Chapter 1
My eyes peel open to the glaring morning sun streaming through my open window. Damn, that’s bright. I press a hand over my face and let out an unladylike groan as I rub my hand down my face, forcing myself to wake up.
I let out a heavy breath. It’s yet another school day. Fucking great.
I reach over and feel around my bedside table, knocking shit over as I search out my phone. My alarm hasn’t woken me and the curiosity of just how much more sleep I can get is eating away at my curiosity. My fingers curl around the cool metal and I tear it off its charger before accidentally dropping the bastard on my face.
“Fuck,” I grunt, scrambling around to catch the phone before it falls off the side of my bed and smashes against the old wooden floors. It slips right off and I slap my hand down on the side of the bed, trapping the phone under my hand. “Gotcha, you little bastard,” I murmur as I bring the phone back up, being a little more careful not to engage my clumsy tendencies.
I hover it above my face and hit the home button, lighting up the screen. The second the phone comes to life, I fly straight out of bed. “Shit,” I gasp, throwing the blankets back and scrambling around my room.
No wonder I haven’t heard my alarm go off yet. I forgot to set the stupid thing and now I have all of fifteen minutes to get my ass to school.
Just effing great. This is exactly what I don’t need for a Tuesday morning.
I hurry around my room, pulling my sleep shirt over my head and tossing it onto my messed up bed before rushing around my room in the nudie rudie, searching out a clean bra and something to wear before remembering to feed my goldfish, Frog.
Precisely three minutes later, I’m dressed in my only pair of clean ripped jeans, my combat boots, and an old white tank which was stuffed down in the very bottom of my closet. Unfortunately, finding a pair of panties is a little hard and I simply don’t have time to search them out. Lucky me. I guess I’m going commando today.
I hurry down the hallway and look at my shower longingly, knowing I won’t have a chance to have one until after school. Don’t get me wrong, I showered last night, but my hair could really use a good scrub. It’s going on a few days and I’m starting to toe the line between lazy and downright disgusting. Instead, I throw in a little dry shampoo and hope for the best before scrubbing my teeth and putting on some mascara.
Making my way around the house, I throw my books into my bag before I realizing that it’s way too quiet. Something’s off here. “Dad?” I call out before backtracking down the hall and poking my head into his bedroom. It’s not unusual to find him sleeping well past midday after having a few drinks the night before, but instead of finding a lumpy, disaster of a bed, I find nothing.
“Dad?” I call out again, continuing up the hall. He must be in the kitchen.
As I make my way around the living room, my eyes cast out the window and immediately everything makes sense. His big mother effing, Optimus Prime looking truck is nowhere to be seen. He must have booked another job. As well as noticing the missing hunk of shiny chrome in the driveway; I can’t help but take in the drizzle falling from the sky, making the shitty start to the day that much worse.
Dad’s been a truck driver since before I can remember. His truck is his pride and joy, you know, right after me, of course. That truck got him through some difficult times and it’s the reason we’re so close today.
After mom left when I was twelve, he simply didn’t know what to do with me. Did he leave me home alone or did he take me with him across the country for days at a time? He didn’t really have that ‘father’ gene until he started hauling me on his road trips. We bonded like never before and we’ve been close ever since. I guess that was the silver lining of having a wife and mother walk out on us.
If I’m honest, I’d have to say that dad never really got hit with the ‘father bug.’ When mom left, everything went up in flames. I didn’t know how to rely on my dad, and dad, well, he didn’t know what the hell to do with me. We started off slow. He would book jobs that only required a few hours on the road, and he’d take me with him. That quickly turned into overnight jobs which eventually turned into ‘big jobs’. Sometimes we’d be away for weeks at a time. I absolutely loved it, until I got older.