Dad and Me Pt. 04

Dad and Me Part 4

Megan left with a kiss on Mum's cheek that could have been Christmas and a cheery goodbye for the rest of us. As Mini pulled off the street the garden looked ordinary again. The towels were folded. The lemonade glasses were empty. We all went inside because that was what you did after sunbathing in the garden.

The kitchen was too bright. Spent ice melted in the sink. The radio played something nobody chose. Mum put the kettle on, and Dad sat at the table. I stood by the counter with my bag still on my shoulder and the wet patch on the back of my dress pressed against the cupboard so no one would see it. My body was still carrying the afternoon. My nipples were tight. My pussy was still wet and open from his fingers and from coming while I watched her. I kept my thighs together and tried to look like a girl who had only just got home from college.

Mum poured tea for us all, which we hadn't asked for. She looked at my hair. She looked at his mouth, and she looked at my chest with my prominent nipples unable to be hidden.

'What have you two been doing,' she said. Not quite a question. The same shape she had used the Sunday we came back from the stone hotel.

'Driving, I said. College. Dad gave me a lift.'

'Work,' he said. 'Finished early. Roads were a nightmare.'

She smiled the too-bright garden smile. Megan and I have been sunbathing for the afternoon, she said, as if we had asked, making the most of the lovely weather.

The lie sat down with us; she had a towel that was not just a towel and a friend who was not only a friend. We had a window and a phone and a roof rule that had shaken and held. Nobody said the true sentence. The tea was going cold. I watched her watch him. I watched him watch the tap. I thought about her on the grass and she, I was almost sure, thought about the Mini and the hall and whether I had seen, and none of us said it.

Dad put his mug down. He looked at the table, then at her.

'We got home earlier,' he said. 'Through the side. We saw you. On the grass.'

The kitchen went quiet. Mum's hand stayed on the handle of her mug. She didn't turn around at once but when she did, her face was careful. The too-bright smile was gone.

'Saw what, she said.' Already knowing the answer and the time had come.

'You and Megan, he said. On the towel. We went upstairs. We didn't stay long. Then we came round the front like we had just got home.'

Mum looked at me as I looked at the floor. My face was red and hot. I pressed my thighs together and felt how wet I still was and said nothing.

'How long?' she said.

'Not long,' he said. 'Long enough.'

She nodded once a solitary tear rolled down her cheek. She shifted on her feet as she poured more tea she would not drink. Then she sat and looked between us. Her hands were flat on the table. One of them was gently shaking.

'I have been seeing Megan for months,' she said. 'Not only today. It started at work. A contract.' She looked at me when I spoke.

'We hit it off and had lunch. Then another. She was leaving a man who did not look at her. I was in a marriage that looked fine from the street. We talked about nothing and then about everything. She said I had a mouth that wanted to be kissed by someone who was paying attention. I said I was forty-four and I had a daughter and a husband who was a very good man. She said she knew. That was why she was still sitting there.'

'The first kiss was in a multi-storey after working late. I said we shouldn't. She said she knew. We kissed anyway. I cried after, not because I was sorry, because I had not felt this way for a woman in years. She held my face and said we could stop. I said I didn't want to stop. That was the start. Loving grew first and the bed came after. Hotels that were not ours. Tuesdays in her flat. Months of that before the Mini ever sat on our drive. I came home with my hair different and my mouth careful. You asked if work was busy. I said yes.'

'It's not just sex we love each other. We said that before we said come here. She makes me feel like I have a body again. I have not known how to say any of this in this kitchen until now. I am saying it because you saw us because I knew one day I would.'

Dad didn't shout. He nodded slowly and asked if she was going to stop. She said she didn't want it to. She looked at me again.

'Esme, you saw us through the door as well,' she said. 'Weeks ago. The missing knickers, I know they were not in the wash. I knew they were on the stairs, then they weren't.'

I didn't answer at once. My throat was dry and tight. I thought about the thong in my drawer, and I looked at the floor.

'I heard the Mini,' I said. Quieter than I meant. 'That was all and your bedroom door was open.'

She was quiet. She looked at Dad as another tear appeared. Then back at me.

'And you two,' she said. 'How long have you been this close? I have wondered. The way you have looked at her. The way her voice goes quiet about Oxford. The weekend that did not quite add up. Tell me the truth. It's been niggling at me.'

Dad looked at me and I looked at him. Neither of us spoke first. The radio kept playing. The garden settled into the early evening, everything went quiet except the radio.

'It started after her birthday,' he said. 'Two days after. We have been closer than we should. We went away. The Cotswolds. That is the truth. We have not done everything under this roof.'

Mum's face didn't change much. She looked at me.

'Is that true?' she said.

'Yes, I said. We have been closer, that's all I can say here.' My mouth was so dry, and I wanted to escape, the taboo was now on the kitchen counter.

She was quiet as the radio kept going. Dad said he loved her and he loved me and he didn't know how those two things sat in the same sentence. Mum listened. She didn't interrupt. At one point she put her hand over her mouth and then took it away. Her eyes were wet. She was not crying properly. She was just wet-eyed and still.

'I don't know what I feel yet,' she said. 'That is the most honest thing I can say. I'm not going to scream or get angry. I'm not going to pretend I didn't hear it. I need a minute or two, I think we all do. I need to talk to your dad without you in the room. Then I think we should talk without him in the room.'

'Esme,' she said. 'Go upstairs while I talk to your father. Then I will come up. Don't lock the door darling.'

I went slowly one step at a time. My legs were not steady. I sat on my bed with the door open a hand's width and the wet patch on my dress and the afternoon still in my body and the kitchen still in my head and I waited. I could hear their voices, low, not angry. I couldn't hear the words. I put my hand between my legs over the dress and felt how hot and wet I was and I didn't come. I just rested my hand there and waited.

She came up twenty minutes later, knocking quietly, 'Esme.' She didn't wait long. She sat on the edge of the bed. She looked like she had been crying and had stopped. Her hair was still a little damp at the neck from the garden.

'I've spoken to him,' she said. 'He is downstairs. He isn't angry in the way I thought he would be, I think he always knew there was someone. I don't know what that means yet. I wanted to talk to you without him in the room.'

I nodded and felt my nipples were still tight and my pussy was still aching.

'You watched us through the bedroom door,' she said. 'Tell me what you saw, all of it I want to hear it from you and am asking you here, not in the kitchen.'

I told her. Her on her back. Megan's body in detail and her mouth. The love as well as the filth. Megan on her face. The thumb. The way they had kissed after with everything still wet. The loving version on their sides. I told her I had taken the knickers. I told her I had pushed them inside myself on the landing. I told her I had cum three times in this room with the sound of them still going and then with her shower running. My body was on fire. My voice kept going quieter than I meant. She listened and she didn't look away.

She was quiet for what felt like a long time.

'I have thought about that bedroom door,' she said. 'I have thought about whether you were stood there. I'm not embarrassed or angry. I don't know what that makes me. I have my own history with being watched. I haven't told Megan. I haven't told him. I am going to tell you because you stood in a doorway and you didn't leave, and because I am tired of being the only one in this house who knows it.'

'When I was eighteen,' she said, 'in a different house, there was a woman who lodged in the box room. She was forty-four, the age I am now. Not anyone my mother would have worried about if she had known. The lock on the bathroom was a joke. One day she walked in on me. I didn't cover myself and she didn't leave. I liked the not-leaving more than I liked the excuse. That's how it started, we had two years of mouths, fingers, thumbs. A bed that creaked a lot. A shower that was perfect for two. We were almost caught many times. The almost was the point. A few years after I married a good man, and I had a beautiful daughter. I told myself it had been a weather system that passed. It hadn't. It sat in me and waited.'

'There is more,' she said. 'I have never said this out loud. My mother knew, not everything. But enough. She saw us once, or she said she did. She didn't scream. She told me, later, that she had done the same thing at my age with a woman who worked in the house. She said it like it was ordinary. She said the women in our family have always had this. Mum said don't tell your father. I never did. I haven't told Megan. I haven't told him. I am telling you because you are eighteen and you stood in a doorway and you didn't leave and I don't want you to think you invented this on your own.'

She looked at me. Her eyes were wet again. Not crying. Just wet.

'That's the secret,' she said. 'The one I have told no one. The women in this family have been doing this longer than this house has stood. I don't know if that makes it better or worse. I only know I'm not the first and you are not the first and I am tired of pretending the door was only ever a hand's width by accident.'

She put her hand on my knee; it was warm through my college dress with the drying wet patch. It wasn't a decision yet. I didn't move it. My heart was going too fast. My clit throbbed under the dress. I thought about the box room. I thought about Nan her mother. I thought about the fact that the house had been doing this before I was born.

We talked more. About Megan. About the garden. About the Cotswolds. About the box room and the woman who hadn't left. About her mother who had said the women in our family have always had this. About the fact that the house had more than one secret and now they were in the same room and one of them was older than the house.

She asked if I loved him. I said I do. I said I always wanted him. I said I had wanted her too, watching through the door, and I hadn't known what to do with that until she sat on the bed and told me I had not invented it.

She nodded as the talking slowed. Her hand stayed on my knee. Neither of us moved for a minute. The house was quiet below us. I could hear the radio still on, faint. I could hear my own breathing. I could feel the want sitting low and steady and not in a hurry.

She told me more about the two years and the way the woman had looked at her and made her feel. The way she had liked being seen and touched. The way she had spent the years after trying to be good and had failed in small ways she had never named. I listened. I didn't interrupt. My hand found hers on my knee. We sat like that now the secret was in the room with us. It made the next thing feel less like a break and more like a continuation.

'Can I stay for a while Esme; you are so beautiful?' she said.

'Yes Mum of course.'

We didn't kiss straight away. She looked at me and I looked at her. She was forty-four and I was eighteen and a few weeks. She was my mother. She was also the woman I had watched cum multiple times on another woman's tongue.

My face was hot. My hands were in my lap. I didn't know what to do with them. She moved her hand higher on my thigh, slow, and stopped. I let it stay. We sat like that. The want was there and it wasn't rushed.

She leaned in slowly. Careful. She kissed me. Soft, testing me. I answered it. Awkward at first. Our noses bumped I quietly laughed easing the tension, quiet, and she did too, then we tried again and it was better. Her mouth tasted like tea. I opened for her. My hands found her waist and then didn't know where to go. She made a small sound in my mouth and pulled back. Her face was flushed.

'We don't have to,' she said.

'I want to,' I said. Quieter than I meant. 'I haven't done this with a woman before. I only know what I saw.'

She nodded, 'I love you Esme,' she said as she undressed me slowly. The college dress over my head. Unclipping my bra. She looked at my breasts like she was seeing them properly for the first time. She touched them the way you touch something you have thought about and are not sure you are allowed to have. Thumbs on the nipples. Soft. Testing.

I arched my back. It felt good and strange at the same time. No woman had ever put her hands on me like this. Not anyone. And this was my mother. Her hands. The same hands that had moisturised my shoulders when I was small. Now on my breasts, rolling my nipples, making them tight. Turning me on, my face was hot, my pussy was wet. I kept thinking, this is her, this is Mum, and I didn't want her to stop.

I lifted my hips as she pulled the soaked thong down. She looked at me, smooth, wet, open. She hesitated. I could see her deciding. I lay there and let her look. No one had looked at me like this except him, and that had been different. This was slower. This was her discovering me.

She kissed down my throat and my chest, then she sucked one nipple, then the other, careful, almost shy, and I felt it go straight through me. Low. Sharp. I made a sound I did not mean to make. She looked up. I nodded. She did the other one again. I thought about Megan's mouth on these same breasts in the garden and in the bedroom and how I had watched and wanted and not known what I was wanting. Now I knew. I wanted this. Her mouth. Her hands. Even if it was awkward. Even if it was her.

She went lower kissing and breathing onto my tummy. Her hair brushing my skin. She stopped at my neat smooth mound. Her breath on me. I could feel how close she was. My clit throbbed peeking out between my neat lips.

My thighs wanted to open more and I let them. She looked up between them, her face was flushed. She looked unsure and hungry at the same time. I thought about the fact that no woman had ever had her mouth this close to me. I thought about the fact that the woman who was about to was the one who had taught me to moisturise and asked about Oxford and stood in the kitchen and said she was not disgusted.

I thought about the box room and the two years and the secret she had just told me. My hand found her hair. I didn't push. I just held her there. I wanted her to keep going. I wanted to know what it felt like when it was her. 'Show me the way Megan did it to you Mum.'

She put her mouth on me, slightly awkward at first. Too soft. Then she found it. Her tongue on my clit. Two fingers, careful, not as sure as his. I had to tell her, quiet, there, and she adjusted, and then it worked. I came hard with my hand over my mouth, shaking, not as hard as with him, but real, wet on her chin. She stayed with it until I eased her off. She sat up. She wiped her mouth. She looked unsure and pleased at the same time.

'Oh, Mum that was so good, Can I do that to you Mum? I want to try it like Megan did.'

'Oh darling, yes you can.'

I undressed her, her heavier breasts with the wide pink-brown nipples I had seen as I grew up but more recently in the bedroom and the garden. I touched them for the first time. So soft. Then I put my mouth on one the way I had seen Megan do it. She made a sound. So I did the same to the other one, taking time between left and right. Mum moving beneath me making soft sounds, 'yes Esme, don't stop.'

I went lower finding the faint line. The darker trimmed hair where Megan was a few hours ago. I was nervous so I copied what I had watched Megan do.

Slow flat tongue first teasing her lips, finding the slit and licking her gently up and down the length. I could feel them swell and open finding the wetness covering my tongue. Then on to her clit growing between her lips, red and hard. My lips closed around it, it felt addictive like I never wanted to stop. I sucked feeling it grow and mum arching her back pushing her mound into my mouth. 'Don't stop Esme.'

I wasn't as good as Megan. I knew it. She held my hair. 'Use your fingers inside me Esme,' she said, quieter, 'that's it a little deeper and higher,' I moved, her pussy throbbed on my fingers and then she came, smaller than I had seen her cum with Megan, but she came, her hand tight, her breath catching. Her pussy got wetter and wetter I had to swallow her juices not sure what I was tasting but it was so good. We kissed a wet kiss deep and passionate. Awkward again. Wet. Both of us breathing hard.

We lay there after. Her arm over me. Neither of us spoke for a while. My body was still feeling on fire. It had been a little clumsy but it had worked.

Downstairs the kettle clicked. We both heard it.

'I should go down, Dad will wonder where I am,' she said.

'I know Mum,' I wanted her to stay, and I wanted her to go. I needed more and I needed time to process.

I watched her as she dressed. Slowly. She kissed my forehead. She didn't say what this meant. I didn't ask. She left the door open a hand's width. I stayed on the bed. I pulled the duvet up. I thought about the kitchen where I had not said the explicit things. I thought about this room where I had. I thought about the fact that I had copied what I saw and it had been enough. Was this just the start or the end?

'Still here,' I said to the ceiling. The house didn't answer. I lay there with the door open and the taste of her in my mouth the feeling of her tongue inside me. The afternoon still in my body and the knowledge that the next time, if there was a next time, I would be less awkward and she would be too.

I heard his footsteps on the landing ten minutes later. He knocked and walked straight in. I was naked barely covered by the duvet and I was ok with that. I stayed uncovered and free.

He came in smiling, taking me in with his eyes and sat on the edge of the bed where she had sat. He looked at my naked body and the open door. He didn't ask what had happened. He could see enough from my firm breasts and legs still wet from the pleasure.

'Esme, she wants Megan to come for dinner,' he said. 'This week. Thursday, if she can. Not a performance. Not the Christmas version. She wants us all in the same room so the conversation can be open and real. No more secretive Mini on the street and lemonade that is only lemonade. She asked me to tell you. She said she would ask Megan herself.'

I nodded. My mouth still tasted of her. I thought about the box room. I thought about the garden. I thought about the kitchen where I had not said the explicit things and this room where I had.

'Thursday, I said.'

'Thursday,' he said. 'If you want to be there. She said it is your choice. She also said the door stays open a hand's width if you want it to. I don't know what that means yet. I am telling you what she said.'

He leant over and kissed me. He was tasting both of us still on my lips. He touched my cheek the way he had on the landing after the Cotswolds. 'I love you Esme.'

'I love you Dad,' I said.

He left and the door stayed open a hand's width. I lay there with the taste of my mother in my mouth and the knowledge that on Thursday Megan would sit at the table and the secrets would have to become sentences, and I didn't know if I was ready and I didn't know if that mattered.