A/N: Written for the Bonesflashfic challenge on Livejournal. The prompt was 'Pre-series'.
Disclaimer: Sadly, not mine.
Comfort
"I'll be in my room until you realize that the world does not revolve around you and your stupid wedding," Angela shouted, slamming her bedroom door shut behind her. She closed the distance between the entrance and her bed, and collapsed on it. She was thirteen, frustrated, and alone.
She let herself cry until she felt better. This had become too routine. The closer to the date of her mother's second wedding it was, the more she found wrong with her daughter. There was always a new complaint, another reason to yell.
Angela's refuge was her bedroom. It was the one place she could count on to be empty. She was the only one who could stand it's strong scent of paint. The fact was annoying when she wanted to have a sleep over, but helpful when she was avoiding her mother and extended family.
Physically calm, but still emotionally distraught, she found her phone on her desk, buried under a sketch book. The number she called was one she had never intended to know off by heart.
The familiar, perky voice on the other end greeted her on behalf of some big-shot tour manager.
"Where are they today, Sue?" Angela asked without preamble.
"You need to talk to your dad, honey?"
"If I can." While she waited for the receptionist to find the details, Angela felt badly that she always seemed to snappish when she talked to her, when all she'd ever been was kind and helpful.
"Anaheim. You might be able to catch them at their hotel." Angela wrote down the number Sue rattled off, thanked her, and hung up. She stared at the number for a few seconds before dialing it collect, then doodled around it while she argued with the hotel receptionist. No, she was not a groupie. Yes, she really was Billy's little girl. And would he please just connect her to his room?
Finally, the call was put through, and her dad answered the phone.
"Hey, dad."
"Is something wrong, sweetheart?" Even if her dad was guilty of never being around, no one could accuse him of not caring about her.
"Mom is being difficult."
"I always thought of her as a handful."
"Did everything make her angry when she was planning your wedding?"
"There wasn't much planning involved with ours. So that masseuse proposed after all, huh?"
"Acupuncturist," Angela corrected, wishing her dad could see the sour look on her face.
"Whatever." She pictured him shrugging his broad shoulders. "Do you like him?"
"Does it matter what I think?"
"Who's the handful now?" He laughed heartily. "Not only do you look like your mother, you're going to end up with her personality."
Angela disagreed. She would not let her first, impulse marriage fall apart, leaving her young daughter feeling helpless as her father was kicked out and her mother became more stern than ever. If anything, she would be like her father, the artist that loved easily, and was lovable, but difficult to hold on to.
"I hope not," she said quietly, picking up her pencil to recommence her doodling. "So, when can I see you again?"
"We're touring till December. How about Christmas?"
Christmas was a few weeks before the wedding. Angela would need the break. Too bad it was so far away. "Ya, Christmas sounds good."
"I'll call."
"I'll hold you to it."
"Love ya, Angie."
Angela gripped the phone with both hands and reminded herself that big girls didn't cry because they missed their fathers. "I love you, too, Dad." She waited for the line to go dead before she reunited the receiver with it's cradle.
The doodling she'd done looked as Angela pictured her own insides to look like - a heart containing contact information, surrounded by a dark, unorganized mess.