Take Me Away | ✓

» 17

P H O E N I X

My family had never been perfect. Far from it, but all that mattered was that we were there for each other. And it was like that until, one by one, pieces of us started to disintegrate. The first being my dad--and maybe because I'd gotten used to his absence that the last thing I expected was for him to just turn up on the front door.

After my initial shock had worn off I'd, naturally, shut the door in his face. But that didn't stop him from coming back the next day to which I'd made the excuse of taking on extra shifts at the Blitz. Though I couldn't avoid him forever and soon he decided that if I wouldn't go to him then he'd just have to come to me.

So it was now that he was waiting in a booth at the Blitz with me drawing out the task of wiping my hands so as not to talk to him.

"Do you have OCD or something?" A voice cut into my thoughts.

"Huh?" I snapped out of my daze to see Isabel wrinkling her nose in distaste.

"You've been washing your hands for the past five minutes." She pointed to the running tap and my now numb hands.

"Oh." I turned off the water, letting the droplets fall off the tips of my fingers.

"Are you and Jay going out?" Isabel questioned out of the blue.

"What?" I said, a little startled.

"Are you and Jay--"

"I heard what you said," I cut her off but not in a rude way. "No, we're not together."

"You've never like, experimented or anything?"

"No." I frowned, unsure what to make of this conversation.

A huge smile spread across Isabel's face. My answer seemed to really please her. "Okay."

"Why do you want to know?" I asked but probably knew the answer already. She wasn't the best person at hiding things. Especially her feelings for my best friend.

"Just curious." She shrugged, examining her fingernails.

"Right."

"Your dad's waiting for you, you know."

How she knew who my dad was beyond me. "I know."

"Are you going go talk to him?" She said, pulling out her phone and beginning the start of a text. Why she was bothering to still stand here and talk to me was a mystery. Isabel had never been interested in me, or my life. Apart from maybe Jay, but other than that our interactions with each other were rare, barely non-existent.

"I guess I'm going to have to." I sighed. Taking a deep breath, I untied my apron and smoothed down the front of my shirt.

Approaching the booth that my dad was sat in made butterflies rise in my stomach. I was nervous, that much my already sweating palms could say.

"Would you like anything with that?" I gestured to the coffee cup in front of him.

He shook his head, and inclined it forward. "Sit."