by Naomi Niles
Chapter One
Harrison
The steam rose from the cup of coffee as I placed it on the table in the kitchen next to a plate of toast and a bowl of oatmeal. My phone sat on the table as I grabbed the morning paper and flipped it open to the first page. I was sure that I was one of the only people to receive the periodical, but I was an old school kind of guy. Before I could digest the first story, my phone buzzed next to my cup of coffee. I smiled when I saw her name flash across the screen.
“Hey, sweetheart. You’re late.”
“Geez, Dad. Two whole minutes. It just turned 8:02.”
“Well, you know I am used to hearing from you at the same time every morning. Once you put an old man like me on a routine, you can’t break it and expect me to be alright with it.”
“Well, Dad, I am sorry. You big baby.”
I smiled. She was the reason I’d worked so hard to build a successful company. Her mother decided that she wasn’t cut out for motherhood, and one year after she was born, she disappeared out of our lives. I was only 18 at the time, so I barely knew what to do to take care of a young girl, but I wasn’t going to leave her. She was my responsibility, and I refused to walk out of her life like her mother did, so I did what I had to do to make sure she was taken care of.
I had only spoken to her mother a handful of times since she’d left. She would call here and there to check on her, but she didn’t want any part of her daughter. After the fourth year since she’d left, the calls stopped coming in. Sarah would always ask about her mother, and I would just tell her that she was at work. I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell her the truth at such a young age, but when she turned 8, I told her the truth. She was hurt when I told her, and I figured she would try to contact her in her own time, but to my surprise, she wasn’t interested.
She said that if she wanted to be a part of her life, she would have made an effort, and she didn’t want to force her to be a mother if it wasn’t in her to be one. I could tell it caused her some pain though, because she was my daughter and I knew her better than she knew herself. She couldn’t hide it from me if she wanted to. Her mother’s absence in our lives strengthened our bond, though. I didn’t know what the hell I would do when it came to raising a young girl, but I figured it out along the way. We bumped heads from time to time, but one thing that always remained was my love for her. She was my little girl. My sweetheart. I loved her to death, and I wouldn’t change one thing about our lives if I had to do it again.
“Big baby, huh? Yeah, I guess I am a big baby when it comes to you. I am spoiled. I just love hearing from my little girl to start off my mornings.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I love talking to you, too, Dad.”
“What? Did you party too hard last night?”
“Party? No. I mean, I hung out with Caroline for a little while, but we didn’t do much. Just hung out around campus with a few friends. That’s it.”
“Caroline, huh? How is she? I haven’t seen her in a few years. When is she graduating?”
“This year, Dad. We are the same age. I swear, you are getting old. We just had this conversation yesterday. I was telling you how we were going to graduate this year and then move out to California.”
I narrowed my eyes. I hated when she talked about moving further away. She went to ASU in Tempe, Arizona, and it was almost two hours away from me. I felt that was long enough and I almost made her stay home and go to a community college just to keep her near me. There was no way that she would have listened to me, though. The thing I admired most about her was the fact that she was a go-getter with an incredible amount of willpower. If somebody told her she couldn’t achieve something, she would go out of her way to prove them wrong. It showed with her 3.9 cumulative GPA that she touted at ASU.
I told her that I didn’t believe she could do it, but it was just reverse psychology. I knew she could, but I knew that if I told her she couldn’t, she would work harder to do it. By the looks of it, at the end of this semester, I was going to owe her a brand new car. That was a small fee for such an accomplishment. “California? Noooo, no. We talked about this, Sarah. Now, I let you got to ASU, and that is far enough. Can't you find a job in Tempe? I know there are a lot of companies that are looking to hire young, enthusiastic people like you.”
“Daaaad, come on. You are not going to spend this whole morning trying to beg me to stay closer to home, are you? Because if you are, then I can just hang up and replay our conversation from yesterday in my mind.”
I sighed. “No, no. I’m not going to do that. I don’t want you to go, but I know that you will. My little girl is growing up and you know I have a hard time letting go. It’s been that way since you had to go off to kindergarten.”
“Oh, Dad, not the kindergarten story again. Really?”
I laughed. “You were walking to class with your little bookbag on your shoulders, and you were holding my hand as we walked through the hallway. You had tears in your eyes and–”
“Dad!”
“–I was ready to turn around and take you back home because I was starting to tear up, too. Then all of a sudden, Ms. Caven came out into the hallway and looked at you–”
“Dad…”
“–And then she asked me which room you were headed to. My God, she was beautiful…”
“Dad! No! Stop! I do not want to hear about how you met my kindergarten teacher and banged her later! Ugh! I am hanging up the phone.”
I laughed out loud. “Oh, come on, sweetie; we are both adults now. Yeah, I had sex with your kindergarten teacher. It wasn’t illegal, but she was smoking hot, and you knew it.”
“I knew it?! Dad, I was barely 5 years old!”
“No, I meant when I told you the story after you got older! Hell, from what I can see, she is still pretty hot now. Married, but still hot, nonetheless.”
“My goodness.” She snickered. “You know what? I am done with this conversation before you bring up any more old flings. I can’t believe how many of my teachers you had sex with, Dad. You are ridiculous.”
“Hey, a man has needs, sweetheart. A man has needs. You just make sure you aren’t one of their needs!”
“And this is where I end the call. I love you, Dad. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Sarah! Are you any man’s needs right now?!”
“I love you, Dad.”
“Sarah!” I paused. “I love you, too.”
Moments later, she ended the call. I thought about redialing, but I knew she was headed to her first class for the day. I looked forward to our conversations every weekday. Besides my cup of coffee, it was the one constant that I needed to get my day going. Afterward, I finished my breakfast, then got myself ready to get to work.
I was usually the first person to arrive at the office. It was the way I set the example for the rest of my employees. If I was the first one to show up and the last one to leave, it showed that I wasn’t afraid to put in the necessary work to keep the business going. Harrison Construction had been in business for the past 15 years, and we had worked on everything from the main buildings downtown through government contracts to neighborhood centers throughout the city. In Cottonwood, Arizona, we were the go-to construction company, and it took a lot of hard work to get the company to where it was today.
My office was on the fourth floor of a small building, 20 minutes away from my home. It was the place where we took care of our administrative duties, and the parking lot housed all of our construction equipment. I opened the blinds and stood in front of the window that overlooked our construction vehicles, thinking back to how we started off with one dump truck, an excavator, and a cement truck, and now, we owned fleets of everything.
Just as I grabbed one of the building plans for a project we had just taken on last week, we were set to begin construction on another large building downtown in just a few days, so I had to make sure we had the necessary manpower to get the job done. There was a knock on my door as soon as I sat down, and befor
e I could give the go-ahead to enter, Brian walked in.
“What’s up, man?” he said with a smile on his face. “We ready to knock this fucker out today?”
“Ready? I was born ready, man. You know it.”
He sat down in one of the leather chairs just before my desk and tossed a honey bun in front of me. “I picked up one for you. Now, I know you are trying to watch your figure because you are a hop away from 40, but you can spare a honey bun.”
I glared down at the treat as it sat on my desk. The glaze seemed to call my name as it sat inside the package. “No, man, I think I’m going to pass on it.” He twisted his mouth to the side, and as he reached for the treat again, I put my hand on top of it. “On second thought, maybe it won’t hurt to take this one in.”
“Jesus, man, I was about ready to check between your legs and see if you still had a pair down there.” He popped open his wrapper and took a bite of his honey bun. He still found a way to get his words from out of his crowded mouth. “So umm, yeah, about that account I told you about. Um, the Lancaster account… If I can close that one for us, then we will be sitting pretty for the rest of the year. That contract is worth almost 100 thousand, man.”
He shoved another bite into his mouth. “Shit. We can all take vacations if we get that. Hell, you can buy Sarah two or three cars for her graduation later this year. She’s still up for that, isn’t she?”
I finally ripped the packaging from my honey bun. “Yeah, she’s up for it. It looks like she will graduate with that 4.0 GPA, too. Shit. She’s gonna want something nice, though and I’m going to make sure she has it. She deserves it.”
“Hell yeah. A fucking 4.0 GPA? Shit. I was lucky to get a 2.5 in my day. If I got a 4.0, I think my parents would have died from a heart attack as soon as they saw it.”
“Either that or just been thankful for whoever you were cheating off of.”
He laughed as he propped his leg over the other. “Yeah, that, too, shit. But I know you’re proud of Sarah. After all she has been through and still managed to bust her ass in school? That is a special girl, man. A very special girl.”
“Yeah, I know it.”
I took another bite of my honey bun as I glanced at a picture of Sarah on my desk. Her long, curly, sandy blonde hair dropped just beneath her shoulders and her eyes were stained with blue like the sky above. She looked just like her mother, Susan, and that was the only reason I couldn’t hate her for leaving as much as I wanted to.
“Harrison? You alright?”
I looked at Brian as he sat in the chair with one eyebrow raised above the other.
“What?”
“I’ve been talking to you for the past minute, but you’re just staring off into space.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m fine, man, I’m good. Just thinking about my baby girl, that’s all. I’m proud of her.”
Chapter Two
Caroline
I sat in the back of the classroom, listening to the professor ramble on about classwork. I looked to the right at Sarah’s seat. It was empty, and the class had started 10 minutes ago, so I sent her a text message to see where she was at. She was close to reaching her 4.0 mark, and if she started missing classes, it wouldn’t help her in the long run.
I slid my phone back into my purse as the professor’s beady eyes peered back and forth over the classroom as he continued in his dry, monotone voice. I couldn’t believe that Sarah managed to maintain an A in his class, because I could barely stay awake throughout his lectures. A few minutes later, Sarah crept into the classroom.
She mouthed, “Sorry,” to the professor as she crept past him and made her way down the aisle to her seat. I fixed my eyes on her, waiting for an explanation as she settled into her seat and hung her purse on the back of her chair. “Girl, you don’t want to know,” she whispered to me.
I scooted my desk closer to hers. The loud screech sent the professor’s eyes in our direction. I smiled. “Um, sorry, Professor Morgan.” He kept his gaze in our direction for a few seconds, silently watching like a nosy neighbor, then continued his lesson. As he continued speaking, I whispered to Sarah, “No, I do want to know!”
“I ran into Bradley a little while ago, and he almost got me to go back to his apartment with him for an early morning, um, sex show.”
“Sex show! Bradley?”
“Yes! I almost went, but I know that Professor Morgan is going to give a pop quiz on this lecture and I couldn’t count on you to take the notes for me.”
“Oh, gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”
The professor cleared his throat in the front of the classroom, causing me and Sarah to freeze. We had waited for a few minutes before we started speaking to each other again. “So, anyway, he was telling me about a party tonight. I think we should go.”
“Tonight?” I looked to the front of the classroom to make sure Professor Morgan wasn’t going to look our way. “No, I can’t. I have to study for a test that I have tomorrow. I haven’t studied shit for that class, and I can’t afford to fail that test.”
“Oh, come on, Caroline! Live a little! We are about to graduate, and then after that, it’s the real world. No more parties. No more staying out all night, drinking. Just regular, boring adults.” She glanced to the front of the room. “And you’ll probably end up marrying somebody like Professor Morgan.”
“Ew, no!” I covered my mouth when I realized that I had spoken louder than I wanted to. A few students around us snickered as Professor Morgan peered at us. He removed his glasses and let them hang from the string around his neck.
“Ladies, is there something you want to say to the class? Please, go ahead. You have the floor.”
“Um,” I cleared my throat, “no, Professor Morgan, I don’t have anything to say… except… that you’re doing a wonderful job teaching this class and I can’t wait to hear more of your lesson.”
Sarah giggled as she hid her face behind the student seated in front of her. Professor Morgan’s thin lips pursed together as his frail body stood in front of the classroom. His sweater hung loosely from his body, and his black tie was tied into a small knot around his neck. After a few moments had passed, he slid his glasses back onto his face and continued his lesson as if he was never interrupted. Sarah smirked as I shook my head, and we kept our silence until the end of the class.
Afterward, we went to grab something to eat before our next class began. Sarah and I had been best friends since we were in kindergarten. We both had Ms. Caven’s class, and I remembered her walking into the classroom with two ponytails on each side of her head and tears in her eyes. Ms. Caven introduced her to me, and from that day forward, we became best friends. She didn’t know much about her mother until she was a teenager. She told me that she ran out on her and her father when she was younger.
I remember the day she came to my house and told me. She cried for a while after that because she felt like there was a side of her that she would never know because of how her mother ran out, but I comforted her the best I could. She had a good father, though. Mr. Zimmer did everything thing he could to make up for the fact that her mother wasn’t in her life. He was at every mother/daughter dance that the school had, and he even tried his hand at doing her hair.
He had help, though, because Mr. Zimmer was always a handsome man. He looked much younger than his age, and the mothers of students in our grades would always flock to him, especially when they found out that he was a single father. I didn’t realize how handsome he was until I was a teenager. Actually, the majority of girls in our high school saw how attractive he was. Sarah used to hate when I joked around about him, but I only did that to mess with her. I knew that as long as she was alive, her father would be off-limits.
“So, are you really going to study instead of going to that party? Seriously, Caroline?” She took a handful of french fries and shoved them into her mouth.
“Yes, I am serious. I am not like you at all. You can get good grades by looking at a few things at the last min
ute. But me? I can study for two days and still get a D on the tests.”
“Well,” she said after she took a sip of soda. “That is more reason for you not to waste your time studying because you will most likely fail anyway.”
I rolled my eyes at her as we sat in the middle of the small campus café. Sarah was born smart, so she could ace tests that she barely spent any time studying for. It was uncanny, and she’d been that way for as long as I knew her. “Listen Sarah, I am not a mutant like you, OK? I can’t magically get an A without studying. So, I’m going to have to pass on this party, but,” I sighed, “I know it is going to be fun and I hate that I won’t be there.”
“Wow, Caroline. So, you’re really going to make me go to this party by myself?” She poked her bottom lip out. “All by my wittle bittle self? What if the monster is out there and he tries to take me?”
“Oh, please, Sarah. I’m sure if a monster decides to take you, it is because you want him to. If not, once he takes you, he will bring you right back once he finds out how ANNOYING you are.”
She laughed and nudged me with her foot underneath the table. “You are a loser! Fine. I’ll just go to this party by myself, and I will put it all over Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook just so you can see how much fun you are missing out on! This is our last year in college, and you want to waste it studying!”
Just then, Bradley and Johnathan walked over to our table. Bradley was on ASU’s football team, and Johnathan played basketball. Johnathan was interested in me, and we had been on a few dates with each other, but as of right now, it was nothing serious. He was tall with a short haircut and a toned, athletic body type. He looked more like a model than a basketball player, and he wasn’t that good in the sport, but his height is what gave him the opportunity. People warned me that he had a bad side to him, but I never saw it. After all, rumors are just that: rumors.
“What’s up, ladies?” Johnathan said as he pulled a chair to our table. “So, I know you two are going to the frat party tonight, right?”
