The Prince

Part 4

Skye hoped and prayed that the drop-off would go smoothly without any scene, but his dad's temperamental nature made certainty almost impossible. It's as if he'd discovered a blind spot in his and Raymond's abilities to predict the most likely outcome. His erratic behaviour made him a loose canon.

Before Jackson could turn to Skye, he was halfway out of the car. Opening his door, he rushed to the passenger side.

"Give your Pappie a hug." Jackson smiled, holding his arms up. The fact that he was holding up all the other cars didn't seem to matter to him at that moment.

"Dad!" Skye breathed through ground teeth. Just when he thought he was safe, he got slapped with a happy dose of reality.

"Come on, give your Pappie a hug before you go." He walked toward Skye, arms still outstretched with his happy smile.

"Dad, not now!" He tried to stop him without drawing too much attention, but people were already turning to look at them.

"Oh, come on. A hug is as good as a holiday and it releases all the happy hormones. I think it was in one of Josh's magazines." He stepped closer, starting to make aeroplane noises as he moved closer to Skye.

Skye looked around him again. The line of cars was getting longer and people were already on their horns trying to move, others getting out to see what the holdup was. Jackson of course was oblivious to the scene he was causing, all his attention focussed on Skye.

"If you don't give me a hug, then I won't stop." He threatened when Skye still didn't move.

He surreptitiously looked around again, quite a few kids had stopped to watch what was going on. Groaning, he dragged himself into Jackson's arms and was immediately enveloped in a death grip.

"Ow, Dad you're crushing me. I think we've hugged enough," he tried to get out of Jackson's arms. Instead, Jackson placed a wet kiss on his cheek, laughing.

"Oh, little one, you are the best part of my day." He gave him one more hug, stepped back, and kept his hands on Skye's shoulders. "I think I'm going to cry."

"No, Dad, don't." He knew all too well about Jackson crying. He did it on the first day of high school and only Raymond could console him. Now he was about to do it again, in public! Forget that, in front of the whole school!

"Okay, come here," he leaned closer to his father, giving him a tight squeeze before letting go. "Now, do you think you can move the car so that..." He looked behind Jackson to see a gaggle of fans fast approaching. " Your fan club is on the way."

"What are you talking about?" He turned to watch a group bearing down on them.

"See you later Dad," he gave one last smile before walking purposefully to the main building. Before going through the doors, he turned around to see Jackson still entertaining the group of people that had started to congregate around him, obviously enjoying himself.

"Now that was something to see," Archer stopped next to him in their homeroom class.

"What?" He snapped, irritated by this morning's display.

"You're Dad? He's always good for a laugh and causing a scene. The parking guard had to ask him to move after half an hour of waiting." She laughed. "And, everybody's talking about it."

"He was feeling a bit down and teary this morning, so I was trying to play nice, but with him, if you give him a finger, he'll take the whole hand, as you know."

"When did you become the dad?" She laughed, seeing the storm brewing on his face. "Okay, okay, there's no reason to be so touchy. It's your dad and we all know that he's a bit... well, one of a kind, at least."

Once the first period was done, Skye got up to drag himself to his next class, when his phone pinged. He was busy reading the message from Jackson when a door suddenly swung open in front of him. The crash caused his phone to fall out of his hand and dead on the floor.

"Well, that's a bad crack." He mumbled to himself, picking up the phone with a sigh.

"Oh, sorry! I'm so sorry, really I'm sorry!" A medium-height, dark-haired boy continued to profusely apologise for the accident.

"Don't worry about it. I was due for a new one anyway." He interrupted when it looked like the apologies wouldn't stop soon.

"Are you sure? I'm really sorry that it happened. I can try and replace it for you." He didn't know where he would find the money and the phone looked really expensive too.  He was getting stressed out by it all and the first week wasn't even over yet.

"Don't stress, it was an accident, really." He smiled at the boy, who was red in the face, his consternation clear.

"If, if you're sure?" He asked again trying not to wet himself from relief.

"I'm sure." Skye smiled again and with a nod, he watched as the boy skedaddled away as if he were in a mad rush. "Well, that was odd," he said to himself walking into the class.

At lunch, Archer came running up to him, her phone in hand.

"Emergency!" She called out when she was a few steps away from him, holding up her phone.

"What now? Did your boyfriend decide to come over, or what?"

"No, this Toady," she held up the phone so that he could see the screen.

"Stop calling me that! We're not in grade school anymore." He took the phone from her to look closely. "Wait, am I seeing right? Twenty missed calls and what, over thirty messages, all from..." He couldn't believe what he was looking at.

"Your loving Dad!" She burst out laughing. "He wanted to know why you weren't answering his calls or messages. Why are you ghosting him, anyway?"

"I'm not ghosting him," he sighed. "I dropped my phone this morning and it's showing more crack than you at a party."

"Wow, you're a funny one!" She poked at him with her finger. "Well, you'd better call him or he's going to come over to check on you." She warned.

"True. Remember the time he came to take me out of class because it was a nice day and he wanted to go to the beach?" He laughed. Jackson had pitched outside his classroom mid-morning and confidently strode in to tell the teacher Skye had to leave. When she tried to argue, he'd turned on the charm offensive to full blast and within five minutes they were out and on their way to the beach.

It was one of the best days he could remember. It was as if Jackson was discovering his childhood all over again through Skye. They'd spent the whole day at the beach, swimming and building sand castles stopping only to eat junk food and ice cream, as much as he wanted. Raymond was less happy when he found out and had both of them brought before the riot police to answer for their crimes.