Little Girl Don't Grow Up Too Fast

Permission

 After meeting with Charlotte on good terms and enjoyed it a lot, Carrie still had an uneasy feeling. One of those uneasy feelings was because of her ex, Mike. He needed to know what was happening between the mother and the daughter, even if she couldn't exactly put a label on it herself. He deserved to know. He was her father, and really the only parent figure she had. Carrie wished she had a say, but she knew she gave that up a long time ago.

Carrie ended up getting Mike's number from Mark where she then called him the day after Charlotte had come over. She wasn't sure quite what she was going to tell him. If anything, she wanted Mike's guidance as to where to go from there, if that was anywhere in the first place.

Mike was back at the house for lunch right after his morning practice. Charlotte was at school so he was all alone when he received the call from an unknown number. Curious, he answered it anyways.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Mike. It's Carrie," Carrie said awkwardly, hoping that he wouldn't hang up right away.

"What's going on?" he replied casually.

Carrie's stomach was in knots with the information she was about to pass on, and what she wanted to ask. Plus, it didn't help that the man she was talking to she was so incredibly in love with at one point or another. She had to admit, after all these years, he looked damn good.

"Look, I know I'm not your number one person you want to be talking to but Charlotte came by my house yesterday and we hung out and I took her out to dinner," she blurted out.

"What?! Ive-"

"Ivey brought her over. I had no idea that she was coming. I know you didn't know so that's why I'm telling you this now," she spoke slowly, desperately wanting to make things right. "I don't want to cause what happened a few weeks ago again but Charlotte came to me on her own and she wants to get to know me, and I want to get to know her too."

Mike was so unsure of what all of this endured for him and his daughter's future. He had done so well at protecting her after all of this time, and now she was about to exposed to a lot more than just knowing her mom. He knew that her getting to know her mom was going to come with a lot.

The mother and father of the child made plans to meet for lunch days after their phone conversation. It wasn't a date. It was far from a date. However, there was so much history that it couldn't not look like one. They were in love at one point in time in their lives. She was so in love with him at the time that even though she was drunk that one night, she knew she wanted to give herself up to him because she knew that he was it for her. He was so in love with her that even though it absolutely killed him when he left her that he raised their child the best that he could in a way that Carrie would want. Going into that lunch, it was going to be so extremely hard to dismiss their old love for each other.

Both of them were nervous as all get out to meet each other, and not the way that was expected. After all these, years they had to face each other one on one after all that's happened. Their lives had completely changed as soon as they moved on from each other. Both of them had outstanding success with Mike's athletic career and Carrie's singing career. Everything was different now. This wasn't college anymore. They were grown up living in the real world with high profile jobs.

Even though they both had fame in common, their maturity levels were so different. Mike had to take on the role as single father, and one could only imagine the shoes he had to fit into. On the other hand, although Carrie grew from all of the sickness of depression and was able to cope with the type of the fame and success she endured, she was still independent and had a lot of freedom. There wasn't any common ground between the two there.