Girl By The Tracks

A Love Story of Two Thugs

Jax

"Dixie, sweetheart, do you want to sleep with daddy tonight?" I ask my soon to be six-year-old daughter, who looks beyond adorable with her honey ginger coloured ringlets that just touch her shoulders that are covering the short sleeves of her sage green, pixie pyjamas that match her eyes, as we both brush our teeth in front of the cotton candy pink, princess mirror in the attached bathroom to her bedroom.

"Only if you wear more than just your underwear, daddy," my little girl replies as she spits out her minty toothpaste in the sink and I follow her lead. She's already negotiating things which I find to be quite cute.

"Fine, I'll change," I say as I glance at my black boxers, right after she rinses her toothbrush that has a pink cat head on the far end of it as that is her favourite animal and I use an identical toothbrush but in red which is my favourite colour, just to humour the girl and see that adorable smile of hers.

She backs up from the sink that is the same colour as the mirror, so I can rinse both my mouth and brush, and then make my kitten speak in funny voices, saying that nothing is wrong with her daddy sleeping in his black boxers which results in that monkey-like laughter of hers and her saying that the kitten is wrong.

"But daddy, did Jess like when you would sleep in your underwear?" my daughter asks me, catching me completely off guard as I haven't heard that name in years and tried my best to forget it, forget her.

"You mean Jessie, right? The last time you saw Jess, you were almost two, so you probably don't remember her," I say, hoping she mixed my exes up since I broke up with Jessie last year which I have mixed feelings about but she deserved it and I feel nowhere near as terrible compared to how things were left with Jess because I loved her then and still love her now.

"No, Jessie was nice but she was not funny and made us move a lot! Jess was funny, we stayed in one spot, she would sleep in what went under her clothes too and made everyday fun and made you happy!" explains Dixie.

"I know, I'm sorry about us moving so much but that won't happen again because she's out of our lives now because I don't love her," I reply honestly as I don't like to hide anything from my little girl because as young as she may be, she's as much part of this world as I am but I avoid making any comments about Jess as it's easier to ignore your feelings than face them head on, especially since she took off as soon as I reunited with Jessie four years ago.

"I know you are, daddy, she was hiding from the police and wasn't good for us," she replies, not knowing that I'm also hiding from the police, I just did a better job at it and didn't have as bad of a criminal history as she did.

"Sweetheart, your daddy was no saint either, I actually used to rob banks with her back in the day," I explained honestly and as she asks me why and for details, all the memories that I shared with Jessie come back to me as if they're a movie or something.

No, not a movie, more like a prologue of a book because although what I had with her was sweet, incredible and what I needed at the time, that wasn't the focus of the story everyone wanted to read. It was everything that happened before I met Jess, everything that should've stayed in the past as Jess is all I ever wanted my whole future to be about as soon as I met her, but I did date Jessie for another three years when Jess ran away, thinking it was the right thing but the right thing would've been chasing after her.

Growing up in an orphanage with no siblings to guide me, nobody to even ask what happened to my parents because I was found by a gas station and nobody claimed me despite putting a lost baby up on the News which didn't get anyone's attention except for an elderly lady by the name of Helena who owned an orphanage and took care of me there with the other orphans. The only difference was that she had a soft spot for me, treated me like her own and she even named me Billy, which is a nice name, however, not Jaxon which is not my legal name, but the name I go by now which I'll get to shortly.