Awkward Meet Normal

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Annabelle:

I was wiped by the time everyone left. We watched as his mother walked down the sidewalk while the driver opened her door for her.

"Where do they all go when waiting for people to be picked up?" I asked.

"My guy usually goes and gets the car filled up and cleans the windows. Some of them go through fast food. Depends."

Interesting. I pull out my phone and get the Uber app out. I groaned, thinking about all the money I had been wasting on the back and forth. But I had to go home. It was the stupid rule I put in place.

"You are leaving?" Dash looked at my phone.

I nod. "I have to."

"You don't have to," he said, grabbing my phone and clicking it off.

"No. I really do. I have a meeting tomorrow, and I have no work clothes here."

His eyes sparkle. How did he do that?

He grabs my hand. "Let me show you something."

I follow him.

"Dash, what is this?" I asked, looking at the women's clothes hanging up in his closet. Three outfits. Three costly outfits. "Are those boots too?" I said, bending down and feeling them. I wanted them so bad.

"I wondered if there would come a time when you wanted to spend the night but didn't have any clothes."

"Who did this?" 

"I have people," he said.

He has people. Ok.

"I can't. Space."

He stops me. "You said slow, not space. If you want you can sleep in a guest room. You came here for a reason tonight."

"I wanted to see you," I admit to him.

"I wanted to see you too now; how did the hospital go?"

I swallow. This was why I had come here in the first place. To explain what I was thinking. 
"My dad is a completely different person, and he's divorcing my mom."

Dash watches me.

I walk out to his room and pace around. "He's calling me kiddo and telling me he loves me, and it is not like him. He said he wanted to make up for the lost time. That money doesn't matter. That I matter."

Dash walks over to me, making me stop walking, and hugs me. I breathe in and out. The conversation with my father weighed on me more than I knew. 

"You are loved, Annabelle. And, of course, he would want to be around you."

I step back and look into his eyes. "My father isn't that man. My parents don't say I love you. Christmas gifts were handed out in emails some years. I just. I don't know."

"What is it?" He asked.

"I'm mad at him. I'm so damn mad at him I could punch something. He treated me like I was nothing. And you know the sad thing?" I am not ready to cry. I am raging mad. "I think if this had happened before I met you. I would have taken anything he would have given me. I would have been dying for this attention from him." 

I remembered missed games and missed conferences. I didn't have to go because my parents didn't deem it necessary enough.

Dash brushes my hair out of my face.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You didn't do this."

He chuckles. "I'm glad I'm showing you your self-worth, though. You are everything and more. Never forget that. However, your father had a near-death experience, which sometimes changes things for people. Maybe tell him how you are feeling."