Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

My father, I only saw at the end of the day. When he was tired. Relaxed.
Happy to be home from work. I would sit with him on the recliner, eating
popcorn and watching Ironman. It was like spending time with Trace, my
friends, or a grandpa you only spent minimal hours with once a month.
Macon had joined the military by the time I was old enough to remember
anything. Significantly older than me, he was the one I feared when I
should’ve feared my father. Here was this soldier I didn’t know walking
through our front door once a year, always lurking around the perimeter of a
room, there but never quite present. He didn’t smile as easily as Army, or
crack jokes like Trace. I never felt safe enough to wrap myself around his leg,
torturing him until he gave me a brownie like I did with Dallas, and he was
never around to protect me like Iron.
And while I knew he was my parents’ first and was raised in our house, I
started to wonder more as I grew older if he’d ever really lived with any of
these people. I wasn’t the only one he seemed cold to.
He reminded me of our mother. There was a cloud following them both,
and you can still see it in his eyes, even now. There’s something that wasn’t
as easy for them as it was for the rest of us.
And when I was eleven and he hit me, it devastated me more than losing
both of my parents within eight weeks of each other that previous year. I
cried and cried, not because the spanking hurt, but because I felt hated.
Because he hated me.
At least that’s what I thought until later that night when I found him
sitting at the kitchen bar, his head in his hands as he quietly cried in the dark.
He never apologized, but he never did it again. And over time I came to
understand that my oldest brother was only twenty-three that night, and
twenty-three is still so young. That he was suddenly in charge of three minors
to feed and clothe, a mountain of debt, and the prospect that life would never
be more than this for him. That even when we grew up, Iron would always be
a problem, and Army and Trace would be bringing babies into the world they
couldn’t support on their own. Macon would be the one everyone turned to,
because he was the “adult.” He always took care of us. You always felt
lonely in a room with him, but you were never alone, and if we took anything
into this world, it was that.
We didn’t know if he loved us, but he would always stay.
I could rely on him like I never could my mother, and I craved his
approval and respect like I never did with my father. I look around the table