When Life Gives You Lemons (1.1)

When Life Gives You Lemons

Summary: Sometimes life likes to throw things your way and see if you can handle it. Sometimes you can. Other times you can't. Only time will tell if it's something you can handle. Until then, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

 

Part 1, chapter 1: Incoming (also kind of part 1 of chapter one since this site has a word limit)

Part 1: The part in which daughters are flung on unsuspecting men and lives are severely altered.

 

“Bass! Bass, Bass, Bass Bass Bass!”

            “What?” I snapped as I threw open the door and glared at my best friend, who blinked at me innocently.

            “Can I come in?”

            I scrubbed a hand across my face and nodded, stepping aside to allow my friend entrance. A beat later found the two of us in the living room. My friend, Atty, looked at me and grinned, and I took in the disheveled state of her clothes, and the blood on her collar.

            “Dammit! What did you do this time?” I asked as I surged forward, but Atty held up a hand and shook her head.

            “Oh, you know, men and their bar brawls,” she said dismissively, even as I quirked a brow because she was obviously not a guy. I wasn’t, however, surprised. Atty had a habit of managing to pick a fight with almost every man and woman in a bar. One wouldn’t know it to look at her but she could be quite a handful and useful in a fight despite her slim build and short stature. “I’m fine. And anyway, that’s not why I’m here!”

            “Then why?”

            She flashed me that wide grin of hers, full of excitement. “Because you and I are going to a concert this weekend! Who’s the best friend ever? I am!”

            “How… what…” I spluttered, staring at her. “How did you swing that?”

            “Won it in a pool game,” Atty said, green eyes shining with delight. It was hard to not smile in return – the girl’s mood was infectious.

            “Why am I not surprised.”

            “Because you know of my prowess at pool!”

            “Prowess,” I repeated, quirking a brow at her. “Big word for you.”

            She rolled her eyes. “Why are you so mean to me? I got you tickets, man!”

            I ran a hand through my shaggy brown hair, taming the natural curls. I’d been getting ready to go to bed, since I had an early shift in the morning. Atty always seemed to ruin my well-laid plans. “Sounds great,” I said. “If I can get off.”

            Atty sighed dramatically, flinging herself onto the couch, hand combing through her short, wavy black hair. “You work too much. Boring. No fun.”

            “Well, sorry, but one of us has to do something for a living.”

            “Hey, I work,” Atty said with this childish pout to her lips.

            “Hustling pool isn’t a job!”

            “Says who? It pays the bills!”

            I shook my head. “One of these days, kid, you’re going to get in over your head, and I’m not going to help you.”

            “That’s not very nice, friends are supposed to help. And I’m not a kid! I’m two years younger than you!” Atty protested petulantly.

            “Physically, yes,” I said with a smirk, “but mentally… I’d say you were about five. You infant.”

            “Wahhhh!” Atty cried in a pathetic, childlike wail. “Wahhhh, Bassy won’t play with meeeee!”

            “Oh, shut up,” I muttered, scrubbing a hand over my face. “I’m going to bed.”

            “ ‘kay,” Atty said, smirking again, leaning back into the cushions as she reached for the remote, focusing on the TV.

            I watched her for a moment, but Atty made no move to leave. I shook my head and stomped off down the hallway, grumbling about infants who seemed to think they lived here.

            I wasn’t surprised, though. Atty had a small apartment on the other side of town, but tended to crash here at least three times a week, if not more. Sometimes she never went to his apartment except for a change of clothes. Instead she slept on the couch, hogged the TV, and ate all my food. I would complain if Atty wasn’t such a neat freak that she cleaned everything while I was at work. My apartment never looked cleaner than it did when Atty stayed.

            So, basically, I was using Atty as my maid.

            I just had to feed the brat, too.

            It wouldn’t be so bad if Atty wasn’t a bottomless pit. Ate all my damn food. Pizza was always the first to go. And the coffee.

            I took off my glasses and climbed into bed still grumbling, but fell asleep rather easily, listening to the distant sounds of the TV in the other room.

 

Attison Black was my best friend.

            And by ‘best’ I mean ‘only’, and best by default.

I met her three years ago, when I first moved here. I’d been down on my luck, suffering from a break-up with my only long-term girlfriend and the fact I was let go from my job due to cuts. When I got here, I had enough money only for a run-down apartment in the worst part of town, and enough money to ride the bus around town in search of a job. On one particularly bad night, I went out to get drunk.

            Atty was a bartender there. I wasn’t sure how it happened but Atty got me talking (probably with that damn friendly grin of hers and way too much booze), got me drunk, and then firmly inserted herself in my life. Three years later and I still wasn’t sure how it happened.

            But I was grateful. I didn’t know anyone when I moved here. Atty made the transition bearable, at least. She even got me my current job, due to the fact she knew a guy who knew a guy who put in a good word for me.

            Not that I’d tell her any of that, though.

            Best not to stroke her ego.

 

Two days later, I had to cancel our plans for this weekend. My job demanded my presence. I couldn’t risk saying no because I’d only been working there for about two years now. People still treated me like I didn’t know what I was doing. To be completely solid in my job I needed to have three good years under my belt. Until then I had to do what I could to make the best impression possible.

            I needed the money. I was taking online classes so I could get a degree and thus a better job, but that meant I needed all the work I could get. Atty would understand.

            “Alright,” she said, and I tried to ignore the heavy tone of her voice as we spoke over the phone, “rain check, then.”

            “Have fun,” I told her.

            She snorted. “When have I ever not had fun?” she said, and there it was – that damn grin in her voice, and I rolled my eyes.

            “Whatever, you infant. Don’t hurt yourself.”

            “Is that your very gruff way of telling me to be careful?” she asked, the grin far too evident, and I couldn’t stop the scowl from spreading across my face.

            “I’m hanging up now.”

 

Atty loved the concert. She got me a T-shirt and a CD from there, and raged for days about how unbelievably epic it was.

            She came back drunk and in a sleepy yet good mood. Woke me up when she crashed through the door, and I didn’t even bother asking how she got a key, because she was sneaky like that. She collapsed on the couch and I draped a cover over her, but only because I didn’t need her getting sick due to the AC being across the room, pointing right at her.

            I’m a gracious host like that.

 

Three days later, the phone rang.

            As usual, I answered it with a quick, “yeah?”

            “You sound mean when you answer,” Atty once told me, “you should smile.”

            “They can’t see it over the phone – what’s it matter?”

            “Trust me, dude, you’d get laid a lot more if you smiled when you answered the phone.”

            “Mr. Sebastian Ross?” asked a bored-sounding voice. Immediately I thought ‘lawyer’ and my spine stiffened. I also wasn’t too keen on being called ‘Sebastian’. Despite having arguing against it, Atty always called me ‘Bass’. People at work called me ‘Ross’ or ‘Mr. Ross’. The use of my first name had me a little on edge.

            “Yeah?” I said again. “That’s me.”

            Am I in trouble?

            “This is Roger Clark and I am calling to notify you of Whitney Harrison’s passing.”

            My mind blanked for a moment. Then I remembered Whitney – a girl I had a fling with nearly six years ago. It was at a graduation party, and we were pretty drunk. She was nice enough but I never saw her again after that, so I couldn’t understand why I was being called.

            “Okay… why are you calling me?” I asked, frowning.

            “Mr. Ross, in her passing, Ms. Harrison left behind her only daughter, Lonnie Harrison.”

            “Okay… and?”

            “You are Lonnie’s next of kin, as her biological father,” he said in that same bored tone, like he hadn’t just shattered my reality. “In the absence of her mother-”

            My mind blanked again. Froze. Stopped. Maybe I even stopped breathing, because I couldn’t catch my breath suddenly.

            “W-What?” I stammered pathetically. “I’m… she’s… I’m a father?”

 

“Bass – what’s up?”

            “I just found out I’m a fucking father and I have a daughter and she’s coming to live here.”

            “Be right over.”

 

“When’s she coming?”

            “Three days,” I muttered pitifully, clutching the beer bottle tightly in my hands. “Three fucking days. I didn’t even know I had a kid and now she’s going to be living with me!”

            “Life sucks like that.”

            “I don’t even know her!”

            “You will.”

            And for some reason, I believed her.

 

Atty insisted on driving me to the airport. She also insisted on pushing me forward when a precious little girl stepped off the plane.

            It was the first time I saw my daughter, and I felt nothing. Nothing except sadness, because she deserved so much better than me. Her brown eyes, darker than mine but much more innocent, spoke it all in volumes. Looking at her, all I felt was this emptiness, because this was a life I could have had, if I had known of her existence. A life I wasn’t sure I ever wanted… but I could have had it.

            But I didn’t. I didn’t know about her, and I didn’t deserve her. My life was no place for an innocent little kid.

            “D-Daddy?” she asked timidly, peering at me through those long eyelashes, and something in my heart cracked.

            “Y-Yes,” I said back just as quietly as I knelt next to her, unsure of what else to do. “I’m… I’m your dad. I… you’re Lonnie, right?”

            I can’t even recognize my own daughter.

            In my defense, I had only gotten a blurry picture of her sent to me over the phone, yesterday. I’d stared at it more times than I cared to admit.

            “If you stare at that any more, I’m going to have you arrested for stalking your own daughter,” Atty told me.

            “Yes,” she said, hugging her teddy close to her. It looked worse for wear, suitable for the trash, but it was clear she loved the damn thing.

I forced a smile and patted her on the head, smoothing down the disobedient blonde strands. She took this as invitation to crush my ribs with the tightest hug of my life.

Atty cleared her throat and I lightly pulled away from her.

And then she and I walked my five-year-old daughter out of the airport. When Lonnie slipped her hand into mine, I didn’t say anything.

Instead I gripped back.

It was only when we got to the car that I noticed Atty had taken all of her luggage and had been carrying this whole time. As she stuffed it in the trunk, a wave of guilt hit me, because that was my job. I was her father. I was a parent now, and it was my job to handle her things.

Atty allowed her hand to trail across my shoulders and back as she passed me and headed toward the driver’s seat.

With a sigh I tossed her the keys and settled into the passenger seat.

And if it was awkward and silent on the way to my apartment, no one commented on it.