Parachutes Book Three: The Impact

by Takerra Allen

His dollar had never been good enough. That’s how Vin had viewed his life. One monster-ass vending machine displaying countless options and possibilities, until Vin stood in front of it, ready for his turn to pay the cost and get his reward. But his dollar wasn’t good enough. It was too wrinkled or too old and therefore rejected. He was sent to prison at his young age with his wrinkled dollar and regrets.

“No fuck ups allowed. You gotta bring your A-game. You gotta fucking…you gotta care,” the plea clogged his throat. “You got a wife, doc? Kids? You gotta care about her like that. She’s too important to too many people.” To him. She was Vin’s fucking soul.

“It kills me to see you broken. But I want you to love me enough to let me go, baby.” Vin looked like he had stopped breathing.

“I want off the parachute.”

“Lex…I miss you.” Tahli sucked salty tears from her lips. “I know…I know you’ve been watching this whole shit. Girl, my life’s a fucking mess now. I know you…you were counting on me to live the life you didn’t get to.” Tahli confessed to her ceiling. “But I fucked it up. Am I doing the right thing? Because Abby’s jaded and Paige don’t give a fuck even if she tries to.” Tahli snorted in crunchy snot.

“Nah. Fuck Vin as a husband, as a man, and as a mothafuckin’ homie, too, and if you down wit’ Vin? Fuck you, too. Munch? Fuck you, too. Wynter? Fuck you, too. Sophie? Fuck you, too! The kid–”

Lol

“Sometimes the people we think we need so much and that we think we can’t live without, they end up leaving us. And guess what? We live anyway.”

“I believe who our parents were and what they did or didn’t teach us can only carry us but so far. Eventually, we have to take responsibility for the decisions we make and recognize we are fully capable of breaking old cycles and implementing new ones. We are not predisposed to anything,” she spoke more surely than she felt. “I don’t believe, anyway,” Tahli added in a mutter.

‘Grief is the price we pay for love’. Sometimes you have to let the pain run its course.”

“It’s self-sabotage, man. Anytime shit gets a little scary, you go and do something to jeopardize it all. Because deep down, Dalvin, you don’t think you deserve the life you’ve worked hard to achieve. Come on, man. You’ve made it out of the jungle. You managed to escape from the other side of that cage. And now, when shit got out of your control, you’re not running to get a little piece of ass on the side. No, you default to your other vice: violence. You gotta do something to risk putting yourself right back in that cage. Because somehow, someway… you’ve been conditioned to think that’s where you belong.”

To deem someone flawed suggests that you believe they have deviated from perfection. But there is no perfection. People are people.

“That’s why I had to let you go. If we were ever going to have a shot at forever. But I wasn’t going anywhere. You were gonna go and I was gonna stand right there until you found your way back.”

“She made me promise to give you all of the love that she never could.”

“He said one day you would try to run. But to promise him that I was man enough to chase you.”