Three

Dani runs from the office and hits the button for the elevator, which thankfully opens up immediately. Once she is closed up inside of the elevator car, she leans back against the wall and covers her eyes, letting out a little scream of frustration.

“Oh my God!”

She can believe what she just witnessed, but she does know one thing for sure; She wishes that she could pluck her eyeballs out so that she never has to see another person having sex for as long as she lives. She was too disgusted to even think straight.

Because when she pushed open the door to her father's office, she found that he was not alone in the room. He was sitting at his desk, as she had expected. But what she hadn't imagined was his married secretary sitting on the desk with her skirt pushed up to her hips, with his hands holding her in place.

She was bare from the waist up, with his mouth on her chest, suckling at her. Dani had quickly averted her eyes, disgusted by the sight. Clearly Dani had surprised them both, that much was clear. But it came as a surprise to her too.

Yeah, her mother has been gone for six years. It is not like she expected her father to never move on again. That is not what she has a problem with. What hurts her is, if he is finally ready to pull himself out of his despair that he has been in since her mother died, why can't he do it with her?

Why could he not make a life for himself in the real world, with his daughter? He can't drag himself away from work to come to see her perform, but he can push all his work into the floor so that he can do his married, twenty-six year old secretary?

Hurt is what is creeping up in Dani. Her father made the choice to be with his employee tonight rather than support his daughter. Jealousy, as she thinks about all of th other times that he had chosen to be with her, rather than being with his daughter.

Dani does not cry though. Screw all of them. She is done crying. Rick and Amber deserve each other. They both suck! As for her father.. let him have his secretary.. but a small part of her hopes that the husband comes and kicks his ass.

As for what she was going to do, well, that was another story. She really had no idea what she could do. She was seventeen in three weeks, still not old enough to legally leave home.

But if she had a choice, she would get the hell out of New York. Get away from everyone and everything that she knows and that knows her. She wants a fresh start somewhere else, where she will have a clean slate.

The elevators doors slide open with a door with a ding, and once more she runs to Eddy. He is there waiting with open arms, holding close. “Eddy, take me somewhere far away from here. I don't want to go home.”

So Eddy put her in the front seat of the limo with him, keeping his arm around her as a gesture of comfort, that she greatly appreciated. He drove around the city for a few hours until he started yawning. It was nearly two in the morning and she knew that she could not ask him to drive around all night. He needed rest.

“If you'll drop my off at the corner of Canal Street, I would appreciate it.” She tells him and he gives her an incredulous look.

“Why on earth would you go down there at this time of night? Especially at this time of night.” Eddy asks her and she shakes her head to clear it.

“Because there is a little place there that is open all night that I can hang out at. I told you, I don't want to go back to my dad's place.”

Dani could not bring herself to call it home, because it had not been a home since her mother had moved into the hospital to live out the rest of her days. Her mother had died of HIV.

Whenever she tells people that, they assume that her mother wa a drug addict or whore, having contracted it by living a rough lifestyle, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

Her mother had been an actress and a famous singer. She performed on Broadway and in so many movies and shows. She was the prettiest woman that Dani had ever seen. Long, tall and blonde. She had a figure to kill for, a face like a goddess and voice of a an Angel. Everyone that laid eyes fell in love with her.

Not just because of her looks. She was as kind as she was gorgeous. A small town Kentucky girl having made it big in New York, she still had that old country raising that had her be kind to everyone. She never adopted that entitled, better-than-everyone attitude that some famous people get. She stayed humble and kind.

So kind in fact that when she saw her broadway co-star, Jamie Layman getting roughed up outside of the theatre one night, she had stepped in to help him. As an openly gay man, he was always having to put up idiots hassling him.

That night a group of drunk, homophobic idiots had taken too far. One of the men knocked Layla to the ground, pulled a gun and shot Jamie in the chest. The others ran off at the sight of the gun, him quickly following them, leaving the young man to die.

Layla had moved over to him, placing her cut up bare hands on his wound to try to stop the blood. He was twenty-six years old. He did not deserve to die like that, all because of who he was and how he loved.

He died there on the street in Layla arms before help could arrive. Layla wasn't the same after that. Everyone assumed it was the depression when her health started failing her. She had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when she was a baby, so she was no stranger to illness. With a lung transplant and other experimental treatment, she had lived to be twenty-seven, when doctors never thought that she would make it out of her teens.

That is abserious condition and it is deadly, but Layla Denise Albertson Millman was a fighter. But when she contracted AIDS, it quickly destroyed her already compromised immune system. She was dead within eight months of the night of Jamie's death.

Strangers around the world mourned her, but none more than her daughter and her husband. A ten year old Dani spent every day by her bed, holding her hand and stroking back her wispy hair. Everyone else was afraid to touch her. They feared catching the disease. But Dani was afraid of that. What she feared most was trying to live a life without her mother.

She had no idea that he would also have to live without her father too.

“We're here.”

Eddy's voice pulls her from her painful memories of the past. She looks up and sees that they are outside of his apartment building. He had told her about it, pointing it out to her as they drove by, but she had never been there before.

“Your building?”

“Yeah. You are staying with me tonight.”