𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐖 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐓; nipsey hussle

𝟏𝟖 | 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐅 𝐁𝐀𝐃 𝐍𝐄𝐖𝐒

"Why in hell you didn't tell me he woke from his coma?!"

A PEACEFUL AND QUIET silence filled the home office of her father's. With little to none of movement, he respectively sat within his office chair behind his dark oak wooden, executive-style desk with his reading glasses slightly below eye level. John's attention was submerged into an unknown book, causing him not to respond to his daughter's outlandish greeting.

"Did you know the oldest surviving banknotes have stemmed back as far as 1375?" John continued, "That's longer than I can even imagine," he spoke while slowly turning the page of the book that mimicked the size of a series of encyclopedias.

"The oldest surviving bank what? Did you not hear what I just—" Lauren continued, "You know what, I don't even know why I agreed to come here," she voiced throwing her hands in the air as a sign of defeat. Exiting towards the front entrance of her father's office, indescribable mumbled words that John couldn't make out released from her mouth in evident agitation.

"Get back here, Nicole," John's stern voice echoes. He removes his reading glasses and folds them in his hand. His arms are crossed before his chest as he now leans along the front edge of one of his many favorite monuments of his home— his desk. Lauren casually stops in her tracks.

Nicole, she thinks.

That was her middle name and also her mother's first. It's been years, feeling more like centuries, since she's heard such name being used to grasp her attention. The thought was nearly comparable as forgetting the name even belonged to her. John didn't settle with the name as much as her mother did in the past, reason being calling his daughter by her middle name allowed his mind to reminisce about the woman who deserted him with a five year-old to raise by his lonesome, the woman he still loved until present day. The couple had been wedded a year before Lauren was born into the world, yet it still feels like yesterday. Though her departure was so sudden and unexplained, every Sunday for the previous twenty-three years he waits for her in the living room of their old home hoping she would arrive just so they can attend church together. She has yet to show.

"Don't call me that," Lauren abruptly spoke, still standing in place. "Well, that is your name, right, sweetheart?" John asks as he lifts himself from his desk.

Lauren says nothing in response. A readable look of disgust displayed on her face. Once was an inseparable bond between a father and daughter has now became a diminishing relationship where Lauren doesn't feel the importance of speaking to her father anymore.

John waves Lauren over, "Look, I'm delighted that you're here and the last thing I want to do is fight with my only child on her second day back home."

Half a year surpassed since the father and daughter has been in one another's presence, and two months of no communication. John needed Lauren to be around more for both of their sake— he wasn't getting any younger and with him getting word about her coming back home for good from her grandmother made him the happiest he's been in a long time. "Can we sit? Talk?"

Lauren sighs a breath of relief, taking a seat in front of his desk. She thought he'd never ask. Her arms were wrapped in front of her chest along with her legs crossed over one another, not making eye contact— staring off into space.

"How have you been?" John asked, twirling his reading glasses in his hand. He continued, "I heard you were back in town for good."

She lightly shrugged, "A man once told me to never ask questions that I already knew the answer to."

John smiled in a sheepish manner knowing that the man his daughter speaks of is him. He ran his fingers through his neck-length hair in thought of a response.