The Way Back | ✓

4.4

Andrew had gotten home early, showered and changed before he went straight to his phone to call Aurora. They talked on the phone for a while before Talia told her daughter to go have dinner with Simon.

"I want the weekend with her," Andrew declared before Talia could get a word out.

"What?"

"I said I want this weekend with her. I could pick her up after school—"

"Don't be silly," Talia cut through quickly. "You have work."

"I'll call it a half day and I'll work extra on one of the weekdays to make up for it. You were the one who said sacrifices had to be made with my work life if I wanted my life with my daughter to go anywhere," he pointed out.

"But—"

"But what? You expected me to turn a deaf ear to that?" Andrew sighed, propping himself back up on the headboard of his bed. "Look, Talia, Aurora means everything to me. She's worth sacrificing work, sleep, money. Anything. I'm willing to put in the hours as you wanted. Now what other excuse are you trying to come up with?"

The other end of the phone was silent but he knew she was still there. Though his words probably did upset her he knew she wasn't angry. She'd have hung up on him otherwise.

"All right," she finally said. "You'll pick Aurora from school. Then what?"

"Then I take her out for lunch and we come back to my flat. She spends Friday and Saturday here. Sunday, I could spend the day doing homework with her and after lunch I could drop her off," Andrew proposed, talking slow with a cautious voice so as to not tick off Talia, who was highly temperamental when it came to issues concerning their daughter.

"That doesn't sound all that bad," she admitted and he grinned, triumph coursing through him.

"What time will you drop her off?"

"Five in the afternoon."

"Four," she argued, and he rolled her eyes for she always had to argue on one thing.

He was going to spend the weekend with his daughter so to trifle with her about the timing in which Aurora got dropped home was a waste of time. "I'll drop her home at four," he promised.

"Good. And if I want to see her this weekend—"

"Really Talia," he exasperated, feeling like banging his head back against the headboard. "You get to spend time with your daughter almost every single day since the divorce. You see her everyday while I don't. Must you ruin this for me also?"

"I am concerned about the safety of my daughter, Andy," she stressed. "I haven't seen your flat since the day you moved. I don't know how it looks like complete with furniture. I don't know if you have Aurora's room even set up. I don't know the state of your place. I am not going to send my daughter to a place of uncertainty."

Andrew could not help laughing. "Do you hear yourself, Talia? A place of uncertainty? You've known me for ten years and you're scared of sending Aurora to an apartment that's literally a fifteen minutes drive from the house? What did I do to make you think that I cannot take care of her?"

She sighed. "It's not what you did..."

"Then what, Talia? You make me question whether I am enough for my daughter, if I'm not trying hard enough when in reality I'm giving all I got but you won't give a response. I need a green light to be my daughter's father. Why won't you give me the green light?"

Gone was Andrew's trepidation and patience, a bitter angriness left in its wake.

"If I want to see her this weekend, can I?" Talia asked at last, her tone matching that of finality which told Andrew that this was a subject she refused to budge on. All he wanted was an explanation and even that she denied him.

"Fine," he huffed, giving up. What other option was there if he wanted to spend the weekend with his daughter?

"Brilliant. I'll come by tomorrow to check out your flat and her room—"

"That's really unnecessary."

"See you tomorrow, Andy," she signed off as if she didn't hear his interruption before she hung up.

Sighing, Andrew dropped his phone on the bed and got up. He trudged from his room to one of the spare rooms, one that had Aurora's stuff. He'd bought a single sized bed and a small wardrobe. The room was far from arranged. He got straight to work, adjusting the bed, putting on one of the two new covers he got the other day when he went shopping which was right after signing his divorce papers. He put up a flower frame and did the finishing touches. He'd cleaned up the room in less than half an hour and when he stepped back to assess his work there was no way he could smile. The room had all the essentials but it looked so bare.

Without a second thought he marched to his room, changed out of his pyjamas and into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt before grabbing his keys, wallet and phone before heading to the nearest department store.

It was only seven in the evening. The shop didn't close until eight. He had time to fix this before Talia had the chance to jump in and steal this weekend with his daughter away from him.