` it's never easy [open!]

[Richard Eli Calvin]

It had been yet another long week for poor Rick. He hadn’t slept, he was an insomniac after all, and was now not sure if he could stay awake through this Saturday. He had promised to take his daughter, Jade, to the park before his first performance of the night. The weekends were actually his busiest time and that really was tough with Jade but he did what he could. It was about seven in the morning when Jade came and knocked on the door of his room to tell him she thought it was about time he got up. Rick had sent her downstairs to watch Saturday morning cartoons while he got ready. After he was showered and dressed and all that Rick also went downstairs. He let the two dogs, Manu and Jewel, out into the very large back yard. When he had decided he was going to take responsibility for his daughter his parents, who owned a very successful horse racing stable and therefore and plenty of money, had bought him a good sized house where Jade had lived, so she wouldn’t have to be uprooted. In the end it worked out as well as anyone could hope for. Rick found a job and was now completely independent for everything to do with himself and his little girl.

After he was done watching the dogs, who ran around for a bit and then laid down in Jade’s sandbox, Rick went into the kitchen, after checking on Jade, and made some breakfast for both of them. He made the basic pancakes and bacon, making Jade one large one shaped like Mickey Mouse simply because he just perfected the art. By the time they were both done with breakfast it was around nine and Rick decided they better go out on their walk now if they wanted to be back in time to meet the babysitter. Of course they would be stopping for lunch and ice cream. It was Jade of course and though he tried not to spoil her it never really seemed to work as well as it did in his mind. The dogs were called back in and a leash was attached to both collars. Luckily, Manu was a very well behaved dog. Rick had had him for years and the dog was now very old and Rick was starting to worry about longevity. It was now only a matter of time before the dog would no longer be able to live, but that wasn’t something to worry about today. Anyway, Manu stayed perfectly by Rick’s side and jewel only pulled slightly now. Jade was then told to hold onto the leashes so she wouldn’t wander off.

Getting to the park took about twenty minutes with Jade’s constant stopping to ask what something was or to read a street sign to her father. She was a very bright girl. Once in the park they made their way to the playground so Jade could play for a bit and Rick could study a new script to work for a while. On the way, though, Rick found someone he worked with and had to stop and talk. She was introduced to the dogs and had met Jade before. Rick reminded Jade to stay really close as they talked for a little while, but Jade was young and soon saw a butterfly on a flower a little ways away. Now, Rick wouldn’t have minded her going to get a closer look, he would have still been able to see her from there, and that was originally her plan but when the insect flew off the little girl didn’t think about her father anymore and just chased the bug off the path. Rick continued to talk for a little while before the two were ready to bid goodbye to each other. It was only then he realized that Jade didn’t do as she had been told and didn’t say close.

“Jade?” he asked, worried, looking around him. “Jade?” he raised his voice again and looked around frantic. “Did you see where she went?” he asked his friend, who just shook her head. “Holy shit… Jade!” the two went in different directions to look for the lost girl. Rick went in the direction of the playground and the women went in the way they had come, saying they would call if they found her and if they didn’t within ten minutes they would call the police to help if they didn’t find anyone in that time. The park was big, but her short legs couldn’t get her very far very fast.

Meanwhile, Jade had continued to chase the monarch around until she lost it in some trees. She was giggling and then looked around to go back to her father and see if he was ready to go, but to the poor girl’s horror, he was nowhere to be seen. “Daddy?” she asked looking around. Nothing was familiar to her. She walked in the direction she thought she had come from, but quickly realized she was hopelessly lost. “Daddy?” now her voice was becoming panicked and tears were coming to her eyes. She started walking in some random direction to hopefully find a path and when she did she followed it to one of the many benches placed along the edge of it. She had always been told to stay where she was, not talk to anyone and only ask a policeman for help if she saw one, which was what she planned to do. On her way to the bench, though, she ran into someone else. She looked up at her, tears in her brown eyes, slinking back a little bit, obviously very scared. Jade couldn’t help but stare for a moment. “I sorry,” she said softly, then looked back down again. She made her way to the bench and heaved herself up onto it. She sat with her hands in her lap and her head down, hoping by some magic her dad would come by and save her. Little did she know, the playground was just around the curve in the path and her father was coming that way looking for her as she set there waiting.

[Shaelyn McAndrews]

Deciding to not follow her mother to New York might have been a good idea after all. A change of scenery was good for her, and not having someone in the same household besides Goliath and a beta fish was proving to be just what she needed right now. It was a routine thing now to go to the park almost every morning, since being in an apartment, there was nowhere for Goliath to roam and he needed the exercise. Stretching as the early sunlight sifted through the curtains, she yawned obnoxiously and curled up against the massive animal that remained loyally sprawled on her bed beside her. His steady snoring hardly bothered her anymore, and her mother joked that he was only training her for when her husband would do that. She hated the whole marriage jokes, just because her own mother had been married at eighteen didn't mean that Shaelyn should jump down the aisle with the first guy she meets. Guys were nice as friends anyway, once they got too clingy she just couldn't deal with the suffocating feeling. She had put her career first before relationships, and it showed. To her, her biological clock wasn't running out of time; but her mother continued to insist that it was, and all that motherly-fear of never having grandchildren. Didn't she have other things to worry about than her daughter being married? Apparently not.

Swinging her legs out of bed, she trembled as the bare skin of her feet met with the cool wood of the floors. Grumbling something under her breath, she stiffly wandered to her dresser and discovered her comfy sweatpants weren't clean. Opting for her yoga pants instead, she rolled her eyes at how her mother had commented on how well they fit her curves - they had been a gift from a friend back home, who insisted they were the 'new thing'. Although they were rather comfy, so what if they attracted a little attention? Finding a loose t-shirt, she hunted down her sneakers and shoved them on after getting dressed. Sauntering in to the bathroom she washed her face and brushed her teeth mechanically, sighing at her tired complexion. Arguing using a comb and hairspray, she managed to tame the cowlick at the middle of her forehead to pull her hair back neatly in to a pony tail, her thick red-brown hair not looking as unkempt as it usually does in the morning. Fiddling with a half-broken drawer, she found her make up back and did a light touch of eyeliner and mascara before shuffling to the kitchen. Shoving two pieces of bread in to the toaster, she fixed herself a cup of chocolate milk and slumped down at the eat in table. The sound of claws clacking along the hardwoods signaled that Goliath had decided to awaken, the Great Pyrenees lazily making his way to the kitchen. "Good morning baby," She crooned, massaging behind his fluffy white ear as he came up to her, his large tongue lolling sloppily out of his mouth as usual. Oh, the beauty of large dogs.

Suddenly the scent of something burning reached her nose, and she hurriedly went to try and salvage her breakfast. Flinging the hot toast on to the counter, she stared at the black toast for awhile before throwing it in the garbage. Guess she was skipping breakfast this morning. Grabbing her car keys and Goliath's leash, the four year old plodded after her happily and waited to be hooked up to the leash. He nearly drug her down the stairs in his excitement, her cursing under her breath the entire way. Good thing she loved that dog so much, she didn't know how she dealt with him sometimes. After he spent his time slobbering up her windows until she opened it so he could stick his head out, they finally arrived and spent a good fifteen minutes while he sniffed at a tree. Shaelyn didn't have anything to do today anyway, and the weather was gorgeous enough to be outside for however long before she went over to the stables to check up on Dante. The sunlight caught the different shades of red and brown blended in to Shaelyn's hair, her warm brown eyes lighting up as she took a deep breath of the fresh air.

Her moment of relaxation was cut short as she felt her arms almost get ripped out of their sockets, her fingers grasping for something that was no longer there. The leash! Her eyebrows furrowed in frustration as the saw her white beast-dog barreling after an innocent squirrel across the park lawn, his leash flailing behind him. "Goliath!" She screamed, knowing it was no good. He wouldn't go far, he wasn't that good of a runner anyway. She jogged after him as he disappeared around a bend. He slowed down, panting and shaking his head. He stopped near a bench, noticing a strange little girl sitting on it alone. Being a very friendly, big teddy-bear type dog, he walked over, plopping his big head in her lap and exhaling heavily, wagging his tail in an attempt to get some attention like the big ham that he was.


Goliath

[Richard Eli Calvin]

Rick was pretty lucky with his parents, at least now. They generally stayed out of his life and allowed him to run it how he felt it needed to be run. Sure, he was still calling them quite often questioning then about how to fix something in the house or how he was supposed to nurse Jade’s fever, but they always waiting for him to call instead of the other way around. As for his love life, they stayed well out of that. He didn’t only need a wife, he needed a mother figure for Jade and if he couldn’t get both in one woman than there was no need to worry about it at all. That being said, Rick also didn’t have time to go around look for anyone and he was young and happy alone, so there was absolutely no reason to look. He was more concerned with his daughter and his career and his parents understood that and left him alone, and that was always nice. However, he did wonder if they were better about it now because they were horrible about it before. He had a career at the age of eight and even while he was in one of the strictest boarding schools in the nation and his parents were still breathing over his shoulder. It got tough after a while and he was feeling the stress from it all and after a while his parents finally decided to leave him alone and it worked for all of them. Maybe it just took some parents longer to understand that than it did his, but he also had the older sister to help his parents learn to back off before he got to that point. Anyway, thinking about this Rick realized he should probably call his parents sometime soon, but that was the only thought he really had on the subject.

Well, except how bad of a parent he felt at the moment not knowing where his daughter was. Ever since he had gotten custody of Jade five years ago, damn had it really been that long? Anyway, he was always wondering when he would make some detrimental mistake to Jade’s parenting and now it managed to happen. How could he lose his daughter? She had been right there two seconds ago! He had just stopped to talk to a friend like he had done so many times before and she was fucking gone! The only thing he could do was swear inwardly as he yelled his child’s name outwardly and looked around frantically. He was following the path they always went down to get to the playground, assuming that would be the direction she would wander off to, both his black dogs still healing on their leashes. He trained his dogs well, they did not fight the lead, they did not pull and they almost always behaved in the way one would expect a dog to behave. His parents did breed and train border collies so he knew the importance of having dogs that were well behaved, especially dogs that had a mind of their own like the Hovawarts at the end of the lead. He always found himself reprimanding other people’s dogs if they weren’t listening or whatever else. A pet peeve maybe? No, it was more him being worried about the dog hurting his child. See, he was fatherly. Or something.

Jade, well, she wasn’t dealing much better. Her adopted parents had left her due to death and now her biological father was gone too. You know how kids are, they get lost and think their parents will just go home without them and forget about them completely. Of course it wasn’t true, but try explaining that to a young, confused and scared child. Luckily, it wasn’t the weekend and the park wasn’t insanely crowded, which eased Rick’s concerned ever so slightly but his daughter was still lost and still scared. Jade was crying, but still trying her best to look around for her father or at least a police officer or someone she knew. Rick was well known around Caramel Rivers just because he was always talking to anyone and having parties or whatever else, not to mention he was slightly famous anyway but that wasn’t the point.

Just was Jade was about to give up completely and get up and keep walking a large white dog came trotting up towards her and before she could do anything the dog plopped his head onto her lap. She petted the dog gently. Obviously, big dogs weren’t a problem for the girl since she had two of her own and neither had ever been mean towards her at all. She was a little confused, she had never seen a dog that looked like that, it looked like a white version of her dogs. Well, in her young mind of course. Obviously the builds of the dogs were quite different, but they were both fluffy and big, so in a young girl’s mind they were certainly close enough. “You lost too?” she asked. The dog helped her calm down a bit, but tears were still in her eyes as she looked up and was a woman looking at the dog and her. She figured the woman must be the dog’s owner. So he wasn’t lost after all, that actually saddened her. Jade moved over to the side of the bench, to get away from the dog. “Sorry,” she said softly, knowing her father had always told her to not pet a dog unless she got the owner’s permission.

Jade was not supposed to talk to strangers and she knew that so she avoided eye contact with the woman with the dog and watched as her short legs kicked from not reaching the ground when she was sitting on the bench. She had to admit, though, she felt better with the woman and dog there beside her. At least she wasn’t all alone and she had always pictured a kidnapper as male so this was helping. At least… a bit. It would really help if her father could come up though…

((I hope this works for you. I wanted her to have contact with Jade before Rick showed up so we could have a thread after Rick finds her lol))

[Shaelyn McAndrews]

Shaelyn had always loved children, being the first one always wanting to hold an infant or babysit as much as possible. That was how she made her money through highschool, babysitting the neighbor's twin boys. They were so much of a handful, but she was able to keep them tame enough that their mother always relied on her to watch them whenever possible which got less frequent as they grew older. Although according to Shaelyn's mother her 'biological clock was ticking', she wasn't in any hurry to have children. She had chosen her career as her path, not motherhood. She always wondered what it would be like to have her own child, but then she realized that maybe that just wasn't for her; after all, she hadn't found a man she could completely deal with for long periods of time. They usually became way too clingy, treating her like a piece of property, which most girls would swoon over the attention but Shae preferred to be a bit more independent. She could care for herself and her dog as well as horse, that was good enough for her at this point in her life.

Perhaps this was a hint of her parenting skills, since Goliath was like her oversized, hairy, slobbery child. And now she had lost him, and she thought back to the last time this happened she was so close to going to obedience classes. Maybe she should really do that. She jogged around the corner, spotting the white dog next to a young girl. His heavy head was resting on her lap, his ears perking up as she spoke to him. He wagged his heavy tail in response, his coat thick yet soft to the touch. It was well groomed, seeing as it was white and had no knots, at least not at the moment; in a few days time it would probably be a rats nest. He felt her shift beneath his head and he lifted it, watching her with a pitiful look and following her to the other end of the bench and sitting next to her dangling legs, panting and thumping his tail against the hard ground as Shae approached them.

Her warm brown eyes settled on the pair, and as the little girl apologized she just shook her head and smiled. "Don't worry, it's fine. He loves the attention," She bent down next to Goliath, picking up the loose leash that dangled from his collar. Her hands burned, rubbed raw from the leash slipping across her skin. She flinched slightly but held the leash daintily in her grip, standing up. She glanced to the little girl's expression, noticing the tears in her eyes and she was alone...strange. "Are you here with someone?" She asked gently, separating herself from them but allowing Goliath to sit beside her, he didn't seem interested in moving and she wasn't about to yank with her raw hands on the leash. Shae's hair was beginning to fall loose from the ponytail it was swept in to, and so she removed the hair tie absently while looking in the distance at the path, expecting the little girl's mother or father to come running along any moment.

In an avalanche of soft red-brown locks, Shae's hair fell a bit past her shoulders in soft waves, framing her fairly pale face. The sprinkle of freckles on her nose stuck out slightly against her complexion, brown eyes gentle and at ease. Goliath panted, a strand of drool dangling from his jaws. Shae fidgeted slightly, not wanting to leave the girl when she was all on her lonesome. "This is Goliath," She said, nodding to the big white dog. "He seems to really like you, you know." She was trying to keep the little girl from worrying too much, and hopefully the big white teddy bear of a dog was helping. He whined and leaned his head back to look up at Jade, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth comically. "I'm Shaelyn," She introduced herself next, flashing a set of fairly straight teeth. She had never had braces, but her teeth were well enough straight that one could only tell a few were a little out of place by looking closely. Her mind wandered to the barn, and how she really needed to give Dante a good work out - he was putting on some weight that he did not need to gain at all. She tried figuring out how young the girl was, fairly young - and she could tell the little girl was slightly guarded, but she thought that it was a smart thing; her own mother had always told her to not speak to strangers too, but perhaps this would be an exception when she was separated from her family or whoever she was at the park with.

[Richard Eli Calvin]

Rick couldn’t stand stereotypes, or blanket statements. Sure, he made them too, everyone did, but he still hated them. Generally they were about male actors or singers, those were the ones he could stand, especially during his high school years. Granted, he always laughed about back then. Yep, he was gay, while the jocks who said it were the ones running about in spandex, changing in locker rooms filled with all guys and slapping each other on the ass while he was in a green room with girls who were anything but shy. Not knowing the customs, who would you think is the gay one? Now, however, this girl was putting all men into a category of being clingy, which was downright laughable to Rick. The best thing for most men was to find a woman who wouldn’t expect them to cling and would want to be independent. She must have met some insane guys if she didn’t want them to be clingy. Then there was Rick, who was the extreme of the pre-described case. He hadn’t exactly been looking for serious relationships lately, but before Jade had come around he had been in two, Monica of course and the person he dated his senior year of high school. The latter didn’t work out, she wanted him to cling and he just didn’t, not to mention he still wasn’t over Monica, but Monica herself and he had been a great couple. He was known to come to class and have people ask where she was and he would have to turn to Kylie (her roommate, and his best friend) and ask the same thing to be able to answer. They would go days hardly speaking, neither got jealous and while both were happy to see and talk to each other it wasn’t necessary to be happy in the relationship. That being said, he was also the envy of the school, able to find a girl that would allow that. All in all, Rick would have to laugh at her dating problems. He would think she’d have guys lining up for a chance at a girl that didn’t expect him to be there all the time, but it was also possible she was looking in the wrong places or whatever else.

Well, now Rick wasn’t exactly thinking about that, it was more that he was panicked that he had lost his daughter. Right when he got custody, well, he was happy to have the little girl in his life and all that, but he had been eighteen and not exactly happy that he was going to be a father. For a while before she came to live with him he tried to make himself realize that this wouldn’t be as hard as he thought it would be. He tried to convince himself that he’d been taking care of Manu for years and had been helping with his parent’s border collies and thoroughbreds his whole life so he tried to convince himself he had some idea of how to be a parent. Damn, was he wrong. Taking care of all the aforementioned was easy compared to one daughter. Children always wanted attention and needed constant watching and everything else. After two days of the “Wick, I’m hungry” or “Wick, I need to go potty” (she called him by his name, but couple pronounce R’s at her young age) he was ready to give her back to her parents, it was only then that he realized he was going to take care of her for the rest of his life. He got better at it and it stopped making him want to just got and sleep for the longest time, which of course he couldn’t do for the fact that he was an insomniac. Well, at least he thought he was getting better, and then he went and lost her, yeah, he felt like a pretty horrible father at the moment.

Jade, on the other hand, was sitting there thinking her father didn’t want anything to do with her anymore and had already left the park and purposefully lost her so he didn’t have to deal with her anymore. The dog did help her calm down a little bit, but that didn’t make her feel any better for being deserted. When the owner of the dog started to talk to her she wasn’t sure what to do. Her daddy always said to never talk to strangers, but this stranger wasn’t leaving and seemed very nice, at least. Maybe she wasn’t so bad, and she wanted to help… she hoped. At the question she looked up before back down to her lap and nodded. “But I lost my daddy,” she said softly, tears falling from her eyes. Jade couldn’t help but smile when she said the dog, Goliath, a name she had never been able to say, liked her and she started to pet him again. She nodded when the girl said her name, but didn’t want to say anything else. That could be bad, right? Her dad always said it was bad, at least.

It was about at this time that Rick finally came into view from beyond a bend, but Jade’s head was down at the dog’s head on her lap. “Jade!” he said, fairly loudly, which Jade head and looked up quickly. “Daddy!” she shouted back, looking up, her brown hair (which Rick was very proud that he had learned how to do) bouncing against her neck. She quickly jumped up and ran over to her father, who crouched down in order to allow him up into his arms. He wrapped his arms around her when she came level to him and half rested his head on her small shoulder. “Jade I…” he censored himself, knowing that if he said what he wanted to say Jade would learn words he didn’t want her to learn. “I… don’t you ever do that to me again, you hear? I was so worried about you,” he said, leaning back to look at her face and seeing that she was crying. “Oh, shh, shh, it’s all okay now, no need to cry,” he said, running a hand over her head and smiling at her. He then went to stand up, when Jade reached her hands over her head to asked to be lifted, which he did before turning his attention to the female and her dog he had seen with Jade when he walked up.

“Hi,” he said, kind of awkwardly as he walked up to her, Jade in his arms and the dog’s leashes in his hand. He stopped quite a ways away, told the dogs to relax, which really meant sit but he trained them in herding commands because those were the ones he had learned when he was a child. Manu went into a sit right away, but growled at the dog and woman for a second before Rick nudged the animal with his knee. Jewel took more prompting, she was still young, but she managed to sit after too long. “I’m Rick, this is Jade,” he said, nodding to the little girl, “my daughter,” he also added in, knowing he was very young and most people didn’t guess their relationship right away. Sure, sometimes he didn’t say it so openly, but he figured the “daddy” call Jade gave out with give it away. “Thanks for… looking after her. I… I don’t know where she went, she was just gone,” he said, looking at his daughter with a playful glare before back at the woman with a small smile.