Chapter 9

My biggest fear is that I’m married and my spouse says ‘let’s cut carbs from our diet’ and then we’ll have to divorce because carbs make me happy.

-Cora to Coke

Coke

Cora, despite claiming not even an hour before that she wasn’t good with people, sure knew how to talk her way into the dorm. She also knew how to sweet talk the front office when we hadn’t found Frankie in her room.

Cora explained what was going on, and in a matter of moments, she’d had a list of Frankie’s classes in her hand, and we were striding across the forecourt of the quad on the way to the building where Frankie’s math class was being held for the second hour of the day.

“Do you want to go in there and observe, or do you want me to go get her out?” Cora questioned, her hand on the handle to open the door to the math building.

I thought about that for a moment.

“It says that she’s in there for another half hour before she’s set to take a break, correct?” I asked.

Cora nodded.

“Then just check on her. I want to know that she’s actually in there. Once we know whether she is there or not, we’ll either let her stay if she’s in there or go look for her if she isn’t.”

Cora nodded once and then disappeared inside.

Around five minutes later, she reappeared, hands wrapped around herself tightly.

I frowned. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “I forgot how much I hated school. She’s in there, and she’s sitting alone at the very front of the room.”

I nodded, relieved to know where she was.

I probably should’ve waited to come up here until the end of the day but, telling my rational brain that when my dad brain just plain wanted to make sure his kid was okay was impossible.

I sighed and pointed to a fountain that had a thick ledge around it to sit on. “Want to wait there?”

She nodded, and we walked in silence.

I hopped up first and then watched with amusement as she tried to hop up. Eventually she got it, but she had to scramble for purchase with her feet and wiggle to do it.

“I’m not sure this is meant to sit on,” she muttered darkly.

I snorted, taking a look around at the fifteen other students currently sitting on it. “I think that you’re allowed, otherwise all of these other kids wouldn’t be doing it.”

She huffed. “That’s ridiculous.”

My lips twitched. “So, tell me about your school experience.”

Why did you hate it so much?

“I’ve already given you a little bit of my background. Honestly, it’s probably not anywhere near as bad as my teenage brain made it out to be. I took about sixty college credit hours in high school by the age of seventeen. Seventy-five percent of them I had to actually take at the local community college after school. I pretty much took them from the age of fourteen to sixteen. College boys aren’t really nice to girls that young, and the girls weren’t very nice either. All I wanted to do was be there to learn and to get the credits. The community college I attended, and the times that I attended, were all at times where the classes were mostly full of a younger college crowd—eighteen and nineteen-year-olds. They were all still quite immature, rude and just impossible. Pretty much, it was like I was still in high school.”

I grunted. “I loved high school. Loved college, well, some online classes anyway. Loved the military. It’s hard for me to imagine how one could hate it.”

“Why did you leave the military then?” she asked.

I touched my throat.

“I was a drill sergeant. Was for a while—quite a few years. I yelled—a lot—during my time as a drill sergeant, and I’d gone through a lot, put my body through so much. But…my voice just couldn’t handle it anymore. One day I was yelling at this fresh-faced kid…making him roll in the sand after we forced him to put sunscreen on when his mother had sent him some contraband...”

“Sunscreen?” she interrupted.

I nodded. “Sunscreen. They’d put the sunscreen on—or anything sticky really—then we’d make them roll in the sand. We’d call it a sugar cookie. Then we’d make them do PT with it caked on their bodies. Anyway, I’d been yelling at this kid, and all of a sudden blood started spewing from my mouth as I yelled. It hurt. Bad. But I kept going, worked through it. I went to sleep that night, woke up the next morning, and straight up, I couldn’t talk. Turns out, I’d damaged my vocal cords so badly that it was permanent. What you hear is the end result of that injury. I still can’t yell or raise my voice. That level of my voice is gone—just not there.”

“Wow,” she breathed. “What happens when you try to yell?”

I snorted. “Nothing. I can talk like this, but when I try to raise my voice, nothing but air comes out.”

“Huh,” she muttered. “And you can’t be a drill sergeant without yelling.”

“Correct,” I confirmed. “But I left the military in good hands.”

“How?” She turned on the concrete barrier and reached over to touch the water with one finger.

“My brothers. All of them followed in my footsteps. Three of them are still in, and one of them retired just last year.”

She opened her mouth to continue with that line of questioning, but the doors across the way burst open, and the students started pouring out.

Both of us watched as one by one, the students left the building.

Finally, Frankie exited, and her face was crestfallen.

I was halfway across the forecourt that separated us before I’d even realized I’d gotten off my ass.

“Frankie!” I called, thankful that my voice seemed to carry over the crowd.

Frankie’s head shot up, and the look of pure, unaltered happiness that lit it up made my heart full.

She started running to me, and before I knew it, Frankie hit me.

She wrapped her arms around me tight, and she started to cry.

I felt Cora’s presence, which had been right at my side, fade into the background.

And once it was just the two of us, I felt the loss of Cora’s presence like part of me had been ripped away.

But I decided to ignore it and investigate the why of that particular problem later.

Right now, my little girl needed me.

***

“Cora,” Frankie said. “You bought the property that dad wanted to buy. He was convinced that someone was going to buy it, and then build something noisy on it and wake him up all day and night.”

Cora’s eyes went wide. “Well…if anyone is waking anyone up, it’s him doing that to me. The first night I met your dad, he kept me up for more than three hours by starting his truck over and over again.”

“I remember those days.” Frankie sighed as she dipped one of her fries into her ketchup. “I never notice it anymore, really. He’s done that for as long as I can remember.”

Cora grinned. “He doesn’t do it anymore past eleven at night. And when he does do it, I’m at the opposite end of the house and can barely hear him.”

Frankie snickered, the smile on her face making me doubly happy that I’d brought Cora and come when I had.

“Well, that’s good to know.” Frankie said. “I would hate for him to have a vindictive neighbor when I’m not there to keep him in line.”

I snorted. “Like you could control me.”

Frankie and Cora both laughed.

I waved my hand at the waitress when she passed. “Check, please.”

Moments after paying, Cora stood and Frankie and I both followed suit.

When we arrived outside, Frankie shifted from foot to foot.

“I’m sorry I made you come all the way out here,” my girl apologized.

I wrapped her up in a hug, reveling in the way she still felt so small in my arms despite being almost fully grown. “You’re my little girl, Frank. I’d fly to the moon for you if that’s where you were, and you needed me.”

My eyes caught Cora’s over the top of Frankie’s head, and she gestured that she was going to go sit on the bench.

But before she could completely walk away, Frankie said something that made her pause.

“I’m fucked up, Dad,” Frankie sighed. “This college thing is a whole different ballgame. They don’t care if you come to class, yet they’ll still test you as if you did. They grade harder. They don’t give any homework to help even out the tests. People aren’t nice. My roommate blows…”

I looked at my girl, letting her see my love for her, and said the only thing I could think of at that moment. “Well unfuck yourself already. Go get your roommate changed, and if they won’t change your roommate, then I’ll pay for an apartment.”

She started to laugh.

“I thought you said I didn’t need an apartment at seventeen?”

I shrugged. “I’d rather pay for you to live alone than to have you living with some twat that bothers you.”

Frankie snickered. “I’m already on the list to meet with the advisor. I called her today after your phone call last night. She told me that there was an empty dorm room that nobody was in and that it was mine if I wanted it.”

I didn’t hide the relief on my face. “In that case, let’s go get you moved.”