Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>
I sounded almost desperate, and for a moment, I was.
Hesitating, he nodded his head with a small smile and pulled me into a hug. “Do you want me here with you?”
“Yes,” I replied, wrapping my arms around him tightly. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“You will never lose me,” he replied, pulling away as he looked down at me with a smile. “I’ll call you as soon as I get home. We can plan for another get-together maybe in two weeks. If not sooner.”
“Okay,” I replied softly as he stared at me.
As the elevator doors opened, I watched his eyes slide towards it and then back to me. Nodding without another word, he climbed into the elevator and disappeared from sight. I cared for him–significantly more than I should have cared for him.
With a heavy sigh, I stepped back into my apartment and closed the door, locking it behind me. The room still smelled of Neal’s cologne, and it created a comforting feeling considering everything going on.
Before I got the chance, though, to process everything, the phone rang, and I was scrambling towards it, thinking it could have been him calling me to tell me he was coming back upstairs.
It wasn’t Neal, though.
It was James, and as much as I should have been excited, part of me was slightly disappointed, and I wasn’t sure what that meant.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I said to him, waiting for the cool, smooth, sultry voice he had to wrap around me and wash away the thoughts I was having.
“Nothing. I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be coming up there in a couple of days, and I wanted to see if that was okay with you, after the conversation we had.”
“Of course, it is. That’s not a problem at all,” I replied with a small smile that he couldn’t see. “Just let me know when you want to come up. I’m sure it’ll be perfectly fine.”
“Becca, I know that I’ve f*cked up lately, and there’s a lot that I haven’t explained to you, and I haven’t been fair. But I want you to know that when I come, we’re gonna talk about everything.”
About everything?
“Does that mean that there’s a lot more going on than just Tally being missing?” I asked him, able to hear the tension in his voice as he let out a heavy sigh.
“Yeah, there’s a lot going on, a lot more than I have told you, and I haven’t been completely honest about who I was in my past either, so all of this is going to be stuff that we need to discuss.”
Taking a moment to let what he said settle within me, I cast my eyes around the apartment and thought of the evening with Neal. His scent still lingered everywhere, wrapping around me, making me wish he had come back. “Okay, that sounds good.”
“Did Neal end up coming up to see you?” he asked, and it was a question I had been waiting for him to ask me.
“Yeah, he did. He left, though, for work and other stuff he had to do, so it was nice to just be able to make pizza and watch a movie. He left just a moment ago.”
“Wait, so you’re saying that he stayed the night there?” James said in a rather harsh tone.
“Yeah, in the spare bedroom. It’s not the first time that I’ve slept in the same building as him, let alone the same apartment. We didn’t share anroom or anything. He slept in his room, and I slept in mine. He went to bed long after I did, and he got up and left first thing this morning. He had to get back to New York.”
I wasn’t sure why I felt I had to explain myself to him. He wasn’t my father, and lately, he hadn’t exactly been acting like my boyfriend. This was my life, and if he didn’t want to trust me or know I would never physically do anything to betray him, then maybe we weren’t meant to be together.
As much as I had enjoyed the small conversation James and I had had about him coming up. I felt a little upset he constantly made an issue about Neal being around. I could understand why, though, considering everything that had happened last night. It was quite obvious Neal wanted more with me than I to just be friends.
Accepting Neal wanted me, and part of me wanted him, but part of me was also loyal to James and I didn’t understand why was more than I could do at the moment.
“Fair enough. I’ll see you in a couple of days, alright?” he replied.
“Sounds good. I’ll see you then.”
Hanging up the phone, I ran my hand over my face. Aggravation laced me, but it wasn’t because of Neal, and it wasn’t because of James. It was because I was a mess, and I seriously had to get my shit together and figure out what I wanted.
Two days later, I fell back into a normal routine. The last thing I wanted was to sit around and preoccupy my mind with things I couldn’t change. Instead, I had to focus on school and all the different exams coming up soon.
Like a paper I had to write for one of my classes that was literally almost a mile long.
To say I had a complicated situation would be an understatement. However, the coffee was finer at the cafe down the street from my home, and what better way to study for the long exam than to surround myself with a comforting atmosphere?
I embraced the coziness with coffee, a muffin, and warm inviting aromas of the local cafe.
For someone in my situation—alone–this was the perfect place for me to be. I was glad for the atmosphere, and tapping on my keyboard, I searched for the answer I needed.
At least that was what I was trying to tell myself.
Part of me wished it was a glass of whiskey I was drinking right now, considering how stressed I was. While the other part of me just kept telling me to chug along like the little choo-choo train that could.
What’s that saying… buckle up, buttercup… or something like that?
What honestly was I supposed to do with my f*cking life?
Letting a heavy sigh escape me, I shook my head, pinching my brow as I tried to contemplate what sentence I was going to write that filled the description of what I had to work with.
Why couldn’t things just be f*cking easy for once?
As the chime and chatter of the cafe and the aroma of coffee swirled around me, I tried to find solace. Yet, when a distinctive voice cut through the glitz and glamor of casual conversation and pierced my ears like a never-ending warning, I froze.
“Can you believe it, Tracy? I just can’t absolutely believe that he actually got that little bitch pregnant and then brought her home to me like I was supposed to do something about it.”
Holy f*cking shit.
If my day couldn’t get any worse… it was about too.
Chad’s mother and her posse had just walked into the cafe. Which only meant one thing. Chad was back in town, and if Chad was back in town, his mother was going to be here for the next week, which also brought further complications. Damn my life.
She didn’t notice me at first, and as I tried to bury my head behind my laptop, pulling the hood of my sweatshirt over my face to make myself invisible I listened. “Oh, honey, I know. I feel so bad for you having to be put through this.”
Her friend’s comment made the woman smile a little, and as she did, I couldn’t help but grimace.
I hated that woman. She was an absolute nuisance, and the entire time I’d dated Chad, she saw me as beneath her. But Chad kept me around as if I was the toy he appreciated. It was probably because I was on the Depo shot though, and she knew there would be no way I’d get pregnant by him.
Thank God I never did. I could only imagine how that conversation would have gone.
Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t realize her gaze had landed upon me until it was too late. “Look who it is,” she said as she grabbed her coffee and beelined straight for me with her posse right behind her. “The little slut who thought she could get into my family.”
“Excuse me?” I said with confusion completely taken back by her comment.
The disgusted look that crossed her face as her eyes scanned me up and down did no justice to the anger building within me. “You heard what I said.”
Taking a deep breath, I slid my hood down and closed my laptop, placing it back in my bag as a scoff left my lips before a slow smile appeared. “Barbara, it’s lovely to see you again as well. Did you get Botox done recently? I have to admit your doctor is amazing.”
Wide-eyed with shock, she gasped at the insult I’d thrown her way. Her cheeks turned red as her posse tried to hide their amusement. She had actually thought I gave a f*ck about what she had to say, and that was more than amusing.
“I don’t understand what it is you’re doing here. I could have sworn I heard through the grapevine that you weren’t coming back to Yale this year.”
“I am not sure who you heard that from, but that is definitely not right. It’s my last year, so I will finish with honors as I started. Gotta make sure that I get those grades, and then I will take myself onto bigger and better things. I wish I could say the same for your son.”
Another jab. Her narrowing eyes were lit with fire as she stared at me intently. “Excuse me?”
Speaking up against her wasn’t something I had ever done before, but considering everything that had happened to me lately, I was tired of being nice to everybody.
“Oh, didn’t you know?” I said, faking shock. “I was the only reason your son was passing before. I truly hope he finds someone smart enough to do his work. Lord knows he can’t do it on his own.”
“How dare you!” she exclaimed, drawing the attention from other people around. “To sit there and insult me. Who do you think you are? I came here—”
“You came here to what?” I snapped giving her a pointed look. “I have been here for hours, and you accosted me in this cafe for your enjoyment? Everyone here, including the owner, is familiar with me. I insist you leave and go elsewhere.”
A small smirk crossed her face as if she was looking at me for the very first time. “Too bad that you didn’t show this kind of fire in you before. Perhaps then I would have been more inclined to consider you a match for my son.”
“As much as I would have liked that before, Barbara,” I scoffed with a smile, “that will never happen now. I’d rather be single than with an arrogant prick who likes to beat on women… but what can I say—like father, like son.”
The hushed murmurs of her posse caused her smirk to fall and anger to shoot through her gaze. “I could have you expelled, you know.”
It was my turn to find amusement as I laughed. “You can try.”
There was no point in carrying on the conversation with her, but I would not be the one that yielded in this situation. After a moment of tense silence, Barbara turned and made her way from the cafe with her friends following behind her.
The many eyes of people in the cafe, and their whispers surrounded me.
My eyes cut towards the manager as I mouthed the words, ‘I’m sorry,’ grabbed my things and heading for the door. It wasn’t every day you got to say how you really felt and put a cruel woman in her place.
And as the cool mid-day air hit my face outside, I took a deep breath and exhaled, closing my eyes. “F*cking hell—”
Opening my eyes, I looked down the road, glad Barbara and her posse were far down the sidewalk in the opposite direction from me. I would have to take the long way towards my house, but that was fine. It was better than having to carry on a conversation with that woman again.
Pulling out my phone, I sent James a text message letting him know I had run into Chad’s mother and that Chad was in town. Which should mean Tally was in town as well. There was finally a silver lining of hope to finding her.
‘I’ll be there tonight,’ he replied back, causing a small smile to grace my face.
I could finally see him, and though he would be preoccupied with finding Tally, I could spend some type of time with him. Making haste, I picked up my pace and headed towards my apartment building that sat gleaming against the sunlight in the distance.
I was glad I didn’t live too far away from everywhere I needed to go because walking was something I actually loved to do so I always had an excuse not to drive. If I could, I would be perfectly fine with only using my car twice a month, and that was to go to the grocery store.
Otherwise, I preferred to walk everywhere.
The closer and closer I got to my building, the more an uneasy feeling settled in my stomach as if something was wrong. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but perhaps it was the adrenaline finally subsiding in my system after having that conversation with Barbara.
I walked inside and waited for the elevator behind two other people who seemed to be going up as well, one of them whispering about the different things they had heard going around campus with the head of students. My ears perked to attention as I heard he had been caught doing things he shouldn’t have.