Angel (Love, Daddy 1)

I lean to my right. The pressure from my prosthetic needs adjusting. Finding a specialist that could form fit and teach a six-foot-seven-inch, three-hundred-and-seventeen-pound man how to walk again with the bottom of one leg blown off hasn’t been an easy road.

Erik pushes back from his place behind the desk and steps forward as I start to open the door. I pivot taking one quick look back his way. Squinting into the morning sun as it streams through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“One more thing.” His voice changes, the lightness gone.

He nods slightly and looks down at a thick folder at the corner of the desk. For some reason he can’t meet my eyes.

Our mutual discomfort heightened by the fact that one black boot is sticking out from under the hem of my charcoal gray slacks. Where the other boot should be, there’s just slick, curved metal.

“We settled the last of the claim.” He flips up the corner of the folder, then closes it again. “It’s done. I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I wanted you to know. It wasn’t your fault, but we settled and accepted all of their terms just as you asked. Now, you just need to settle it with yourself, Magnus. It was an accident. You weren’t at fault.”

I sniff. My hand tenses on the door handle, the veins traversing the bones leading to each finger in thick rivers. My desire to turn the knob falters as the words tumble out of my mouth. “Tell that to Sarah Templeton.” My head starts to pound. “Oh wait, you can’t, can you?”

I force my wrist to turn my hand.

The click of the handle, the blast of air as I jerk open the door. I feel like I’m watching the whole thing from somewhere else. The irony of the entire situation is that Sarah’s piece of shit mother came out of the woodwork after her daughter died. Found some TV attorney to take her case of wrongful death against me and the corporation. Erik wanted it to go to trial, but I put my foot down. We paid off that worthless bitch because there was no way I was letting Sarah’s name be dragged through the mud. Her mother did jack shit for her until she was dead, then all of a sudden she was the grieving, long suffering, maternal figure. Sarah deserves some peace, even now. The ancillary benefit of settling out of court was it kept both Sarah and the entire sad event out of the media.

I shoot off one final barb. “Doesn’t feel settled to me.”

Erik shakes his head and looks down, but I finally walk away. I turn the corner out of his office away from the elevators and onto the stairs, sparing us all the forced smiles and averted eyes on my way out.

Chapter Two

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CHASTITY

The sound of breaking glass doesn’t even turn my head anymore. Working as a picture framer, the back room at the gallery is a mixture of nail guns, glass crashing in the scrap bucket, the lame piped in gallery music, and low conversations between co-workers.

My friend Andrea works here with me at Westwood Gallery and Framing. She was a model for a while, and trained as a flight attendant after high school except the airline went belly up before she could start.

We met at the Humane Society on one of my volunteer days and she was there doing some court ordered community service. She made a bad decision one night and egged an ex-boyfriend’s car with four dozen eggs. Found out that was what’s known as a misdemeanor. We bonded over homeless mutts, tragic rescue intakes, and cleaning cat boxes.

Someday I’d love to have my own rescue shelter. Save all the animals I can’t save there.

I was unemployed when we met. Taking care of Mom had kept me busy for the most part, but when money started becoming even more of an issue, she encouraged me to step out. She knew I needed the push. Andrea helped me get the job here at the gallery, even though I had zero retail or picture framing experience. She’s as close to a best friend as I have.

As close to any friend as I have. Moving seven times before I turned sixteen didn’t lay the ground work for building lasting friendships. Toss that in the blender with my facination with Disney princess movies, my voluptous shape, and my brain’s unique way of evaporating my power of speech around strangers, and you can safely say I was far from winning any popularity contests.

Andrea is typing away on her phone standing next to me while I work on a family photo. She looks like a cross between Whitney Houston and Heidi Klum, minus about eight inches in height. Oh, and the freckles. She has a nose full of them, and flawless, deep olive skin with runway-model cheekbones. Yeah, she’s that girl. The one men will break their neck to ogle. And whenever we are together, I’m definitely her wing-man.

Woman.

Wing-woman? Is that a word?

Well, I may be on her wing, but I don’t feel like a woman. I’m grown up on the outside, but not on the inside. Not much about being an adult appeals to me to be honest. I’m tough when I need to be. I can take care of myself and others, but deep inside, I wish someone would take care of me.

The thing that drew me to Andrea at first was when I told her my favorite movie she didn’t laugh in my face. Almost anything Disney will have me snuggled on the couch, wide-eyed with anticipation. But then there’s Beauty and the Beast. I can recite every line in my sleep. Sing every song with gleeful emotion into my hairbrush, hopping from my bed to the floor, spinning around and around. I’m not afraid of a dramatic drop to my knees either for the big finish.

Favorite food? I’d go with cotton candy and cupcakes if it wouldn’t rot my teeth and send me into a sugar coma. I’m a fan of Mac and Cheese as long as the pasta noodles are shaped like cartoon characters or circus animals.

I sleep with more stuffed animals than pillows, and I still have to have a nightlight too. Not just any nightlight either, but the one that casts pink stars around it.

Andrea is giggling softly to her self as I’m working on finishing up framing a collage of family photos. Clipping the fasteners into the back ridge of the frame. Before she needed to tend to her phone, Andrea and I were discussing my most recent run in with our area manager, Eddie.

She tugs the hair tie out of the messy bun on top of her head, flips her hair up and over her head a couple times then puts it right back up flashing me her best mother hen look. “Then what did he say?” She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, making a face like she’s just sucked on a slice of lime. I’d just finished recounting my miserable morning with Eddie. A miserable morning which comes on the heels of a miserable few years.

“He said he wouldn’t tell Julie, but to remember he’s doing me a favor.”