Tainted Growth (DISCONTINUED)

Chapter Three - Reminisce

Sam's POV
-

"Hi, dad," I muttered as I still had to raise my head up to kiss his cheek in greeting despite my father sitting down at the kitchen dining table. He still smelled strongly of cologne, so I knew he was able to get off work early. I looked down at the table though and saw that he had a bunch of papers scattered around along with his laptop open to some spreadsheet. I frowned, knowing that he just brought his work home just he could be at the house more often.

Lately, my dad has been working a lot lately. A few weeks back we took a trip to Toronto for a whole five days just so we could spend more time together, except once he got back, he found out that one of his head workers quit. Therefore it caused my dad to work overtime, attempting to catch up with his work clients while trying to maintain a healthy relationship with me. Ever since I started to live with him, he made it his first priority in being the dad he never could be my first sixteen years of existence.

Now, I could say we were pretty close. He made sure to take trips with me often, go out when I didn't have practice, went to all of my tennis games, and made sure I had healthy relationships with the people I interacted with. There were still a few things that I didn't know about him, or him not knowing about me, but with time I knew it would get better.

We didn't want a repeat of what happened when I lived with Jason.

"Hi, sweetheart," He said with a smile as he set his work down to look down at me. "How was school? You hungry? There's some leftover pad thai in the fridge unless you'd like to go out later?" At that moment, my friends also casually walked into the kitchen and started to rummage through my fridge as if they owned the place. I rolled my eyes, knowing that they always did this and that's the only reason why my dad stocked it fully. "Hello Savannah, Hello Courtney, sorry I wasn't able to get groceries this weekend, so, unfortunately, I only have produce instead of snacks today."

I gave my father a pat on the shoulder as I moved away from him and towards the kitchen, "It's okay, I'm not that hungry...plus, it's not your responsibility to shop for groceries for my friends." I took a seat at the kitchen island and watched as Courtney sinfully bent over to look through the refrigerator drawers. I felt my cheeks grow hot as I turned to look away, instead of catching Savannah's gaze as she tried not laughing due to my embarrassment.

"What's up, Mr Sumner?" Courtney said casually as soon as she produced three Honeycrisp apples from the bottom drawer. She threw one over to me, where I clumsily steadied it in my hands, while Savannah forcefully grabbed the apple mid-air. I silently wondered if she bruised the poor thing by being so rough with it.

Instantly, Savannah bent over to grab the red pocket knife she always kept hidden in her shoes. She flipped the sharp object open and started to slowly cut chunks out of the crisp apple. I took a small bite out of mine then looked back at my father who was silently shaking his head while smiling to himself.

"I just have a few paperwork to do this evening. Do you three have any plans?" He placed his rather large hands on his keyboard to start doing the work he mentioned, and it kinda looked ridiculous as his hands were almost as big as the computer itself.

Since I wasn't quite sure what my plans either, considering my friends sorta just followed me home, I didn't even bother to answer. Instead, I looked over at Savannah and Courtney, who were already almost done with the apples. I looked down at mine, seeing the puny bite and getting a small sense of deja vu, but shook my head and proceeded to eat the healthy snack.

"Well, this Friday, we were planning on going to this club, so today we're just going to prep young Samantha here in what she's going to wear."

My father's neck stiffened and his fingers stopped typing. I froze as I glanced between them. What were they thinking talking about going to the bar this weekend when I was clearly underaged? They could've at least softened him up, or mentioned that it was an 18+ bar instead of going to headstrong with the topic.