Daddies Brat

Leslie

“What is it?” Harper asked. “You didn’t bomb another astronomy test did you?”

“I actually passed my astronomy test,” I whispered. “But I failed all of my core psychology tests.”

The three men crowded around me to read the screen.

“You only failed two of the classes,” Avery said cheerfully. “You got a D in the other two.”ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

“Getting a D is just as bad as failing!” I replied. “I need a C average in my core classes to graduate.”

“Oh.” Avery cleared his throat. “Then, yeah. This is bad.”

I read the grades again, then a third time. Three of those tests were written answers, and the fourth was a term paper. All for my various psychology classes. Material I knew.

At least, I thought I knew them.

Dread crept into my chest, and a deep sense of failure. I had been slacking off. I had allowed myself to get distracted. All of my grad program acceptances were contingent on me not failing any of my core classes. Now my future was in jeopardy.

“I can’t keep doing this,” I said. “Not in my final year at school. I need to focus.”

“Want a beer?” Riley asked.

“Or an edible?” Avery chimed in with a grin.

“I don’t want any of that!” I snapped, more harshly than I intended. “Those are the opposite of what I need right now.”

“Sorry,” Harper said. “If you want me to help you study…”

“I spent too much time studying on astronomy, and not enough energy focusing on the classes that actually matter,” I replied. “I need… I need…”

“What do you need?” Avery asked. “Anything you need, we’ll give you.”

“I need… to be left alone.”

Riley caressed my back. “I don’t think being alone will help you right now. You’ll just wallow in these results. You should…”

“I want to wallow!” I hissed. “There are too many people in my room right now. I need to be alone. Go on. Leave.”

I pointed at the door. Harper grimaced, then bowed out. Avery tried smiling as he followed. Riley looked at me for a long time, and I thought he might try to stay by himself. Then he finally got up and left, too.

The room was quiet after they had gone. The silence stretched for one minute, then five, then ten. I stared at the door, feeling the mechanical parts inside my brain start moving again.

Anger boiled inside of me, and I allowed myself to lash out at those around me. Riley had started all of this by ignoring the rules and kissing me that night. Avery had made things worse by being so friendly and easy to be around. Harper’s support and help with astronomy was a hindrance in disguise, siphoning off my focus from the classes I needed to worry about.

They may have meant well, but the three of them had been a distraction. I had never been the kind of woman who dropped everything else in her life when getting involved with a man-or three. And it definitely wasn’t who I wanted to be going forward.

My career, my entire future, is now in danger. And all because I can’t keep it in my pants.

I let myself be angry for an hour; I even set a timer. When the timer ended, I put on a pair of noise-canceling headphones and got to work studying. I spent all Sunday night at the books, going over the material I had failed. Preparing myself.

Even though I knew the grades, I didn’t receive copies of my tests and papers until class on Monday and Tuesday. By then, the sting had been taken out of the grades and I was able to focus on what I got wrong, and why. I visited my professors’ office hours and talked about how I had done so poorly. One professor commented on how I had seemed distracted in class, and wasn’t participating in group discussions as much.

So it wasn’t just my grades. My distracted nature was obvious in other ways. That only hardened my resolve.

That last office visit ended at three in the afternoon, and then I got in my car and drove home for Thanksgiving break without telling any of my roommates. I arrived at Flagstaff close to midnight, and managed to sneak into the house and up into my bedroom without waking my parents. When I woke up the next morning, the air smelled like pancakes and bacon.

“I’m not ungrateful,” Dad said when I hugged him in the kitchen. “But is there a reason you drove home a day early without telling anyone?”

“I just really needed to be home.”

He smiled and placed a stack of pancakes on a plate for me. “Glad to have an extra day with my favorite daughter.”

“I’m your only daughter.”

“Details.”

My brother flew in from Miami the next day, along with my grandparents -on my dad’s side-from Nashville. Then our family was all together. The house I grew up in was filled with laughter and joy, warmth and love. We played board games while my grandpa told us stories about my dad growing up-stories we had heard a thousand times before, but didn’t mind hearing repeated. Being around my family helped ground me in reality. It honed my attention, and forced me to focus on what mattered the most. I wanted to be a psychologist. I needed to eliminate all the distractions in my life in order to accomplish that goal.

I did a lot of studying while I was home, too. My family respected that, even when I said goodnight at eight o’clock and retired to my bedroom to review three more chapters from my textbook.

Saturday was my twenty-first birthday. My parents and brother took me out to a bar so they could buy me my first drink. They knew I had partaken in the occasional alcoholic beverage at college, but were more than happy to pretend like this was a first-time for me as we approached the bar and placed our order. And as we had hoped, the bartender asked for ID.

“We were hoping you would card her,” Dad explained. “It’s kind of a special occasion.”

“She’s turning twenty-one!” Mom said excitedly.

“That’s great,” the bartender said, glancing at my ID before handing it back. “But this says your birthday was six months ago, Lauren.”

Dad gave a start. “Lauren?”

“Shit!” I snatched the ID away and grabbed a different one out of my wallet. “That was, uh, the wrong one. This is right.”

The bartender chuckled and held out his hands. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Leslie!” my mom scolded. “Was that…” She lowered her voice as if speaking of the devil. “…a fake ID?”

Dad whirled to face my brother. Mom did the same thing a second later.

“Why is this my fault?!” my brother demanded.

“I will give you ten thousand dollars, right now, no questions asked,” my dad said, “if you can tell me that Leslie’s fake ID didn’t come from you.”

My brother bit his lip, then excused himself to the bathroom. My parents waited until he was gone before laughing.

“What?” I asked. “You’re not mad?”

“Everyone gets a fake ID in college,” Mom said. “It’s actually how I met your father.”

“I was a bartender, and she had the worst fake ID I had ever seen,” Dad explained. “Instead of calling the cops, I got your mother’s phone number.”

“That’s… kind of problematic, Dad.”

“I wanted to give him my number!” Mom replied. “I would have tried getting busted sooner if I’d known it would mean finding the love of my life. When the universe gives you a sign like that, Leslie, you listen.”

I frowned, thinking about how my fake ID had created the situation with Riley. Without it, I never would have gotten into the party… and Riley wouldn’t have had to save me from getting arrested. Was that a sign, or just coincidence?