Okay all, here's another part to my story Luckies. I hope everyone get's some kind of entertainment out of it. Enjoy!
(WARNING! Contains mature language and content.)
CHAPTER 1
I was getting ready to go down
stairs to greet Victoria, when the phone rang.
I was trying to decide if I should ignore the phone or not. I thought it might be important. You never know with my phone calls. So I answered it.
“Yeah?” “Christopher Sterling!
How’s it goin’ old pal?”
I
knew who it was. It was the man who got
me my job. Who helped me start my
career. Sam Thasher. “Sam?”
“How are ya’ my friend?” “It’s
uh, it’s been alright.” “Just
alright?” “Yeah.” “So what’s been goin’ on Chris? How’s the Family?” “Sam, I really don’t have time for this. I have some… things to take care of.”
I hadn’t talked to Sam since before
my divorce. Sam had no idea they
Charlotte and I got divorced. But Sam
knew me better than anyone else. Even
better than Charlotte. He knew
something was going on.
“Really? Well, okay.
But give me a call when everything is taken care of. I have some good news for you. See ya.” -
Sam had hung up. Good news,
huh? I could have used some good news right about now, and coming from Sam, it
must have been really good.
After all that, I heard a “honk-honk”
come from Charlotte’s pickup truck down stairs. It was a 1977 Chevy Silverado.
I fixed that son of a bitch up so many times. I had so much money and sweat
into it, and she had the nerve to take it in the divorce. Then again, she also had the nerve to take
my daughter.
I knew keeping her waiting would
just give her an excuse not to let Victoria stay. Like somehow making her wait 5 more seconds made me a bad
father. “Well, fuck her!” I
thought. I was a better parent to
Victoria than she ever was! At least
when I wasn’t working… Or drinking.
I grabbed my box of Luckies and
my lighter and went to meet them down stairs.
I lived at the apartment on the second floor all the way at the end of
the balcony. There was only one
staircase, so I had to walk all the way down to the other side to get down
stairs.
As I started down the staircase
I pulled a half smoked cigarette out of my jacket pocket I saved from the other
day. I put it to my mouth and quickly
lit it.
I only had three more steps to go
when Charlotte stepped in front of the staircase and stopped me. Arms crossed, one leg extended so her hips were
uneven, and that look. Oh God, that
look. The look she used to give me when
I came home after working the late shift and she thought I was cheating on her. The look she used to give him when I would
wake up early to make pancakes for her and Victoria, and came into the kitchen,
saw flour on the floor and thought it was cocaine. The look she used to give me when she wanted me to do something
wrong. When she wanted me to
relapse. When she wanted me to fuck up.
The look I was so happy I didn’t have to live with anymore.
“Don’t give me that look!” “Where the fuck have you been? Is this how you treat your family? Making them wait out it the cold? It’s like half a fucking degree out here!” She was always making things more dramatic
then they needed to be. But I thought
that was one of the things I used to love about her. She made things interesting, and it was just plain hilarious to
watch her over-react.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where’s my daughter?” “MY daughter is in the truck keeping
warm. I swear to God Chris, if I come
get her and she’s sick, you’ll have hell to pay!” “Woman, I gave you 13 years of my life. I think I’ve paid you enough!”
“You’ll never be able to pay for the shit you’ve put me through!”
Charlotte and I rolled
our eyes simultaneously. Like we were
kids dating in junior high and we were having our first fight. I didn’t want to argue any longer, I was
just ready to see Victoria. “May I
see my daughter, please?” “Oh, where
did all the manners come from? Maybe if
you had manners when we were married you wouldn’t have to live an entire state
away from your daughter in the middle of fucking nowhere now would you? “
Charlotte and I used to live in
Fulton, Pennsylvania. After we
divorced, Charlotte took Victoria up to New York to live with her parents, and
I went back home to Ohio. Good old
Youngstown, Ohio. It was a shitty town, but there was nowhere else in the world
I would ever call home.
Charlotte always liked to pretend
they were rich, just because her parents were.
So of course she ran to them.
But I didn’t have mommy and daddy to run to. My mother had died 6 years ago, and I never gave a shit what
happened to my dad since he never gave a shit about me at all.
Charlotte was just getting more
aggravated with me, so she decided to start yelling. “Damnit Chris! I can’t
beli-“
I wasn’t about to listen to another
useless lecture. And I wasn’t about to
get yelled at in the freezing cold. I
just wanted to see Victoria. So before Charlotte could finish, I turned it back
around and shouted back. “JUST GIVE
ME MY FUCKING KID!!” Most of the time it
wasn’t easy, but I could always shut her up one way or another. And I could always yell louder.
Shocked at my tone of voice, and a
little off guard, Charlotte let out a sigh and answered. “I told you, she’s in the truck.” Without saying another word, I walked
over to the truck. I took a few more
puffs of my cigarette, and then threw it on the ground.
Charlotte smoked. And I knew Victoria knew she smoked But I wanted to try and hide all the bad
parts of me. But that was impossible.
When I got to the truck, I saw her
through the window. There she was. She had wavy, light brown hair underneath a
green hooded sweatshirt. With
headphones on, mouthing the song she was listening to while she was texting
someone on her cell phone. She had
changed so much in a year and a half, but she was still the same. The same beautiful girl I helped
created. The one thing I actually did
right in my life.
Not wanting to interrupt her, I
tried to softly tap the window. But she
didn’t look. So I tapped again, this
time louder and longer. She took one
headphone out of her ear and slowly looked over at me. I gave her half a smile, and waved, but she
just looked at me like she didn’t give a shit.
She was either scared, or angry.
He couldn’t tell. After a brief
staring contest, she but her headphone back in her ear, and continued texting. She was defiantly angry. I wasn’t surprised. I hadn’t seen her in a year and a half. But I felt like there was more too it then
just that. There was something else
making her angry. Maybe it was
something her mother told her on the nine hour trip down from New York. A woman can talk a lot of shit in nine
hours.
With all those thoughts in my
head, I started to get pissed. So I
walked over to Charlotte. She was
leaning against the building smoking a cigarette. Her brand was Virginia Slims.
I hated the smell of Virginia Slims.
To me, it was the ultimate stench of bitch.
With my anger growing, I placed my
hand on one side of Charlotte against the wall behind her, and leaned in. In an angry, yet quiet voice, I asked her; “What did you say to her on the way down
here?” Charlotte was annoyed with
my approach. She took one last drag of
her cigarette, and threw it down.
Before answering me, she forcefully broke through the barrier I tried to
make with my arm. She leaned in, and
put her face up close to mine and answered.
“I didn’t say anything she didn’t already know.” Hearing that answer just infuriated
me. So I got even closer to her and
asked; “WHAT DID YOU TELL HER?” This
time, Charlotte looked concerned.
So she let out a sigh in anticipation of what she was about to tell
me.
“I didn’t say
anything. And neither did she. She hasn’t said a word to whole time we were
in the truck. I kept trying to get her
to talk, but not a sound. Honestly
Chris, I can’t say I blame her. She
used to be such a daddy’s girl, but what do you expect? She was pretty much ignored. She used to write you every day.”
The anger I had before quickly
changed into sadness and disappointment.
I just dropped my head in shame.
I leaned against the building, and lit another cigarette to help ease my
pain. “I know. I still have all the
little letters and drawings she made me.”
“But after the
last time she saw you, she’s been… distant and angry, but completely normal in
every other way. She hangs out with
friends, does her homework, and watches TV.
But every time I mention you, she shuts down. To tell you the truth, that’s the biggest reason I brought her
here. I know we’ve had our issues and I
know all I’ve done is made things worse, but I can’t stand the thought of Tori
hating you.”
I froze. I heard exactly what she had said, but somehow I didn’t
understand. “Wait! What?!” Did Charlotte say my daughter hated
me? My baby girl. I didn’t understand it. I refused to believe it! I simply couldn’t accept being hated by the
only true and beautiful thing in my life.
I was trying to cope with the shock
of it all. I stopped smoking my
cigarette, just holding it now. I swallowed the huge knot in my throat and
answered. “She said she hated
me?” Charlotte was choking back
tears, and trying to keep her voice to continue their conversation.
“I told you, she hasn’t said
anything. It’s obvious how hurt she
is. We divorced when she needed us
most. And you didn’t answer any of the
letters she sent or any of the phone calls she made. Not to mention, you canceled the last three times she was
supposed to stay with you.”
After he I told he wasn’t allowed to
see her, I thought that was it. I
thought I was never going to see her again.
So yeah, I ignored her. I gave
up. I got drunk. I had tried so hard to get her back, but
nothing worked. I didn’t know what else
to do. Charlotte was rewarded full
custody because of my drinking problem.
The judge gave me one year to get my act together and work on getting
sober. They said they would check on me
and decide another court date to talk about maybe giving me joint custody.
I didn’t think I would be able to do
it. I didn’t think I would ever see
Victoria again. So I ignored her. I didn’t want to be reminded of the things I
had lost. I just wanted them to
disappear so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting hurt again. But life just doesn’t work that way now does
it?
After nine months of being drunk,
worthless, and daughter-less, I knew this was no way to live my life. I couldn’t just let her go. There was no way I could forget her. So I did what I had to do. So the last three months of that year, I sucked
it up and got sober.
Charlotte and I had another court
date. I was rewarded joint
custody. After all that was taken care
of, Charlotte and I had planned several times to have Victoria stay with me,
but every time work seemed to get in his way, and the drinking slowly crept
back. So she quit trying. I don’t know why, but Charlotte never told
the court I started drinking again.
Maybe she had more faith in me than I thought.
Victoria had no idea her parents
stopped trying to give her a more stable life.
So without a thought, she kept writing and kept calling. But I didn’t answer. I ignored her again. She figured her father didn’t care about her
anymore, so she stopped caring about him.
Finally, one day I made the plan to
have Victoria stay with me from September 20th through New
Year’s. Charlotte never thought it
would work, since it never was successful before. But she thought she would give me one more chance. Just one more chance to show her and
Victoria I was the father she disserved.
I remember when Charlotte told me she was pregnant. We had just been going out for a couple
months. I was 18 and she was 17. We were young, but so in love. Unfortunately people don’t just stay together because of love. It takes more work than that, and we just
didn’t work that hard I guess. But I
promised myself the day I found out I
was going to be a father I would be nothing like my own father! I promised to be there for my kid until the
day I died. I broke that promise. And I broke it more than once. But this time is different. This time, I can’t fail. Because if I fail, I don’t just fail my
self. I fail my family. We might be fucked up and broken, but we’re
still a family. And I’m not willing to
let that go. I’ve been waiting my whole
life to be a good father to Victoria, and now here she was, finally. After a year and a half of silence, she was finally here. And I
wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but what ever was going to happen I was
willing to face with my daughter.
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