Tolerance || Daddy's Home

Daddies To The Rescue

Originally, I was going to attend the daddy-daughter dance. To chaperone and stuff. At the time I was excited to experience what a daddy-daughter dance would be like. Now I don't have a dad to take.

It was tough watching the poor kid have to stuff her face with cupcake to forget both her dad's abandoned her.

Dad hasn't replied to my recent messages and Dusty... was somewhere.

I wonder what those two are doing.

*———*

At a bar, all alone, contemplating life, sat Dusty. He'd underestimate what true fatherhood was. He was defeated. A simple glance at Brad and he thought he had a winning chance.

Oh, how wrong he was?

Everything Brad did in a day drained the man. From the smallest task as staying in the cones to coming home to a moody, heartbroken teenager.

"Dusty."

The man looked back to see Brad, who looked like how Dusty felt. Dusty stood from his seat immediately shutting down whatever Brad had to say. He already had second thoughts about leaving, Brad was the final push. It was both the admittance of defeat and shame to make him run away from the curly-haired man.

"Come one, Dusty. Where are you going?" Brad asked. He had hopes to convince Dusty as Griff had convinced him to not give up on his kids. He just couldn't understand why the man was so anxious to leave. "I'd pay a billion dollars to take her to that dance. You're just gonna leave?"

"You take her then." The shorter, broodier man uttered.

"I can't take her. Okay? I'm not welcomed after I said I was gonna put a spite baby in her mother."

Brad did feel awful for that. For a lot of his behavior that last few days Dusty has been with them. These four days he had a lot of time to reflect.

"I guess that's out, then."

"Yeah, that is out."

"So it's gotta be you."

Dusty huffed. "I'm sorry, Brad, I just can't do it, all right?"

Again, not understanding Dusty, he fumbled to voice out his scrambled thoughts. "What do you mean, you can't do it?"

Dusty came to a halt to face Brad. "I can't stay inside the cones."

He saw that the minute he had to run around to take the kids places. Dusty believed it would've been as easy as the time he would leave for his adventure and come back to his kingdom. Well, it wasn't.

"Look, Dusty, the cones are there for everyone's safety."

Dusty's metaphor completely went over his head. The shorter man frustratedly explained the metaphor explaining this life was not for him. He wasn't domestic.

"Dusty, come on, what are you taking about? You're organized. You're handy. You make the best cinnamon rolls I have ever tasted." Brad rambled.

In Brad's eyes he didn't see a single flaw in Dusty. He was the perfect, super dad any kid would want to have. And that's the thing, Dusty thought the same, but it's not up to the kids to decided what kind of dad they want, it's the kind they need.

"Those were Cinnabons, Brad. Come on. You can't make rolls like that in a conventional oven." Dusty admitted to which Brad had to say the last word. He knew from the beginning those cinnamon buns were a fake.

"Why would you lie about Cinnabons?"

"Because I wanted to win. All right?" The grip on his bag tightened at his confession. "I wanted to prove that I was a good dad, too, but I'm not."