Three's A Crowd

Fifty | Mistakes and Miss Takes

Third Person's POV:

You ran up hastily to the residential building, nervously tapping on the up button as you messily wiped away your tears.

You didn't know how to feel about this. About him. You haven't seen him for twenty five years and here he is, looking like he had when you last saw him, gray hairs visible on his jaw, the same wrinkle at the corner of his eye whenever he smiled.

He missed everything important in your life, every graduation, every prom, birthday, every date Carter had scared away when it should've been him at the front door. He left. He left you, Carter, and your mother for good, never in those twenty five years had he left a email, or made a phone call, sent a fucking letter, nothing.

Come on, it couldn't have been that hard, could it? He was in the army for God's sake, one of their best. He didn't even try, not even for you...

The elevator doors opened as you stumbled in, carelessly smacking one of the buttons and falling into the corner of the lift. You spread your legs out and tilted your head back in frustration, and anger, and pain, running a hand through your hair, which wasn't even your hair at the moment.

Your breathing erratic and the little makeup you had on a mess as you squeezed your eyes shut, so tight in hopes of slipping away from reality, hoping for unconsciousness to take over and numb the pain, to make you feel and think of just nothing.

Just for a minute of time, you longed to forget.

But you didn't. A little voice crying 'he left us' in the very back of your mind, only growing louder and louder, by the second, screaming so loud that the pain felt physical. That man downstairs was the reason you thought no other man could ever stay long enough for you. That no other man would ever fight for you or even love you. That you were only a mistake.

He made you feel like you weren't enough, that you weren't worth the fight. As selfish as it sounds, he would've stayed if he actually did love you. Did he love you? Did that love ever exist before he had left? What shattered it into pieces? Pieces that made you bleed out the rest of your love for a father? What put out that innocent light of love that you had held and hoped for all these years to come back to?

Where was he when you needed him?

Why did he change his number when you had memorized it the day you realized it was going to take longer 'til you could see him again? Why did he switch Facebook accounts once you were able to have one? Why didn't he just tell you he was leaving that night at the airport? Why did he have to sugarcoat his goodbye with 'I'll see you in a minute'?

Ding!

"Well... this is kinda weird."

You pulled up your knees and hid your face, not caring to look at who found you in such a devastating state, trying as much as possible to quietly sniffle. The man walks in and presses a button on the elevator. Silence fills the elevator as you focused on your breathing, pushing back the thoughts until the person could get off to his designated floor and leave you alone.

Two steps toward you and a muffled shift of clothes sounds right in front of you, telling you that whoever went into the elevator had sat down in front of you. A familiar scent hits your nose, one you could barely even smell in the first place due to the stuffy nose resulted by your crying.

"I don't know what Scarj and Renner showed you back there, but I can cross off water balloons since you're not as wet as a willie."

You let out a soundless laugh, blinking out the tears that had glassed your eyes. The figure gently takes one of your hands and intertwines his fingers with yours, detaching them for a moment just so he could pinch at the tips of your fingers and draw shapes on your palm with his thumb and index finger on his other hand