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After suffering the severe whipping of Irene’s ruthless tongue, Mr. Collins hadn’t the faintest idea what to think of me anymore.

For the remainder of our time alone, he just kept to himself, thinking to himself, and when he got bored of that, he got up from his chair and wandered about the apartment... his fancy suit stained with spilled wine, his once tucked gray hair now frazzled and unkempt from an egregious amount of scratching and ruffling... all in all, he was pretty much a soulless husk of the sleek and elegant man he once was.

It was kinda hard to see him, and not feel an inkling of sympathy for the poor man. Probably woke up one fine winter day only to then have his entire world flipped upside down with my unceremonious appearance. The bundle of joy he vowed to protect and cherish her whole life, now he has to willingly entrust to another, a stranger-to me.

Can’t really fault the guy for scrutinizing and criticizing every breath I took, honestly.

“Y’know, all things considered, you’re a pretty amazing dad, Mr. Collins,” I said, watching him run his finger across the shelf brimming with his daughter’s many mementos and achievements. “Can’t have been an easy time raising Amanda to how she is today.”

Beaten and battered by wine and exhaustion, Mr. Collins’ stony facade crumbled and allowed the slightest smirk to slip onto his face.

.....

“More accurate to say that she raised herself, really,” He muttered with great pride. “Still, indeed, wasn’t easy. Probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. That being said... I’ve enjoyed every single moment of it.”

“So take some credit. An amazing girl like her can’t exist without also having some amazing figures in her life.”

“You trying to flatter me, young man?” He spun forward at me, steadying himself from a stagger. “Not the right approach if you want to earn brownie points with me.”

“I think we’re far beyond me trying to make a good first impression,” I said. “You saw me for yourself, heard me for myself. How you think of me is how you think of me. Right now, I’m just being me. You still wanna dissect me then...”

I let my arm finish the rest of my sentence, flinging it up at him for the go-ahead, yet he didn’t go for it for some reason. He stared, he blinked, then he promptly hobbled away toward the closest window, seeming to simply admire falling flakes of snow piling atop the dazzling view of the cityscape.

“I’m not sure what alignment of the stars I was born under for me to be blessed with the fortune of crossing paths with your daughter,” I said, gazing at him through his reflection in glass that almost seemed to be also staring right back at me. “It’s something I think about everyday, everytime I see her, every moment I’m with her-the same question as you-how the hell did I get here?”

He grunted, and briefly, I was unsure if that was the alcohol or acknowledgment.

“She puts me up on a pedestal, tells me I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to her. It’s terrifying, the pressure... trying to live up to the person she sees when she looks at me, to be that guy deserving of her. But it’s like every time I do something that might even the score between us, she goes and does something stupid that just makes me fall for her even more, and I’m back at square one again-trying to live up, trying to be the person deserving of the kind of love she holds for me. The pressure...”

Before I knew it, I was rambling. I didn’t mean to ramble, I started this whole thing off just wanting to say something, anything, because I don’t know-I felt like it. Oh well, guess I felt like rambling now.

“But it’s a good kind of pressure, honestly. The kind that motivates me even harder to try, and one day, I know I’ll definitely get there. No matter what, I will. Because even if I don’t deserve her, at the end of the day, I still want her, and I’ll do anything I can to keep her. She says I’m the best thing-I want to be better. For her, I’ll be better.”

There was probably more I wanted to say that I didn’t say. Loads more. But it’s either I didn’t have the proper words or I simply had too many words.

“So with or without your blessing,” I muttered, reaching my end. “I’d like to be better.”

As usual, Mr. Collins was as unflinching as stone, wobbling, swaying, but deep inside ironclad. His glazed eyes remained peering toward the falling snow, and really I was beginning to doubt if he had even heard me at all, but then he ran his fingers across his rumpled hair until they were spiked, and I heard him give a sigh.

“I told you already. Amanda practically raised herself growing up. At the age of six, she had more initiative and independence than most teenagers do at sixteen. And as she got older, learned more, experienced more, she had pretty much paved the path for the rest of her life. She had ambition, a lot of talent-honestly, apart from her incident, I struggle to even recall the last time I was ever worried about the choices she’s made. Because my Amanda always knows what she truly needs, always knows what she really wants...”

Mr Collins drew himself away from the window pane, a brief lucidity swirling in his bleary eyes gazing straight at me.

“And now she wants you,” He said, heaving heavily as if admitting a truth he’s always denied. “And much to my dismay... it seems that she also really needs you. So, really, young man, whether I like it or not, whether you think it or not... you already are better.”

For that one moment, that one second, it might be my imagination, it might just be the wine talking through him, but I think, I’m certain we might have just shared something with each other there for the first time.

Shared what though-I don’t know. But it sure was something.

And it definitely was something nice...

Then, just as this moment between us showed signs of blossoming. In barged in a ruckus, a foul smell, and the front door was blown wide open, allowing in a walking, talking fumigator of tobacco in the form of Mrs. Collins, closely followed by a near-asphyxiated Amanda still wrinkling her nose.

“Well, well, I hear that a certain unheeding husband of mine was up to no good again,” Mrs. Collins declared aloud, catching sight of me still snug in my chair as she strode deeper into the apartment, wearing an invisible cloud of cigarette smoke around her body. “So far, no permanent harm done, I hope?”

“Sorry we took so long,” Amanda said, smiling warmly as soon as she saw me. “It took a while to find her. Mom likes to round the block, bad habit from her drill-marching days, I guess.”

She could have been in the Atlantic ocean for all I cared. Right then, finally hearing more than just the hiccups and groans of a middle-aged man had me swelling with enough relief to shed tears.

“Wasn’t so bad,” I replied. “We just talked a little, nothing too bad.”

At the sight of his sorely missed wife, some neuron signal must have fired up in Mr. Collins’ brain, because one second he was simply standing there completely lost within his head, and the next I knew, there was a fuzzy streak of fancy clothing dashing across the room that nearly sent Mrs. Collins toppling to the hard floor.

But instead of feeling the surprise that comes with the weighty impact of a fully-grown man, Mrs. Collins only looked the slightest flattered... as her ditz of a husband continued to pull her into his tightening embrace.

“I was looking for you...” He murmured into her clothes, his usual low imposing tone becoming as meek as a mouse. “I was looking out the window, you weren’t there. I missed you.”

So... this is what Amanda meant about her mom being the only one able to control him. This ... was not what I was expecting when she said that. If anything he seemed to spiral even worse. From grouchy papa bear to a cuddly teddy bear in a heartbeat.

“You gotta look a little bit harder than that, honey,” Mrs. Collins cooed, affectionately stroking the matted gray of his hair. “Oh, just look at the state of you... and you promised you’d control yourself. So much for that, hm?”

Amanda pulled a face, carefully shuffling herself past her parents’ public display of affection, and gravitating closer toward me.

“I don’t know how you can tolerate Dad when he’s like that...” She remarked, eyeing her mother with a mixture of awe and a grimace. “He gets so aggressive when he’s drunk...”

“Not necessarily a bad thing,” Mrs. Collins said, swinging her husband’s flaccid arm and mounting it over her shoulder in support. “Not to me, anyway...”

“You like him like this?”

“Come now,” Mrs. Collins gave her daughter a faint smirk. “How do you think you were born in the first place?”

“Mom...” Amanda sunk her face into her palms, and I could feel her discomfort emanating off of her in rippling waves of cringe. “...ew.”

And here I thought my mom was bad.

“And as for you...” Mrs. Collins huffed, shambling and swaying her husband over to the nearest couch. “Take a second to clear your head, then we’ll head back straight back home, alright?”

Mr. Collins flailed his head in response. I guess that was supposed to be a nod.

Seeing the husband and wife pair struggling to keep both pairs of legs steady had me quickly spurring forward toward them and propping Mr. Collins up on his other side.

“Here, I’ll help,” I grunted, shifting his weight onto my shoulder.

“Sorry, you have to see him like this,” Mrs. Collins said, smiling apologetically. “I trusted him to hold his liquor... but it seems he was a lot more worried about you than I thought.”

I just shook my head, no harm, no foul, besides it was his conniving daughter that instigated this in the first place to help me out... so really I felt partly responsible here.

With my aid, we managed to shift Mr. Collins over to the couch, but before I could fully step away, I felt a tug on my jacket-keeping me in place. I tried pulling up, to no avail.

“Mr. Collins?”

“You know what? I agree with you, young man.” He muttered, his grip on my jacket pulling me down within earshot. “I also don’t think you deserve my sweet little girl.”

More put-downs, more doubts. Same old, same old.

Silently, I began to pull away again, but he still wouldn’t let go.

Then as if the night wasn’t already bizarre enough, Mr. Collins flashed me a smile. The subtlest, the barest definition of one, but a smile, nonetheless. He unclenched his grip, slowly raising his hand instead to give me the lightest yet firmest pat on the shoulder.

His smile grew wider.

“Prove us both wrong, won’t you?”