Bittersweet

Bittersweet: Chapter Twenty- Five

P.S- So, yeah. I didn't get my shit together. Instead, I fucked up far worse than ever than you could ever imagine. I knocked up said farmer's daughter. I'm going to be a father.

P.S.S-Congrats! Try and be better grandparents than you were actual parents, yeah?

This was almost laughable. Austin Burkhalter, a father. I wasn't prepared for this-I would never be prepared for this. Having a child was never something that I'd thought twice about-it was never something that I actually wanted. I had always been borderline...Neurotic about wearing fucking condoms every single time. Women wanted to fuck without one? (Which, there had been plenty over the years. They knew who I was, and they all wanted the same thing: stability). Every single time, I was the one that insisted. Somehow, Elizabeth Hart made me so damn blind and that I'd basically been acting without a brain. Obviously, I knew it would come eventually with someone that my parents picked out for me, but I never actually saw myself as a...Family man.

I wasn't cut out for that. As much as I hated to admit it, my father and me? We were cut from the same cloth. He'd been a shit father my entire life. What if...What if I ended up just like him? I never actually had any desire to find out. You know what they say, like father like son.

My stomach dropped as I thought about it again for the millionth time. I shifted in my seat and swallowed the lump forming in my throat. I broke into a cold sweat and my heart was racing painfully. I felt like I was going to vomit. I swerved off the highway and into a gravel parking lot. Without turning off the truck, I forced the door open and pushed myself out of it. I doubled over until my sweaty hands were on my knees and my face was directed to the ground. Taking deep breaths, I waited for it to spew out of me, but it never came.

Part of me wished that it would come, maybe if I vomited up the contents of my stomach, I'd feel better. Lighter. Not as weighed down.

"Hey Mister! If you barf out there, my daddy's gonna make you get the hose and clean up that shit yourself." A voice called out from behind me, pulling me from my gaze on the ground.

I leaned up, taking a few deep breaths. When I turned around, there was a small girl out in the distance, poking her head out of a glass door of a building with the name Lenora's Sports Bar in bright red lights out front. To be honest, it didn't exactly look like a building. It looked more like a dilapidated shack at best. I look around at the parking lot, making sure she was yelling at me, but it was mostly desolate other than the two trucks parked in the very front.

"Yeah, I'm talkin to you." She said as she pointed straight at me with one hand and the other on her small hip. "You see anybody else in this damn parkin lot?"

I stepped forward once making sure I wasn't seeing shit. There, in my line of vision stood a young girl with a bright red ball cap on her head who was cussing at me like a god damn sailor. If I hadn't been in shock, I would have burst out laughing. This girl was maybe four feet tall and dressed in a pair of overalls and dirty shoes.

How fucking bizarre.

Slowly, I put my hands up notifying her that I'm innocent of any barfing, and take a few steps back. "No barf. Sorry about that." I called out to her, and step towards the truck.

Before I can open the driver's door, she called out again. "Hey! You got any money?"

I glance back over to her, and it looks like she's gotten closer. What the fuck is this? For a moment, I watch her and wonder if I'm about to get shanked and robbed by a girl no older than ten years old. After I get a better look at her, her threatening vibes seem to diminish, and she gives me a toothy grin.