A Complicated Life [COMPLETED]

Chapter Twenty-Five

Two Months Later

Clawd's Point Of View

"Morning, sweet pea," I said as I walked into the kitchen.

Nicole turned to face me and smiled. "Morning, Daddy. It's still weird to hear you walk down the stairs, you know?" she asked.

I walked up to her and kissed the top of her head. "Yeah, I imagine it would be weird," I said.

She nodded and took a sip of her coffee, an action I found to be very weird. She was ten and drinking coffee. "Can I ask you something?"

"You know you can."

"Are you going out, tonight?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Like, to a bar or something? Are you going anywhere?" she asked.

I frowned and turned to face her. "No. I wasn't planning on it. What gave you that idea?" I asked. She reached across the table and grabbed my phone before handing it to me. I scrolled through all of the texts that had been received in the past half hour. "Ignore that. It's Heath. What more do you expect from that man? He goes out every night," I said as I slid my phone back onto the table.

"So, are you ever going out?" she asked.

I looked at her and sighed. "No, sweet pea. Not to a bar, anyways. I still have to leave the house to go to the store and things like that. Otherwise, no. I'm never drinking, again," I said.

Her smile returned to her face. "Great," she said softly.

"Yeah, great," I said as I turned around to pour myself a cup of coffee. A walked back to the table and sat down across from Nicole. "What big plans do you have for today?" I asked.

"School. And then homework. And then hanging out with you," she said.

"Calvin walking with you to school?" I asked.

"You know it." She looked up at me. "Unless you wanted to drive me?"

"No, I'm good. You can walk with Calvin. I'm not here to take away all your time with him," I said.

"All righty, Daddy," she said. "Question?"

"Answer?"

She laughed. "What's Sin(30)?" she asked.

"What kind of math are you in?" I asked.

"Trigonometry."

"You're in fifth grade," I said.

"Advanced fifth grade. It's a high school course, but we have to take it now. Unless you fail the first assignment, which I passed. If I had failed, I'd be in Algebra 1," she said.

"Who else is in that with you?" I asked.

"Just Calvin. Everyone else is in Algebra 1," she said.

"Go get a calculator, sweet pea," I said.

She glanced up at the ceiling and bit down on her lip. She looked back down at her paper and smiled. "I got it. It's .5," she said.

"Did you just do that in your head?" I asked.

She nodded and wrote down the answer. "Sure did, Daddy. That's what the purpose of elementary is. They teach us how to do things without a calculator."

"Right, normal elementary, not trigonometry," I said.

She laughed. "Pretty much the same thing for me and Calvin. This is normal elementary when it comes to some of the kids in that class," she said.