Prompt: Write a story about making a decision

When my dad died this past April, we hadn’t spoken in six years. But I could still smell the tobacco that hung on his clothes and breath. I could still hear the Johnny Cash record he played at night, dutifully lifting the needle every time it started skipping on “Cocaine Blues.” I could still see his cup on the table beside him, the glass stained with tobacco spit and the inside littered with sunflower seed shells. I could still feel him ruffling my hair, an act I despised when I was younger, having to fix it again in the mirror every time I left the house. But I longed for nothing more than to feel that now.

Things took a turn when I was eight and my uncle Jaime died in a motorcycle accident. His brother was his best friend.

Two years later, my mom kicked him out of the house after he almost burned it down. The curtains were draped over the space heater he’d turned on and he was too stoned to notice until flames flicked against the ceiling of their bedroom. I’ve only seen my dad cry twice. Once after Jaime’s death and once as he begged her to let him stay.

I was waiting tables at Dennys when Dad started asking me for money. A few months later, I sobbed in the passenger seat of my mom’s beat up Toyota, furious at her, when she told me she was filing a restraining order. He’d broken into our house when we visited grandma the week before.
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I wouldn’t look her in the eye, but she rubbed my shoulder as my body shook. “We can’t fix him,” she told me.