Roman and Dylan

Chp. 2

D

    "Dad? Dad?" The small boy ran up to his father's side with a bright smile.

"Look what I found in the yard." He held a long worm in between his fingers.
"Dylan go away, I'm busy." his father spoke with a stern tone.
The man typed quickly on his keyboard and tucked a pencil behind his ear.
He mumbled something, as he seemed to be deep in his thoughts.
"C'mon dad, can you just look?"
8year old Dylan flung the worm up in the air in an attempt to catch it, but it accidentally landed on the keyboard of his father's computer.
The typing stopped and the man realized he messed up in his progress.
"Damn it!"
Dylan panicked and tried to pick up the worm before his dad could say anything else, but it was too late.

"Why can't you just leave me alone?!"
His face was red with anger, but it quickly faded as his eyes set on Dylan's frightening visage.
The man rubbed his eyes and sighed deeply.

"Please Dylan, just give me a few minutes to work. Then we'll go do something together, ok?"

Dylan held his head down.
"That's what you always say." He said forlornly.
His father rubbed his eyes in frustration, and
watched his son walk away, heading out the front door to play alone.

-

I took a drag from my cigarette before flicking it to the ground and squishing it with my shoe.

I looked up at the sky and blow out some smoke.
The grey clouds roamed quickly across the sky. God, I hope it rains so I don't have to be here. I lurked in front of a café waiting for my partner to arrive so we could work on our project.

"Hi!"
I turned my attention to the small girl that stood before me.

"Thank you for meeting me here and thank you for responding to my text."

I raised an eyebrow at how she carried herself.
Books held tightly to her chest with her head held down, refusing to make eye contact.
"Yeah. Sure."

Memories from last night surfaced quickly as I remembered lying in bed staring at the ceiling listening to my favorite song, Daddy Issues by The Neighborhood.

I waited for my mom to get home with food to eat because I was dying from refusing to eat that slop, they'd served earlier at lunch that day.
My phone dinged which startled me a bit. Nobody ever texts or calls me anymore, especially after being expelled.
I reached for my phone and saw an unknown number, simply forgetting that I gave it to that girl in my last class. After she bombarded me and begged, I gave it to her.

I decided to ignore my phone.
Minutes later it dinged again, and I drew out an exaggerated sigh. I picked up the phone and saw the same number again but decided to see what they said.

"Hello! It's me, Roman."
"Please meet me at Frog's Café downtown, after school, so we can work on our project."

I scrunched my nose in confusion. I have no idea where that place is.

"Where the hell is that? I have never been there." I responded.

" 341 Chestnut St. right by the big red building with the graffiti all over it." She texted back quickly.

"I'll try to find it."

I closed my messages, and now here we are. She was lucky I found the damn place. I was ready to bale if I couldn't.