Austin Carlile Is My Father? (#Wattys2015)

Not Good Enough In Truth and Cliché

Sienna

After making two bowls of steaming hot chicken soup, Sienna sat herself on the couch next to Austin. He smiled at her faintly and nodded his thanks, spooning some up and blowing on it so it wouldn’t burn him. Sienna copied her father’s actions tasting the Campbell’s brand of chicken noodle soup. It wasn’t that bad. 

“So you want to know about your mom, huh?” he asked, his husky voice making Sienna jump slightly. 

“Please?” she asked softly. “What was she like when you were together? I feel like she was totally different person, you know? I only knew her from when she was like...with me and I wanna know how she was, and-” She cut herself off, blushing when she realized she was rambling. 

Austin let out a chuckle and sighed. “Aight. I knew you mother when she was...sixth grade? Seventh grade?” he looked thoughtful. Sienna glanced down at her food and shifted the noodles around a little bit. “She was helper of the week, every week...all the time. She and I were friends. Not best friends, but we would sit together during lunch with her friends and my friends.”

Sienna listened to his words, soaking in every detail every minute. Austin laughed. “Ou relationship didn’t start until halfway through Junior year. I had a friend who dated your mother. I used to hang out with really interesting people, in fact, one of my friends recently was released from prison.” Austin perked up. “I should give him a call!” 

Sienna tried to mask her disappointment as he moved further from the subject of her mother, but Austin quickly refocused. “Anyway. Her ex treated her like shit, but in a sense, she couldn’t leave him. I think he was basically holding her in an unhealthy relationship. It’s gonna sound super cliché, but I had a crush on your mother. On homecoming night, her boyfriend, Anthony, made her get dressed up and took her to the dance. I went to the dance with this girl named Amanda. I was surprised that she went with me, seeing how she was extremely popular, and I was...not...” he trailed off and Sienna felt the wrench in her gut, realizing that Austin was referencing him being bullied. “Halfway through the dance, I see Lucy standing alone on the sides of the dancefloor. Amanda had gone to ‘powder her nose’ and it had been a solid fifteen minutes since she had come back. I walked to Luce and she was looking like she was trying not to cry. I asked her to dance and she smiled and accepted.” Austin’s tone softened making Sienna smile. She could almost see a younger version of Austin asking a younger version of Lucy to dance. 

“She and I were in the middle of dancing to Living On A Prayer, when this other guy, Chad came up to me. He was all ‘Dude, Amanda fucking gave Tony a blowjob in the bathroom! Whata-SLUT!’.” Austin’s eyebrow rose and Sienna choked on her food. “So when Lucy found out that our dates were fucking each other, she broke up with him. Then the bullying got really bad. But Lucy was always there for me. She loved me very much and she wouldn’t let something like that break us apart.” Austin rubbed his neck. “And in all honesty, she wasn’t even my girlfriend. What happened was Tony beat me up pretty horribly and she was there, helping me into her car. She brought me to my house, cleaned me up, I begged her to stay, and we ended up having sex.” 

Sienna knew she should probably be feeling uncomfortable, seeing how Austin was telling her about her father and mother having sex, but it’s not like she didn’t know where babies came from. It wasn’t new news. 

“I was gonna ask her to be my girlfriend.” Austin said, nodding. “I was gonna ask her and I didn’t. I called her up to ask her to come over so I could ask her out, but she sounded upset and she told me that we should stop seeing each other.” Austin’s face fell, remembering the memory. “And I was broken. Then she dropped out of school, everyone told me she was pregnant with some pedophile’s kid. I didn’t believe the pedo part, but the rest seemed convincing. I never heard from her again.”