calling the police. But it took a shrapnel wound and the smell of my own burnt flesh for the truth to finally sink in: when someone fundamentally doesn’t care about you, your words—your rage, your pain—they simply hit dead air. I was silent. Alma, mistaking my quiet for passive aggression, started to explain. “I always knew you picked Columbia because you wanted to escape your dad.” “Max just didn’t want to see you two completely estranged, so he… accidentally used your password and changed it.” Yes. His good intentions had rerouted me from a top-tier Economics program at Columbia to a niche journalism school two thousand miles away. Alma was still rambling. “Ash, even if we had both gotten into Columbia, I would have convinced you to change your major anyway.” I was tired of the noise. I looked at her, flatly. “Did you deliberately do poorly on your exams so you could stay here and be near Max?” Her voice snapped off, like a bird suddenly choked mid-song. She had no idea how I knew that. She’d never truly understood how calculating Max was beneath his facade of an innocent, sweet boy. After graduation, when he no longer needed my father’s tuition money, Max had sent me a barrage of texts. He detailed how he and Alma had secretly gone to the amusement park and the cinema we were supposed to go to, and how she used the hotel curtains as an excuse whenever I called her while she was on weekend trips with him. 5 I spent years after the betrayal drowning in the pain of being abandoned by three people at once. I used the raw reality of the war zone as my personal rehab. I slapped myself. I used a utility knife to cut myself. My entire life, my father had used emotional oppression, then used his status as a “hard-working single dad” to guilt and control me. Max made it clear I was unloved by everyone, including my only parent. He told me Alma leaving me was the right choice. He even said someone like me didn’t deserve to live. My father’s texts were just as brutal, saying he’d wasted twenty years raising me. That I wasn’t running to NYC, but running away from a minor disagreement. Alma had sent only three words: I am sorry. I didn’t want to hear them. I just kept running, using the sheer terror of facing death, the empathy for the displaced refugees, to bury the pain. I almost died several times. The last time was the worst. If someone hadn’t pulled strings at the embassy, I would have died there, unknown. I glanced at my phone. A flicker of complex emotion crossed my face. A text message waited for me. “Ash, is the paperwork done? I can have the chopper ready.” I politely typed a reply. “Three more days, Mom.” 6 Under my father’s suffocating control, I never imagined my mother was a real person. I certainly never imagined the Sterling family, the dynasty she belonged to, held such immense power in the NYC financial world. She didn’t know I existed in this quiet corner of the country. My father had kept my birth a secret. Fate, however, has a sick sense of humor. The Sterling family saw me—Ash James, the driven, exhausted war correspondent—on a news report. The resemblance between me and my aunt, my mother’s younger sister, was unmistakable. When they learned my name was James, my mother, Eloise Sterling, felt a chill. Two decades ago, when my father was a handsome, ambitious university student, he and Eloise had a brief, cross-class romance. The Sterlings valued bloodline above all else. When Eloise heard that I’d been severely injured while saving a small boy in a chaotic war zone and was clinging to life, she acted immediately. She contacted the embassy and used a military-grade transport to have me repatriated. Everything else fell into place. The DNA results confirmed it that very day. I was her son. 7 I hadn’t told my father about my mother. He would never have been able to handle it. As a child, when I was foolish enough to ask about her, I was met with hard slaps and days locked in my room without food. Once, when he was drunk, he grabbed my wrist, his eyes so full of malice he looked like he might eat me whole. “Why was I so blind as to have a lowlife like you!” he had hissed. “I should carve those eyes out, so I don’t have to look at them anymore!” That vile mantra haunted me for years. I learned to keep my head down and never mention my mother. It was only after meeting her that I understood the root of all my misery: I looked too much like a Sterling, especially my eyes. My leg injury was severe. Eloise had to pull a lot of strings to get me in with Dr. Alistair Smith, the renowned orthopedic surgeon. I had to wait a month for his schedule. I suggested returning to Richmond first. My father, having only seen the news of my injury, simply called me ungrateful, saying I went off to die in such a distant place just to spite him and burden him with the cost of a coffin. I knew if I didn’t come back, he would cause a scene at my unit, demanding my supervisors be held accountable. I was here to quit my job and finalize my paperwork—to formally move my residency. My leg would require extensive treatment in NYC. When Eloise learned my application had been changed, robbing me of my preferred major, she promised to help me finish my degree. I refused to let false sentimentality stop me. Having almost died, I finally understood: following your own heart is more important than anything else. 8 I needed to leave early for a follow-up appointment. My father made no move to help me to the car. “Your leg is a write-off,” he said with contemptuous certainty. “No doctor can fix this. You need to accept it.” “The unit will fire you now. I don’t raise trash. You listen to me from now on, and maybe I’ll see about getting the school to let you process files.” He taught at a private high school. He’d never lifted a finger to help me before, saving all his influence for Max, even accepting bribes from parents on Max’s behalf. I swallowed the pain radiating up my leg, the bite of ten thousand ants. “What if there’s a great surgeon in New York who can fix my leg?” I asked. His face contorted. “I’m the only parent you have. As long as I’m alive, you will not set foot in New York City.” “Even if I have to be in a wheelchair forever?” “Yes.” He spat the word out, as if I had committed the ultimate transgression. I knew he would react this way. But the sting still landed. Nothing—not my future, not my injury—mattered more than his control. 9 Getting around with a severe leg injury was a nightmare. I paid the cab driver triple the fare. He stopped his grumbling long enough to help me into the car and fold the wheelchair into the trunk. “Looks like a bad one, son. Blood is already seeping through the bandage. Why didn’t you bring a family member?” I stayed silent. The driver glanced into the rearview mirror, shaking his head. “No folks, huh? Rough luck.” He helped me out, pulled out my wheelchair, and even gave me a bottle of water. I wheeled myself down a hospital corridor. Alma was there, peeling an orange for Max, who sat next to her. Her eyes were only for him. She didn’t even notice me in the wheelchair a few yards away. My father hurried over from the billing counter, showering Max with concerned questions, promising to make him his favorite Coke Chicken Wings for lunch. It was a scene of domestic bliss, as if Max were the son he’d always wanted. “Mr. James, you treat me better than my own father.” “You worked so hard to climb out of that small town, son. If I don’t look out for you, who will?” Watching my father and Max together, I suddenly felt a profound, absurd sense of clarity. They were the true father and son. I smiled, a real smile. Letting go, I realized, wasn’t nearly as hard as I’d been conditioned to believe. 10 I turned my chair toward the elevator. My father’s smile froze. “Don’t you see your elders? You can’t even say hello? What kind of manners are those?” I ignored him. Max tugged on my father’s arm. “Mr. James, don’t be angry. It’s my fault. I forgot Alma had a day off, so you had to come with us. Ash must have misunderstood—” My father’s face darkened, his voice immediately hardening toward me. “Ash James, stop throwing a fit! I purposefully didn’t come with you to the appointment.” “Your leg is broken. You might never walk again. You need to learn to be independent now. You can’t expect people to wait on you for the rest of your life!” Alma stepped in, the eternal peacemaker. “Uncle Walter, please don’t be angry. Ash just got back from the war zone; he needs time to adjust.” Watching her comfortably soothe my father, I felt a familiar, sickening combination of absurdity and irony. Max let go of my father’s hand, his voice trembling with manufactured distress. “Alma, it’s my fault—” “It is not your fault!” My father cut him off, turning to glare at me. “Look at you! You’ve made Max cry! Now go home! Don’t embarrass me here!” I let out a cold laugh, meeting his gaze directly. “This hospital isn’t yours. You have no authority to kick me out.” My defiance was a match to his fuse. Perhaps it was the utter lack of fear in my eyes. He froze, then his face exploded in rage. He stepped forward and delivered a hard, stinging slap across my face. “What? You think just because you’re crippled you can disrespect me? What good are you, you useless burden, except to embarrass me?” “You had to be a war correspondent, and now look at you—you’re nothing but a cripple! You brought this on yourself!” He loomed over me, his gaze dropping to my trembling, injured legs. His voice was pure venom. “Limping trash. Get used to dragging yourself through life. Throw a fit again, and I’ll throw you out on the street to beg like a stray dog.” I was numb. Completely, beautifully numb. I didn’t speak again. I just looked at him, one long, deep stare, before turning my chair and rolling out of the hospital. 11 Alma caught up with me as I struggled to flag down a cab, sweat stinging my eyes. Seeing my difficulty, she looked frustrated, rushing to justify her father-in-law. “Ash, don’t blame Uncle Walter. You left without a word, didn’t come back for the holidays… he truly cares about you.” I smiled, a purely cynical twist of my lips. “My home has been redecorated to Max’s taste. My small room is stacked with his old clothes and shoes. Do you really believe my father misses me? Doesn’t your conscience bother you?” She lowered her eyes, a flush of shame creeping up her neck. “Max’s family is poor. He had no one in Richmond. Uncle Walter treats him like a son.” She was pleading now. “I never meant to betray you. Your dad insisted I look after him.” Listening to her frantic self-exoneration, I spoke quietly. “So, you and Max sleeping together in your bed—that was my dad’s doing, too?” She flinched. “No! It wasn’t like that! I had too much wine that night, and Max had just confessed his feelings to me for the twenty-ninth time. I lost control in the moment…” I turned to stare out the window. When I was planning our wedding, her heart had already chosen another man. When I remained silent, her voice became a whisper. “Can’t we just call a truce, Ash? Forget the past? You’ll need a lot of support and care. There’s no reason to hold onto your dad’s and Max’s small mistakes.” I scoffed. “Is that a threat?” “Of course not!” she insisted, then the true motive slid out. “It’s just… you’re in no shape to work right now. And Max is very interested in your unit. We were hoping you could put in a good word with your supervisor.” “Your father agrees. He thinks the unit is partly responsible for your injury, and this is your chance to demand compensation for Max.” They were planning to drain me dry. I immediately ordered the driver to stop, dumping Alma on the roadside. I then changed the cab’s destination to my office, where I filed my resignation. 12 Back home, I started clearing out my belongings. My primary goal was to get rid of the gifts Alma had given me. We had loved each other once. It was a truth that filled a large, heavy box. For four years, she’d chased me down, traveling thousands of miles by train, accompanying me to dive bars, dragging me to cheap movie theaters where we’d fall asleep on the couches. She sent me postcards from every city. She never missed a birthday, always with a small, handmade gift. I lived in a warm, deluded bubble, convinced we would go from the college library to old age together. Then I realized that Max had been with her through most of those trips. Including the pair of small, hand-painted clay figurines she’d sworn were made just for me. One of the figures bore the clear imprint of a man’s thumbprint—Max’s, he’d later gleefully confessed. When I’d initially confronted her, she lied, blaming the shop owner and buying me a replacement set of coffee mugs. It was hard to reconcile how Alma could whisper sweet things to me while secretly flirting with and caring for another man. Betrayal taught me the harshest lesson of love: some people enter your life only to teach you that love is just a temporary port, never a final harbor. 13 When I wheeled a large, empty box back into the house, my father scowled. “You’re a wreck. Instead of trying to mend things with Alma and Max, you’re throwing a tantrum. Are you planning to sell scrap metal, or do you expect me to support you forever?” His contempt was heavy. He already saw my life as a complete failure. He then began pressuring me to get Max a job at my coveted broadcasting unit, suggesting that Max’s future children might even take care of me someday. I laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. “Is the pie Max is baking you that sweet, Dad?” “In college, his mind wasn’t on his studies. It was on charming you with homemade bread and getting side jobs to buy Alma gifts. He scraped into a mediocre university, begged you for tuition money, then blew it. After college, he quit the low-paying substitute teacher job you found him, and Alma’s been bankrolling him ever since.” “Now, he wants my connections to get into the best radio station in Richmond.” “So, all the good fortune in the world has to go to Max? Everyone else is just a stepping stone for him?” My father stared at me, his eyes blazing. “Max saved my life! You compensating him is the least you can do.” I shot back: “If Max hadn’t been so far behind, and his parents weren’t forcing him to quit high school, would you have even driven out to his village, where you conveniently fell into the water and were rescued by him?” “No matter what, he saved my life! I could sign the house over to him, and it still wouldn’t be enough.” My father had said that before. The house was his most valuable asset, his constant leverage. He’d only paid for my first year of college, using Max’s expensive community college fees as an excuse to cut me off. But this time, my expression was completely neutral. “Do what you want.” “Ash James, you’ll regret this!” “Dad, Max has two younger brothers back home. Whether he’s manipulating you or you’re blind, once you give everything away, don’t look to me for help in your old age.” “Pah! A useless burden like you? I’d be lucky if you don’t leech off me first.” 14 The day I was scheduled to leave, a knock came early. I assumed it was my mother’s transport and grabbed my small suitcase. It was Alma. She was breathless, carrying a large cardboard box. “Ash, is this true? I saw this by the dumpster last night! Why did you throw away everything I gave you?” “I tried to find you yesterday, but you blocked my number, and Max wasn’t feeling well.” I glanced at my watch, utterly unconcerned. “Trash belongs in the bin. There is no other reason.” “Do you have to be so cruel?” She pulled out a thick stack of train tickets—the proof of her journeys to see me—and the two clay figurines. “And these! I made them just for you.” Her voice caught, her eyes red-rimmed. It wasn’t just me who loved then. I couldn’t resist twisting the knife one last time. “What did you expect? You slept with my father’s favorite student. Should I have kept them so my dad could constantly accuse me of lusting after another man’s wife?” “But you can’t throw them all away! They’re the evidence that we loved each other.” I looked at her, deadpan. “The moment you chose Max, they became meaningless.” Alma opened her mouth to argue, but the front door opened, and a woman in a perfectly tailored business suit stepped inside.