XIV

"Oh, that's nice of you, but I'm not sure if I can talk right now." Typical. He never wanted to talk, but I was honestly a little surprised that the trend continued even when I had actually been willing to speak with him.

"Why?" I asked, trying to maintain a light-hearted tone.

"You know work always gets in the way," he said, and I rolled my eyes. Using work as an excuse was really starting to become a more than tedious response.

"Yeah, but I just have a few extra minutes before school. I'm always busy after school," I lied. I was never really that busy after school; I just never wanted to speak with him. He really should have been taking advantage of the fact that I had started this conversation and was seemingly more than happy to continue with it.

"Yeah, alright, good point. How's school?" he asked, and I let myself smile a little. Finally, my father was taking interest in my life, even though it was forced.

"It's good. I'm getting ninety-eight percent in French and even though it's the most boring class ever, I got a hundred percent on my last History test," I said, bragging a little.

"Wow. Good for you, M. Are you going to take Spanish at some point? You know, there are lots of Spanish speakers here, so it could come in handy," he trailed off, kind of knowing what my initial thought process was about the fact that he was insinuating I would ever live in Vegas with him again.

"I might. I don't have space in my timetable next year, though, so maybe I'll do something online or something," I commented, trying to keep the conversation rolling and away from the awkward mess it could deteriorate into.

"What are you taking next year?" I was genuinely shocked at the fact that my dad was actually contributing to the conversation as well. The whole act could have stopped at any minute, but I was very impressed.

"The usual stuff; English, Math, and History… And then Chemistry, Biology, and Physics, French, and then Law as well," I replied. Science was kind of my thing.

"That's great. I'm glad you're taking the sciences. Is that what you want to do after high school? You know, I think you'd be a great CSI," he asked. I didn't know how I felt about his last remark. I was kind of happy that he thought I'd be good at his current occupation, but I also didn't want him to assume that I was just going to follow in his footsteps no matter what.

"I don't know, really. I'm really good at chemistry, and science is just cool in general. I haven't thought much about after high school," I admitted. It wasn't a thought that was really that prominent in my mind. There was always too much for me to think about.

"You should start thinking, M, you're going to be graduating before you know it," he remarked and I automatically rolled my eyes. As if I didn't hear it enough from my mother and every single teacher in the school; I was fully aware of what grade I was in and exactly how long I had until graduation. Somehow, I was going to survive without his almost passive-aggressive comments.

"I know."

"Sorry, I bet you hear that a lot." Wow, an apology. I was floored. Might as well have declared me dead; this never happened. Close to sixteen years of my life and I had never heard something even remotely resembling an apology from my dad.

"Yeah, it's fine, at least you're concerned," I offered weakly, not having any sort of clue for how to respond to the first apology I had ever been the recipient of from him.

"You know, we never did schedule another time when you could visit," he said. I suppressed a sigh, but it was still there in spirit as the seconds passed with no response. "How about this weekend?"

"Yeah, sure, that sounds great," I replied. At least I would get to miss a day or two of school. "I'll mention it to mom on the way to school."

"Perfect. Okay, M, I'll talk to you later, but I'm glad we've worked this out." When he said 'this' did he mean our entire relationship? I may have been willing to work past a bit of the underlying (or more like overlying, most of the time) hatred for a bit, as I had almost subconsciously decided to start being a better daughter by calling him, but I certainly hadn't forgiven him for anything. It was just me attempting to be somewhat more mature about the situation, even though I had the right to be as childish as I wanted to be about it, really. The act of me agreeing to visit was probably going to be over-analyzed by everyone; was I finally done with being such an overly-emotional teenager? Surely, that's what everyone would ask, or at least what they would wonder to themselves.

"Yeah. Bye," I said awkwardly, hanging up the phone before I dug myself into an even deeper hole. It wouldn't be that bad, right? I had almost completely patched things up with my mom, so miracles were obviously somewhat plausible. I wasn't willing to forgive him at all; I didn't think that would ever happen in my lifetime. There were too many things that I believed warranted either an explanation or an apology, and I still held a grudge on all of them.

My mother was surprisingly supportive of the rescheduled visit, and had managed to find plane tickets before I could think twice about the situation. I was departing LA on Friday morning, and thankfully Catherine was going to pick me up at the airport again; a drive back from the airport with my father was probably way too much of an uncomfortable situation for anyone to handle. I would be back late Sunday night, which, after long negotiation with my mother, had turned into an excuse to miss school the next day. I was sacrificing my sanity for this trip, so it was only appropriate that I got to take a couple days off in return.

Six in the morning had always felt early to me, but it was especially difficult when my reluctance to leave the city was increasing with every passing second. I had assured myself again and again that I was going to be absolutely fine; nothing could compare to the terrible experience last time, right? Right. In the worst case scenario, I would be stuck in my dad's office half the time, and at least that could resemble something of interest, as long as he wasn't around. My internal ramblings and reassurances made me feel like a terrible daughter, and maybe I was, but maintaining my overly bitter and snarky monologue was keeping me from running far, far away from the airport.

I decided on working on the math homework I was missing at school while I was on the flight. I had learned from a ton of experience that it was best to make myself at least look busy when I was flying by myself, or else I was going to be privy to unfortunate small talk with whoever was next to me. It was, of course, unenjoyable for me every time, so I'm assuming the other person didn't find it all that pleasant, either. I was really doing everyone a favour as I sat and tried to solve for x.

The flight went by rather quickly, making me hope that this was some sort of warped metaphor for the trip going by faster than I expected. You know, I shouldn't really have been complaining, since if I had gone at Spring Break I would have been stuck in Nevada for a whole week, and now I only had a couple days of potential suffering, but still.

My mind flashed back to the last time I was in the airport lobby as I stood there yet again. The assumption that my dad had forgotten about me had almost been accurate at the time, and it was close to no different this time. At least I had been informed that someone else was in charge of chauffeuring me to the lab or empty apartment, depending on my luck. Last time I was here had been my first time meeting Catherine, as well, and that had certainly been more than beneficial to me. Even though I essentially barely knew her, we had only met once in person, I was so excited at the prospect of getting to actually speak with her face to face again, as she was basically my hero.

I spotted her after a few minutes of wandering through the airport, and my face immediately broke out in a grin.

"Catherine!" I said excitedly, grabbing her attention. I walked over to her, pretending to be a little less ecstatic than I actually was.

"Hey, Morgan!" she exclaimed, immediately pulling me in for a hug, something that I usually minded, but I wasn't as morally offended as I usually was. "I think I'm required to make the clichéd statement that you've grown so much since I last saw you, but you have." I playfully rolled my eyes.

"At least you know that it's cliché," I remarked lightheartedly. We picked up my bag from baggage claim and headed to her car. I was already sad that I wouldn't get to spend the whole weekend with her, but at least this was somewhat of an unspoken compromise.

"So what made you agree to this weekend?" Catherine asked pointedly.

"What do you mean?" I asked. I had always assumed that she was somewhat oblivious to the quantity of daily angst my dad caused me; I knew she knew about a lot of it, of course, but to what extent is what I was uncertain of. Our emails and phone calls didn't often consist of much conversation about my dad; it was always a subject I preferred to avoid. This was a good thing to me. It was easy to look at the relationship between my father and me and blame me for the negativity, in a way.

"Morgan, come on, I'm not stupid," she said, raising her eyebrows. I smiled a little.

"I know that!" I said happily. "I just didn't know you were lucky enough to know about absolutely all the drama between my dad and I," I joked.

"Of course I do," she stated. I think this was relieving to me, as much as I kind of didn't want her to know.

"I guess I was just feeling nice, so I called him out of the blue, and then he suggested it, and I was still feeling nice, so I would've felt bad saying no," I replied simply.

"Well, I think it's great of you. I know you may not have the best time, but at least you're doing the right thing," she said.

"You know, you're the first person who's said that. Everyone else is trying to tell me that I'll have the best time, and we all know that's not true. I know it's probably going to suck, but there's not much I can do, and I can feel like I'm being a good daughter for a couple weeks after," I told her. She smiled.

"Exactly. You'll be fine," Catherine said, and I nodded. She was totally right, as she usually was, and actually being able to vocalize what I thought of the trip without being lectured was nice.

We arrived at the lab all too soon. I knew the drive wasn't going to last forever, obviously, but every moment that I spent talking to Catherine made me wish that it could've. I said goodbye and thanked her profusely for picking me up at the airport and reluctantly headed towards the entrance of the building. After almost ten months of avoiding this place like the plague, the feeling of being back was difficult to comprehend. There was no weight being lifted from my shoulders; I wasn't relieved that I was doing the right thing by any stretch of the imagination. I was just there. I didn't want to be, but I was, so I had to make the best of it. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as I had imagined.

Thank you for reading! Watched Last Woman Standing today and felt inspired to finish this chapter after seeing all of Morgan's awesomeness :) haha.