Chapter one - guilttripping

I said I'd post the first chapter in a few weeks and it's only been twelve days but I COULDN'T HELP MYSELF.

Right. My first chapters always suck. Face it. But please just brave it because the story will get better. C'mon. Frank the accountant who has no time for his daughter and Gerard the obnoxious jerk taking up all his time. How can you resist?

Read on, my baby skittles. Read on.

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“Shit, shit, shit, shit–” Frank muttered as he stamped his foot down on the gas pedal.

He was late. Really fucking late. And Rosie’s recital was tonight.

He’d been working all day on Mr Banner’s taxes, and his mind was fuzzy from all the numbers. Frank despised his job.

He hated being an accountant so much, but really, it was all he was good at. He could play guitar pretty well, but he’d never had the guts to start a band or try on his own, so as soon as he got out of college, he’d just gone straight for the first dull old job opportunity that came up.

Unfortunately, being an accountant was incredibly time consuming, and it had ended up eating away at all the afternoons he could have been spending with his daughter. Rosie was starting to get upset that he wasn’t spending any time with her, so he’d had to reschedule his appointment with Mr Winters to tomorrow and do Mr Banner’s taxes in a hurry just so he could eat dinner with her.

Frank had only just managed to leave the house in time for Rosie’s concert today, but he’d run into traffic almost the moment he’d left the driveway. And now he was late. Again.

“Shit!” he repeated as the van in front of him slowed to make a turn. He was only a stone’s throw away from the school, but parking the car was proving much more of a struggle than he’d expected.

The van in front of him finally turned, and Frank sped forwards then quickly hit the brakes as he reached the school car park. He parked over two spaces, but really, in a school car park, who was going to do anything about it?

Unbuckling his seatbelt before he had even turned the engine off, Frank scrambled to climb out of the car and slam the door behind him. He sprinted across the playground to the entrance to the school and quickly slipped in at the back of the assembly hall.

Behind the teacher who was introducing the act, in the middle of the orchestra, Rosie sat, violin clutched to her chest, and big blue eyes searching the audience for her father.

Frank sighed in relief– the performance hadn’t started yet. He stood on his tiptoes so he could see her better (and so she could see him), but lost sight of her when the tall man standing in front of him shifted his weight to his other foot, blocking Frank’s view in the process. He sighed.

It was his only choice to jump up in the air to try and catch a glimpse of his daughter (damn his shortness), and, humiliating as it was, it worked.

When Rosie’s eyes met Frank’s, her face lit up, and she bounced in her seat a little in excitement. This was the first one of her concerts Frank had been able to make it to in years.

Frank was probably more excited than Rosie.

He knew she was going to be amazing, and he couldn’t wait to see her play up on stage. And the performance certainly lived up to his expectations. He could hear Rosie’s part throughout the whole piece, and she played beautifully. He was so proud.

After he watched the other acts; the solo performers and a choir of nine year olds singing a song from Oliver Twist, Frank hurried to the row of seats right at the front of the hall, by the stage, where Rosie had sat down after the orchestra had finished their piece.

“Daddy!” she squealed when she saw him approaching.

“Rosie, you were awesome up there!” Frank grinned, lifting his daughter up into his arms.

“I know! I practised loads and loads and I’ve wanted you to see for ages! How come you didn’t come before?”

“I’m sorry, Rose,” he said, hugging her tighter in his arms. “Daddy’s just been very busy with work.”

“Well,” Rosie said confidently, “I think now you’ve seen how awesome I am, you’ll want to come to more of my concerts!”

“I’ll try,” Frank laughed, patting the top of her head.

He meant it, but he had no idea how much worse things were going to get with his work.

----

“Mr Way, I’m sorry, we’ve been through this already!” Frank said, exasperated. “I can’t do tonight, I promised my daughter I would–”

“Iero, look, you can’t just use kids as an excuse for everything,” Mr Way sighed, irritated. “I need this done as soon as possible, and I am your client, so could you please just–”

“I can’t just make time! I spent an hour negotiating with you just so I could have the evening with my daughter, and now you’re trying to take that away from me?”

“You can spend any other evening with your kid, okay? This- this is important. I need this done.”

“Well, I need to spend more than an hour a fortnight with my own child. You don’t understand. I can’t just see her any other time. This is important to me.”

“Look. Either you miss one night with your daughter, or I go to jail and you’ve lost yourself a client and gained yourself a shitty reputation. Please make your decision in the next five seconds or I will hang up.”

“Shit,” Frank muttered, burying his face in his hands.

If anyone found out that one of his clients went to jail because of him, no one would ever hire him again.

He sighed, and reluctantly agreed to work.

----

“Thank you so much for taking her, Skye. I’m really sorry about this. Some important stuff came up at work, and I can’t just walk away or I could lose my job,” Frank said, lifting Rosie’s bags out of the back of the car.

“It’s alright. I just feel bad for Rosie,” Skye said, walking with Frank back up to the porch of her house and helping with the bags. “She misses you all the time, Frank. All she wants is to spend time with you.”

“I know.” Frank raked a hand through his hair. “I love her. But– god. I don’t know what the fuck was going through our heads when we decided to have a baby.”

“We weren’t ready. But we’ve got her now, and she’s so perfect, but so hard to fit into our busy lives.”

“Easy for you to say,” Frank sighed. “You’re only part time, and you get half your money from me.”

“It’s still hard,” Skye said indignantly.

“You should be bloody happy I didn’t just walk away. I thought about it, you know.” Frank was trying hard to be civil, but it wasn’t working. He was just so angry.

He’d realised that he didn’t love Skye and that he didn’t like women at all just before she told him that she was pregnant. She was the one who had wanted a baby, and he wanted her to be happy, so he went along with it. And now he was stuck. He couldn’t just never see Rosie again, but it was hard to force himself to go and visit if he knew that Skye would be there.

“Sometimes I wish you did leave,” Skye shot back.

“You don’t know a thing about me,” Frank said, teeth gritted. “I could never leave her. Not now.”

He glanced down at Rosie, asleep in the back seat of the car. Her eyelashes were still damp with tears, and her cheeks were pink. She had cried so much when he told her that he couldn’t spend time with her tonight, and it broke his heart.

He felt horrible, and wished that she was older so that he could explain it to her. He only had to work tonight so that he didn’t lose his job, because if he lost his job, he wouldn’t be able to provide for her and Skye.

She was only five though, and too young to understand the world of adults. He didn’t really ever want her to. It was too shitty for her. She was too good for this world, really. She was too good for him.

But he was her dad, and he had to act it. He had to try hard to pretend not to hate Rosie’s mother, and he had to try hard to see Rosie in every free moment he had.

He had to be a good role model, and not another example of how crappy the world really was.

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Yay. Sucky first chapter with a cheesy ending. Typical me.

I live for your comments, so feel free to say what you're thinking so far.

xoxo