It took a long time to get to the train station; the car was nearly filled with Coke cans and twinkie wrappers. Normally, I wouldn't eat so much junk, but when I get nervous, I need the sugar and food to keep me distracted. Our car seemed to drive on endlessly, my eyes watching the road disappear underneath the car in a mindless daze. "Would we ever get there?" I think as I jiggle in my seat, my knee moving up and down in anticipation. I twist my sapphire blonde hair around my finger, and pull as hard as I can just to see how long I can endure the dull pain.
Before I can get lost in my thoughts, my mom pulls into the parking lot, and closing my eyes, I listen to the tires roll across the asphalt, the crinkling sound bringing upon a wave of nostalgia from my early childhood. I used to listen for that sound when I would sit waiting for my father's old pick up to come speeding down the drive way every day after school...but those times were over.
We stop and my mother turns off the car, unbuckles, steps out, closes the door, and is looking at me through the glass of the car window in less than six seconds. I open my eyes and slowly get out of the car, and an empty can of soda rolls out as I do. She raises her brow, but didn't say anything as she picks it up and tosses it onto the vinyl backseat of our dusty car.
She pulls me toward the station, and I slink as slowly as I can move and still be moving. My gray/white flip flops drag across the ground as if there is a magnetic force that is dragging them back to the core of the earth. She gives a quick glance back towards my sagging shadow with an evil glare. I can feel it's burning gaze yet I ignore the order and continue on with my sulking.
My face turns into the color of a ripened tomato. My breathing became shallow and ragged, but somehow I pull off an aura of unconcern.
And then he appears in a blue t-shirt and worn out jeans with a Metts baseball cap thrown onto his messy, untrimmed brown hair. My father. The one man who had deserted me. The one man who had said fifteen years ago that he would never leave to my mother on the steps of that church. The one man who I had waited for so many months, weeks, days, hours and seconds to pull through and always make it out on top. The one man I would never call "dad".

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...