Dad and Me Pt. 02a

Dad and Me Part 2a

I found out the beginning later, in pieces, but the middle is what I walked into.

Mum had met Megan at work. She was thirty, dark auburn hair, a runner's body, the kind of woman who looked at you when you spoke. They had lunch, then another. Megan was leaving a man who did not look at her. Mum was in a good marriage that looked fine from the street. They talked about nothing and then about everything.

Megan said she had a mouth that wants to be kissed by someone who is paying attention. Mum laughed the lunch-wine laugh and said, 'I am forty-four and I have a daughter and a husband who is a good man.' Megan said 'I know. That is why I am still sitting here.'

Their first kiss was in a multi-storey after working late. Mum said 'we should not.' Megan said 'I know.' They kissed anyway, slow, teasing. Mum cried after, not because she was sorry, because she had not been looked at like that in years. Megan held her face and said 'we can stop.' Mum said 'I don't want to stop.' That was the start of loving first and the bed came later.

They had months of that before the Mini ever sat on our drive. Hotels that were not ours. The occasional Tuesday evening in Megan's flat. Mum coming home with her hair different and her mouth careful. Dad asking how work was and was it busy. Me in my room moisturising because she had told me to, not knowing the house was already a set of locked doors. They said I love you before they said come here and that mattered.

They had a love language by then.

Sweetheart. Look at me. Let me. I want to.

On Fridays they sometimes did nothing but talk on the sofa with tea they let go cold. That is what Mum told herself this was, some weeks: a friendship with a mouth. Today was not one of those weeks.

College for me finished at twelve on a Wednesday if you skipped the last lesson, which I did. I got the earlier train as I wanted the house empty. I wanted a shower that was only a shower and only me. I wanted not to think about Cotswolds linen, or the grey chain room, or his mouth telling me what he could see from the breakfast table, or the sound of Mum's kettle.

It was the week after the first midweek key card. Same lie but in a different direction. Last Wednesday I had sat on a train with nothing under a dress and met him in a lobby that smelled of bad coffee. Two hours with Daddy his baby girl. Then home to group work and Reading and butter at breakfast where nothing showed. He had texted me that night. Same time next week. If you can. If we should. I had typed I can. We should not. We will.

This Wednesday I could not do the grey lobby again so soon. My body still had the dual carriageway in it. I told myself I was going home to wash him out of my head with ordinary water. I told myself the roof rule would feel thicker if I was alone in the family bathroom with the door shut. I was eighteen and a handful of weeks and I was a very good liar, including to myself.

The train did the same twelve minutes in reverse. I had my knickers on this time, a thong, because I was going to my own house, not to him. I thought about his hands on my breasts he looks at in daylight. I thought about the swallow in the grey room. I thought about her asking what have you two been doing, pouring tea. I wanted empty rooms. I wanted not to want.

First there was a Mini on the drive I did not recognise a beautiful British racing green. A parking job that was in a hurry. My stomach did something before I had a reason.

The front door was on the latch, that was the second thing. The third was on the hall runner, halfway to the kitchen, as if they had not quite made the stairs.

A pair of knickers, black lace, small. Not Mum's usual. I picked them up before I had decided to. They were damp, warm still, almost. The inside slick if you pressed the fabric between your fingers, which I did, like an idiot, in my own hall, my bag still on my shoulder. They smelled like skin and something sweet and not like me and not like him either. A different secret, this house had more than one now.

I should have gone back out as I put them in my bag, and I went up the stairs. Quiet on the bits of the staircase that creak. I was Eighteen and a couple of weeks, plus a boutique hotel, plus a chain hotel, and now this.

Their voices drew my up the stairs first. Mum's laugh, the one she uses when she has had wine at lunch. Another woman, lower. Then the wet sound I knew now from a different room.

I stood on the landing, and I did not go in yet. I let the sound go through me and I thought, with a clarity that was almost kind, of course. Of course, this house. Of course, she has a door that is a hand's width open too.

Mums' bedroom door was open a hand's width., not the family bathroom, it was their room. The bed I had been told never to jump on when I was little.

I stood in the gap, and I looked because I had already picked up the small black sexy knickers.

I saw Mum was on her back, I had not seen her like this. Forty-four. Fairer than me, hair up in a clip that was losing, the body she moisturised as religiously as she made me moisturise. Fuller than me through the hips and the tummy, a softness she hid in jeans, breasts heavier than mine, paler, wide pink-brown nipples that were tight and wet from someone's mouth.

A faint line low on her stomach with trimmed darker hair between her legs, trimmed for a reason, not just for her, and she was open, shining, one knee up. She looked, from the door, like a woman who was being loved as well as devoured. That was the thing I had not expected. It was the fondness, the way Megan's hands were on her hips were holding her still and holding her together.

Megan, I knew from the kitchen and from Facebook and from a Christmas drink. Thirty. Mum's friend from work who had started fairly recently, and I had not asked about. Dark auburn hair down her back. Smaller than Mum. Athletic in a real way, not a poster way. A tight waist, a runner's bum, breasts that were a small handful, 32B maybe, pale with cold-pink nipples that pointed. A tattoo I had never been close enough to see, a thin line of script on her rib. Between her legs she was almost bare, just a strip, and that was wet too, obvious even from the door, shining on her inner thigh when she moved.

Megan was between my mother's legs with her mouth. Not being gentle about it, and not cruel either. She was hungry and certain. The certainty of someone who has had this body before and intends to have it again. Hands holding Mum's hips down on the bed Mum shares with my Dad. I could hear her. I could hear the wet. I could hear Mum saying please and then fuck and then Megan in a way I had never heard her say a first name, like a prayer and like a joke. Megan's bum was in the air, facing the door, at me, the strip showing, the tight hole above it, the shine. I could have touched her if I had been stupid enough to reach in.

I did not reach. I watched.

This was not the Cotswolds. This was not a dual carriageway and a key card. This was a marriage bed in daylight, the curtains open, and my Mum being worshipped by a woman who had kissed her in a concrete car park and said we can stop. The loving made my throat tight. The sex made my thong a problem. Both things were true at once, which is how this house seems to work now.

Mum's hand was in Megan's auburn hair, not pushing, holding on, stroking sometimes, the way you stroke a person you have missed all morning. Her other hand on her own breast, pinching the nipple the way I pinched mine in the dark, the way Dad pinched mine in steam.

She came with her legs wide apart and a sound she would have swallowed if she had known the door was a hand's width open, not a performance, a give. Her heavier breasts shaking. Her stomach tightening on that faint line. Her pussy, from where I stood, open, wet, pink, throbbing, shining onto the sheet she would have to change. Megan stayed on her through it, drinking, messy, making a small, satisfied noise into her as if the cumming was a conversation they were finishing.

When Megan sat up her mouth and chin were wet and she was grinning like she had won something and like she was fond. She touched Mum's thigh with her fingers and put the fingers in her own mouth. Mum smiled, wrecked, and said 'you are so sexy', and Megan said 'you love it,' and Mum said 'I do.'

I had two fingers buried in my pussy by then, thong pulled aside in the hall like a thief, thumb circling my clit, nipples pushing through my bra as if the mesh were an insult. I could feel my breath getting shallower. I stopped myself because if I came in their doorway, I would make a sound and the house would have to become a different house immediately.

'Your turn,' Mum said, wrecked, fond. 'Come here. Let me look after you.'

That sentence did something to me that the filth had not. Let me look after you. The same mouth that told me to moisturise. The same mouth that asked about Oxford. Offering Megan care with her tongue.

Megan climbed up and sat on Mum's face with a slowness that was almost shy, which was a lie, as she is not shy, but the love in it was not a lie. I saw it all. The strip, the clit already swollen, Mum's tongue, Megan's small breasts and the rib tattoo when she arched. She held the headboard.

She looked toward the door, and I thought she had seen me and I did not move and her eyes were only on the wall, or on a picture of the three of us at Christmas that I could not see from the gap. She rode Mum's mouth with small desperate rolls of those runner's hips. Mum's hands on her bum, spreading her a little, one thumb too close to her tight hole, and Megan swore and laughed and said do it, so Mum did, just the pad of her thumb, gentle, asking, and Megan came on my mother's mouth with her head tipped back and those pointed nipples aimed at the ceiling and a noise that was thank you as much as fuck.

They kissed after and I watched that too. Slow and sensual. Megan's wet face on Mum's wet face. Tongues sharing whatever they had just done. Mum's heavier breasts against Megan's small ones, pale on pale, wet nipples dragging. They looked like a secret that had been going longer than a Mini on the drive at lunchtime.

They looked like two people who had decided not to stop in a car park. Megan said something I did not catch, and Mum laughed into her neck and said 'she has college until four, we have time.' We did not have time. I was in the hall with damp knickers in my bag and my own thong ruined and my father's key card from last week still a ghost in my drawer.

They started again, slower, on their sides, facing each other, which was the loving version. Both of their fingers making the wet sounds. Megan's thigh over Mum's hip. Foreheads together. I heard Mum say 'I have missed you this week' and Megan say 'I know, work, I know, I thought about you in the meeting.' I left before I saw them finish the second time because if I stayed I was going to walk in and ask to be looked after too, and I was not ready for that sentence in my own mouth.

I pulled Megan's knickers out of my bag on the landing, and I did the stupid thing, the thief thing, the eighteen-year-old thing. I opened my thong and I pushed the black lace inside myself bit by bit until I was full of another woman's afternoon.

Why did I do that. I have no idea. It felt right and naughty and like claiming a piece of a secret that was already claiming the house. My pussy holding Megan's wet thong. I walked slowly to my room with that fullness and with the sound of them still going, softer, a laugh, a creak I had never named.

My room with the door shut but not locked, because locking would have been a story if anyone tried it. I put my bag down. I sat on the edge of the bed, and I could still hear them, but fainter.

I undressed slowly because rushing would have made it only panic. Trainers then socks followed by my college dress. The bra I had put on that morning thrown to the floor. Thinking about no one in this house, which was already a lie; I had thought about him in the grey room, the swallow the steam from the shower.

I looked at myself in the wardrobe mirror as I did it. Eighteen and a few weeks plus two hotels. My young full breasts, tight nipples. The body my father had devoured in daylight in the Cotswolds and again through net curtains onto a dual carriageway. The body that was now listening to Mum look after her thirty-year-old friend with her mouth.

My thong which was soaked through I took off and I was shining down the inside of my legs and Megan's knickers were just visible between my neat slick lips, a black line, stolen, inside me. I thought, with a clarity that made me sit down, I am like this because of him and I am like this because of that door and I am like this because love in this house has stopped being simple.

I lay back but I didn't reach for a toy. I used my hands the way he had used his in the steam and on the spa table and against the chain hotel door at 2:20.

First, I only touched my breasts, slow on both my thumbs on my nipples, watching them in my head as if I were Megan watching Mum, as if I were him in the four-poster saying undress slowly baby girl. Then one hand down, two fingers either side of my clit, not on it, the mean way, until I was lifting my hips, the stolen thong moving inside me when I did.

I could hear water in their ensuite, or I thought I could, and then I heard Megan's voice in the hall, closer, saying she had to go, love you, same time Friday if I can, and the stairs. I heard her wondering where her black lace thong was exactly the time I came the for the first time with her knickers and three fingers in myself and my other hand over my mouth.

It went through me in hard pulses. I kept my fingers in and rode it out and I was not quiet enough. I didn't care. The loving in the other room had made the cumming worse, not better, softer and worse.

The front door clicked shut the Mini's engine. Gone, now the drive empty of green. The house quiet and pretending again.

I didn't get dressed, I rolled onto my front and put my face in the pillow and pushed my pussy against my own hand, my clit on the heel of it, fingers still inside alongside the soaking thong, and I thought of Megan's bum facing the door and Mum's thumb.

I thought of Dad in the Cotswolds telling me what he could see and how he felt inside me. I thought of the lift in the chain hotel his baby girl and the woman with the suitcase who had smiled at a father and his daughter. I came again, longer, messier, my legs shaking, a patch on the sheet I would have to deal with later.

I slowly pulled Megan's wrecked thong out of my pussy and held it to my face, covering myself in a mix of her dampness and my soaking, a heady mix, not young love exactly, something adjacent, something I did not have a word for yet. Thirty and forty-four and eighteen and the lace that had been on the hall runner.

Mum on her own now, in the ensuite shower washing Megan off her, I guessed, the same way he had washed himself off my back and the crease of my bum that first Thursday.

I listened to the water and I turned onto my back and I did it a third time properly, slowly, two fingers curled into that spot he had found, thumb on my clit, my other hand pulling a nipple the way Mum had pulled her own, the way Megan's cold-pink ones had pointed at the ceiling.

I didn't rush it, I listened to Mum's shower run the whole time. I came with my mouth open and my knees up and tears in the edges of my eyes that were not sad, just too much house. Too many mouths and too many rules getting thin.

The water stopped and I heard her on the landing. I pulled my duvet up covering my still naked body. I was still wet. Megan's knickers were on the bedside table, black, small, wrecked, they were mine now.

'Esme?' she called tentatively. 'I thought you were at college.'

'Finished early Mum,' I said, my voice came out quieter than I meant. 'I am in my room.'

She paused outside. I thought about the door being open a hand's width. I thought about the hall runner's gift. I thought about let me look after you.

'There is tea,' she said. 'I had Megan over.'

'I know Mum,' I said, and then, because I am not always brave, I said, 'I heard the Mini leave, I must have dozed off.'

A small silence, then her laugh, almost the lunch-wine one, not quite. A nervous uncertain laugh.

'When you came in did you find something in the hall or on the stairs?'

'No Mum should I have?' glancing at the scrunched black, wet thong on the table.

'No darling I thought I dropped some knickers when I brought the washing up earlier. I can't find them.'

Darling. That word sat on the landing between the tea and the lie. I almost said they were in me, but no they will be in the drawer in a minute. I did not. I am the shy one. I am the moisturised one. I am the one who does not cause trouble. I am also the one who swallowed her husband in a chain hotel six days ago and came three times to the sound of her looking after someone else.

I didn't go down for the tea. I put my own knickers back on and I put Megan's in the back of the desk drawer because I am eighteen and I am a thief now as well, and I lay there smelling my own hands and the lace in the drawer and the house, and I thought about the open door, the Cotswolds door and the grey door onto the dual carriageway and how many rooms in this place had a secret.

I already knew I was going to look out for and listen for the Mini again.

My phone was face down on the side table. At ten he would text if the week held. Same time, if you can, if we should. I would be sitting at her table before that, passing butter, nothing showing, the stolen black lace in a drawer, her mouth still a picture, his mouth still a taste, the roof rule thinner from both sides of the marriage now.

Still here, I said to the ceiling, not to him, not to her. The house did not answer. The Mini was gone. The kettle clicked downstairs. I showered and moisturised because she was right about the skin, and because it was the last ordinary thing I knew how to do.