Dear God, I Left Her When I Found Her

"This one, or this one?" Tanya asked me as she clicked on two different guitar tracks we had just recorded onto my computer.

"I don’t know," I answered shrugging and pulled my guitar strap over my head. "They both sound the same to me."

"Yeah, they kinda do, but" she said and sat her guitar down against the wall. "This one, the first one, you used the whammy board in."

I shrugged again. "Maybe you should choose."

"Fine. I will." Tanya clicked on one of them and spun the computer chair around to face me. "The guys are gonna love this song."

"They better." I snorted. "If you woke me up before eight, it better be worth something."

Tanya started to laugh as someone knocked at my bedroom door.

"Michelle." Molly called from the other side of the hallway.

"Yeah?" I answered, too lazy to open the door.

Molly must have realized this and came in.

"You have a visitor." She told me.

"Is it Damien or Nathan?" Tanya asked hopefully.

"No." Molly told her. She should have known. Nathan would have barged through the front door and stormed into my bedroom. Damien would have done the same thing, just more polite, and you probably wouldn’t notice him as much.

"Shoulda known." Tanya mumbled and threw her hands in the air. "No way they'd be up this early."

I sat my Les Paul on the bed and got up. "Work on those lyrics." I said to Tanya.

"Gotcha." Tanya saluted.

I yawned and stretched as I followed Molly out my door. Tanya had woken me up real early this morning. Apparently she had a sudden inspiration for a song that just couldn't wait for another hour.

I still had on my PJ's, and was in no state for visitors; breakfast, maybe.

I rumpled my hair more and pulled my Sponge Bob bottoms up from sagging too disgracefully, and tugged at the Metallica shirt in a half hearted attempt at freeing its wrinkles. I didn’t prevail, but I didn’t care.

I was half way down the stairs when I could just see someone tapping their foot on the carpet nervously. They were sitting on one of the ottoman's. My legs turned to jell-o all over again when I found the landing. It was my father.

In my head I maniacally started laughing because it reminded me of Darf Vader's catch phrase, "I am your father".

I sat down on the couch in front of him. Molly joined me on the other side.

"Michelle," Molly began delicately. "This is your father. He's come here to meet you."

I couldn’t tell Molly that I had already seen him at Chain Reaction last night, and I felt horrible about it. There's a reason why Tanya and I had to sneak out of my bedroom window to get there. My foster parents didn’t approve of my music, they just tolerated it. If they some how found out that I had played live, they'd choke on their pork chops and ground me forever.

"How did you find out about Michelle, Mr. Haner?" Molly asked him, sensing my demons.

He must have seen the way I was holding my breath. "I had seen her name on a musical roster." He answered.

"What musical roster?" Molly asked suspiciously.

My heart gave a frantic flutter, waiting for Brian's answer.

"At her school." He supplied coolly.

"Oh." Molly said, taken aback. "Okay." She leaned back into the sofa. "Well, Mr. Haner, what do you do for a living?"

Here it comes… , I couldn't help but think.

"I'm a musician. I play in a rock band." Brian answered.

"Oh, um, Michelle plays guitar and I think her and her friends are in a little group, also." Molly told him. Maybe she was just happy to find something that him and I had in common.

Brian nodded, careful not to give anything away. I was thankful for that. Maybe he wasn’t so bad, maybe.

"So why are you meeting me now?" I asked suddenly. It wasn’t the real question that was burning inside, but it came close.

Brian's eyes averted directly into mine. It was just me and him, suddenly. I couldn't look away, the connection asked for complete understanding.

"I want to be apart of your life." The connection burned with the echo of his voice. He had been waiting for me to ask him this, or at least something similar to it. "Especially now that I've found out Alejandra was dead."

I blinked, breaking the unspoken connection. He didn’t know she had died?

"Is that why you didn’t try to find me before?" I asked, finally seeing things in a different light.

"Yeah," he nodded, stiff-jawed. His eyes were relieved that I hadn't convicted him of his guilt. His body language said differently. "I didn’t want to come into your life uninvited."

The silence that came was tense and heavy.

"Oh." Was all I said. It was enough to visibly see the wary man's body relax into the arm chair.

"I was wondering if you wanted to come to the beach with me or something." Brian asked, a thin smile playing on his lips. It made him look brighter, attractive in a way. But he was my father, so I wiped the thought away.

"Sure," Tanya said walking down the stairs and into the kitchen. I heard the fridge open.

"As long as I come too." Tanya informed and walked back into the living room with a glass of orange juice.

"I don’t mind." Brian shrugged.

"This is Tanya," I introduced. "My best friend, guitarist, lead singer, and trouble maker extraordinaire." Tanya made a deep bow for him causing us to laugh.

"Happy to make your acquaintance." Tanya said in an overly dramatic voice.

Brian smiled a full smile. "Cant resist your charm."

"Yeah, I know, right?" Tanya said laughing.

Molly laughed. "Molly is quiet the character around here."

I snorted. "And a pain in society's-" Molly gave me a look of warning. "side." I finished mischievously.

"You're the one to talk." Tanya said collapsing half on me, and half on the couch.

"Get off, Tanya!" I gasped for breathe.

"You know you like it." Tanya argued.

"You know I don’t." I heaved at her back.

"Whatever," Tanya mumbled and slid off of me. "You love me." She said smugly.

"Sadly." I sighed.