|7| Shitty Father

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Brooke's POV

    "Oh, no! What are we doing here again, daddy," Cayleigh shrieked.

    "You have to get your teeth cleaned, Princess," Cayden told her, trying to calm her down.

    "But I thought we already did that the last time," she said throwing her two hands up in the air.

    "They have to clean it more."

    "Ughhhh!"

    Once we were in the dentist office, I took a seat with Cayleigh while Cayden went to sign her in. She leaned over the armrest of the chair and placed her head against my arm. This poor little girl.

    I wrapped my arm around her shoulders bringing her closer into my side and rested my chin on top of her head. "You okay," I asked trying to bring her as much comfort that as I could.

    She shook her head and buried her face into my shirt. "I don't like it here very much. The noises that the machine makes is so loud. The thing they put on my teeth feels weird. And the doctors look so scary when they put their masks and glasses on their face. I hate it here."

    "I know, Princess. But all of that is so your teeth can be clean. If you don't clean your teeth very good, it could start to hurt very much and you don't want that, do you?"

    "But I do clean my teeth. I brush it every single time. Even when I don't have school."

    I laughed at her explanation. "That's good. You're supposed to brush it every single time, even when you don't have school. You know, the more times you brush it, the less times you have to come here."

    "Really?"

    "Yes, silly girl, really." I reached into my purse and pulled out my phone and earphones. "Here," I said giving the items to her. "Why don't you listen to some music on Pandora while they work on your teeth. That way the machine won't be as loud as it usually is."

    Just as she was grabbing the items from me, a lady walking through the door from the back and called her name. "Come on, baby. It's your turn," Cayden told her while walking back to us from the sign in desk.

    She slowly slid off her chair to walk over to him. Just as she was about to pass me, I stopped her. With her facing me, I brought my two hands to each side of her face and rubbed her cheeks with my thumbs. "You're gonna be okay. It'll be over before you know it," I reassured her.

    She gently nodded her head and continued to walk to Cayden. Just as they were about to walk through the door that led them to the rooms in the back, Cayleigh dropped Cayden's hand and ran back to me. She grabbed my hand and started pulling my arm to make me stand up. "Come with me. Please, Miss Brooke," she begged.

    I looked over at Cayden to make sure it was okay with him that I joined them before I stood up. He smiled and nodded at me. Thank God he did because I would have made him explain to her why I couldn't go in the back with them if he didn't.

    As we walked into one of the rooms, the lady told Cayleigh to sit in the chair. "Dr. Greene will be right with you guys," she announced as she exited the room.

    "Miss Brooke, can you open your phone for me," Cayleigh asked as soon as she was settled on the dental chair.

    "It's unlock your phone, Cay. Not open," Cayden corrected her.

    "Can you unlock your phone for me, Miss Brooke."

    "Click the circle button, then push the numbers 2, 7, 6, 6, 5, 3," I instructed her.

    She followed my directions then placed the earphones in her ears, blocking us and the rest of the world out.

    "How come she has your phone," Cayden asked me.

    "She told me that the noises scare her, so I figured if she's listening to music or something, it'll block it out. Maybe it'll also distract her from the hands and tools that'll be all up in her mouth," I shrugged at him.

    "Good idea," Cayden mumbled.

    He shook his head and turned to look out the window. He was obviously having a silent conversation with himself.

    Was it something I said? Did I do something wrong? Was letting her go on my phone without her dad's permission overstepping my boundaries or something?

    Of course it was. No parent in their right mind would be okay with some random person letting their child go on their phone without consent.

    But I'm not some random person. He wouldn't have invited me to her appointment if I was. And if he had a problem with it, clearly he would have told me, right?

    Just ask him Brooke, stop being a weenie. You know you're just gonna keep arguing with yourself about it until you find out anyways.

    I nudged him with my elbow. "What's up? Did I do something wrong?"

    He looked over at me. "No, you didn't do anything."

    "Then was it something I said?"

    "No, Brooke. You didn't do or say anything wrong. Okay," he said slightly irritated. I softly pushed his back forward a little so that he was leaning at a 45 degree angle. I bent over my arm rest and looked behind his back. "What are you doing," he asked, still with his out of nowhere attitude.

    "Just checking to see if I could reach the stick that you have shoved up your ass."

    He smiled at me while shaking his head. "You didn't do anything. I promise."

    "Then what's wrong."

    "It's nothing."

    "Is that really how you want to start off our friendship? By lying to me?" I sarcastically placed my hand over my heart and gave him a faux shocked look.

    "You're so dramatic. You know that, right?"

    "Yep, and if you don't tell me what's wrong I'm gonna teach your kid everything I know."

    "Okay, okay," he joked as if I was threatening his life. "I'm just mad at myself for not thinking about letting her listen to music while they worked on her teeth."

    "So you're mad at yourself because your not a genius like me," I teased. "I don't get it."

    "Are you really a genius if you don't get something?"

    "Yes! Now get to the point."

    "Okay. It's just, we've been here three other times before this one and every single time I had to sit in this chair while I watched her cry. This is the first time that I've ever seen her sit comfortably in that chair over there. I knew she hated it here. From what the dentist told me, it's normal for kids her age to be afraid of being here. But not once did it ever dawn on me to ask her what specifically it was that she was afraid of. I just thought, you know, being afraid of the dentist came with being four. Like, fuck, how much more of a shitty father could I be?"

    I placed my hand on his knee that was closest to me. "Cayden, you're not a shitty..."

    "Father," he finished for me. "Yes, I am. Throughout my whole life, whenever one of my coaches told me I was performing horribly, the first thing I would ask them is what I needed to do to fix it. If I got a bad grade on one of my assignments, immediately I would ask my teacher what needed to be done so I can get a better grade on the next one," he vented. "But when my daughter's afraid of going to the fucking dentist, not once do I try and figure out what I need to do to make her less scared the next time she comes."

    "Cayd, she's your first kid. All parents don't know what to do when they're on their first kid. They even made a commercial about it. You've been going to school for almost your whole life. You've been playing football for probably even longer. You already know what's expected of you when it comes to excelling in those things. You've only been a father for four years."

    "This isn't the only thing that makes me a shitty dad, though. There's so much other fucking things, Brooke."

    "Like what?"

    "Like how for half the year, she practically comes second to football. During the season, she spends more time with my parents than with me. On school days, she doesn't see me from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm. She goes to bed at 8:00, so she technically only has two hours of actually being able to have any type of interaction with me. Saturdays are game day, so she only has like half the day with me. Sundays are Theo's day, which they both look forward to throughout the week so no ways am I gonna take that away from them. And when I have away games, she literally doesn't see me for two or three days."

    "So what are you saying? That you wanna quit football?"

    He shook his head again, as if trying to shake certain thoughts out of his mind. I wonder if he realizes that he shakes his head a lot. "You know, I've asked myself that question more times than I can count. And I always end up feeling more and more pissed at myself when I end up not going along with it. At first it was because playing football and having Cayleigh was too exhausting. Especially when she was a newborn. Now it's because it's taking all my time away from her."

    I placed my hand on his knee. "Do you know how proud you make that little girl over there, Cayden," I asked pointing at Cayleigh with my other hand. "Do you know how much times I've heard her say that you're the best football player in the whole world? Or how you're gonna be so famous one day that people are gonna want to take your guys picture while eating chicken nuggets at McDonald's. Or how she wants to go to school everyday so she can be super smart and go to big people school just like her daddy."

    A smiled quickly appeared on Cayden's face but disappeared just as fast. "That's because she's still so young. She doesn't realize yet that all my time is being used up on what I want to do, not what she wants to do. And one day when she does see that she's being put on the back burner behind football, she's gonna think that she wasn't important to me and that I don't love her. And it eats me alive knowing that one day, she's gonna put herself through that. Because that couldn't be farther away from the truth at all."

    "Cayden, I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news but even if you quit football tomorrow and spend all of her waking moments with her, there's still a chance that she gonna question your love for her. It's a little faze that all girls go through in their life called puberty. It's at that stage in a girl's life when she realizes that she is right about everything and her parents suck no matter what."

    "I'm guessing you're all too familiar with this little faze?"

    "Yep, it was the best two years of my parents life," I cheerfully said sarcastically.

    "Only two?"

    "It was more like three but they didn't know that their little angel was doing bad things in that first year?"

    "Bad things like what?"

    "Never mind. It's not important right now. We're getting off topic. The point is, you're not a shitty dad. Cayleigh is one of the best students at TAP, academically and behavior-wise. Don't tell anyone I said that." I gave him a stern look. "Do you think a shitty parent could produce a child like that. A single parent might I add."

    "A shitty single parent who has two great parents with enough money to hire a great nanny could."

    "Jesus," I scoffed at him. "If you really do decide to quit football maybe you can go on to become a lawyer or something because you got this whole arguing thing down on lock."

    "That's because I strongly believe in my case."

    "Fine, you're a shitty dad. Is that what you want me to tell you? That if you quit football you gonna have all the time in the world for her. But wait, you won't have all the time in the world because you'll still have to put time aside to go to class and do your homework. I mean, unless you decided to quit that, too, which in turn will eventually show her that quitting is okay."

    "Okay, okay, I get it."

    I put my hand up in his face signaling that I wasn't finished yet. "Now that you have no college and no football, you have all the time in the world to spend with her. And that's great! Until her 11th birthday where she tells you, 'Daddy, I'm tired of looking at your face. Can you like leave me alone for like three seconds?' And then I'm gonna look at you from the other side of the table, because I am gonna be invited, even if you have to send my invitation all the way to Hawaii, and tell you, 'Welcome to the Faze!'"

    "You are seriously the most dramatic person I have ever met."

"Hey, I was just speaking from a worst case scenario point of view."

    He shook his head. "And by the way, no matter what, I am never going to stop going to college. Dropping out is not an option."

    "What," I mocked him. "Even if one day Cayleigh realizes that she was being put on the back burner to your education?" He smirked at me. "Look, I know you truly believe that football is interfering with you being able to raise Cayleigh and I understand where you're coming from, 100 percent. But I honestly think that it doesn't make you a bad dad. I think that you want your little girl to have everything in the world. Including the perfect father. And that right there, is the very reason why your not a shitty father."

    He smiled at me and put his hand on my hand that I totally forgot was still on his knee. Then he intertwined his fingers with mine. "If I were you," I continued to say. "I would continue doing what you're doing. And one day, if she tells you that you're not spending enough time with her, then you make a decision on whether or not you want to keep playing football."

    I tightened my grip on his knee a little. We stared at each other for a little while longer until his eyes went from my eyes to my lips. His tongue slightly peaked out from his mouth and began to glide across his bottom lip. Nervously, I started to chew on my bottom lip, a habit that I always had whenever I got anxious. Bringing his free hand up to my chin, he gently pulled my lip out from my teeth using his thumb.

    He slowly began to lower his head. He looked into my eyes, which was right at my eye level now that we were both at the same height. His eyes were at a bright green with tiny specks of brown and gold here and there. So light and beautiful. His eyelashes were long and curled at the end, every girls dream lashes.

    There was a small space between my lips and his full, soft-looking ones. A space that I needed to disappear. He obviously wanted it gone, too, because he quickly leaned forward and smashed his lips into mine.

    Just as I was about to open my mouth to deepen our kiss, I heard the door knob turn and quickly pulled my mouth away from his.

    "Hi, thanks for waiting," Dr. Greene said as she walked through the door.

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