Reality is Different Ch. 03

Hesitation, once again. Another breath, his chest rising at my side. "They're a lot like me, I guess. Thirty, forty, fifty-somethings whose marriages didn't quite work out. Decent people. A little crazy, sometimes, but I figure maybe everybody's crazy, in their own special way. The ones that I went out with, yeah, I'm sure I'd be - I guess 'content' would be the word to use. Content enough, if I were already in a relationship with them. But I can't say that I've felt the kind of a connection or attraction that I think I'd want, or need, to actually pursue something serious with them. They're just..."

"...too old for you?"

I don't mean to say it, really. My tongue supplies the words without consulting me, the ones I'm thinking he might mean. Hoping. Flustered feeling clutching after at my throat, as I hear the silence linger, feel him looking down upon the top of my scalp. When he eventually responds, his voice is startled, puzzled...and I think perhaps a trace defensive. "Now why do you say that?"

I hesitate as well, before I answer. "I don't know." Quietly. Half true. I have no idea why I'd be insane enough to say it - but I'm pretty sure of why I think it might be true. The videos I found on his computer, their titles bragging about 'barely legal,' 'naughty teens'...the ones I can't admit I know about. "A hunch, I guess. I kinda got that feeling, from the way you talked about it."

"I see." His voice drawn out a little, sour, wry. A pause. "That's, ah. Well. I think you're maybe more perceptive than I sometimes give you credit for, sweetheart." I can feel him shake his head above me, briefly laugh, the sound of it a subtly self-conscious thing. Shifting slightly at my side, uncomfortably, as though to pull away - but there's nowhere he can really go. "...I'm not exactly proud to say it, but I suppose there is some truth to that. A part. I mean, the way you put it, that's a little absolute. There are certainly some older women out there that I still find attractive. But I'm..."

A tiny sigh, discomfited. "Probably shouldn't even call them 'older' women, should I. Middle-aged. My own age. Obviously, I'm much too old myself these days to have my eye on co-eds." The statement seems to beg for me to contradict him, but he speaks again before I can come up with a response. "I guess your old man's a bit of a hypocrite, hm? Or immature, at least. Or maybe it's my mid-life crisis. I figure I'm probably about due for that."

"Dad, it doesn't make you a hypocrite. Or any of that." Softly, after a moment. Striving to be comforting, encouraging, as nervous feeling pulses there behind my neck, flutters in my stomach. "You can't help who you're attracted to, right? You just - are." I hope it doesn't try too far, to put my hand on his. My fingers on his wrist, only gently touching. I hope it doesn't say too much...even as a little part of me prays it tells him everything. "And anyway, there's nothing wrong with it. It's natural, I think. Maybe not completely fair, but...men can still be really handsome as they get older. Distinguished. All those movie stars, George Clooney or whoever, that are like in their forties but everyone still thinks are hot. And maybe women can do that too, sometimes, but it's a lot harder for them. Mostly it's just, you have to be young."

"Mm." His tone still slightly sour as he gives his head another shake. But he doesn't take his hand away from under mine. I don't know if there's a meaning in that. "I'm not sure if that's the sort of lesson that I really want to teach you, princess."

"Well, you don't exactly have to." Mildly sardonic, murmured into his side. "It's kind of hard to miss, you know, when every ad for makeup says it keeps you looking young."

"I suppose." A somewhat pained expression in his voice, reaching stubbornly for his familiar lilt of humor. "So what, then, you're saying I should be prowling around your campus, trying to find a date?"

"No." There's a subtle tremor in my tone, not quite as mild and even as I strive to make it. My fingers shifting barely upward on his wrist. It's absurd, it's awful, really, how much I'm bothered in these recent days by the thought that he would find someone. Bitterness and jealousy rising up instinctively inside me at the idea of my dad in love with anyone but me, anxious that these foolish dreams of mine could be pre-empted. Unfair of me. He deserves to have someone, someone amazing, beautiful. Young and sexy, everything he'd dream about. A woman who wouldn't have to be afraid to flirt with him, to kiss him, to be taken to his bed. A girl who can do more than daydream. "I think you could, though. If you wanted to." Earnest feeling scratching at my throat. "I mean, you're maybe not a movie star, but you're still a good...a decent-looking guy. A good guy. I think there's a lot of girls even my age who would be pretty dazzled if you went after them."

He smiles at that, indulgent and dismissive. I can't see it - I just know it, feel it, hear it in the intake of his breath as he prepares to answer something quick and clever and self-deprecating. And I'm pretty sure that it's the wine still flowing fuzzy in my veins that makes me interrupt. "I know there's one girl, um..." Murmured faster, quick and urgent, my heartbeat thumping in my chest. I need to tell him something, some small fraction of the way I feel, even if the meaning of it has to be concealed with half-truths and misleading implications. "In my, my circle of friends, you know. There's at least one girl who thinks you're very handsome. Who says you're sexy."

"Really, now." His voice sparks brighter, livens up with jovial surprise - but I can hear the flash of intrigue there as well. Curious. Interested. "Who's that?"

And of course, there isn't any answer I can give. Just a hopeless fantasy. It's me, daddy. If I whispered it, if I kissed the words into his neck, his ear. If I could make myself believe I was the reason for the tickle of temptation in his tone - but I can't, I don't. He wouldn't ask me 'who' so baldly, if the thought had even crossed his mind that I might mean myself. Probably there's someone else he's hoping for...sudden envy squeezes at my stomach, thinking it, lodges bitter and self-pitying inside my throat. I wonder who it is, the friend of mine who has his eye, who he's attracted to. Kate? Erin? Or maybe all of them. All of them but me. Because I'm his daughter, because he can't really feel that way about me. That was one of Martin's warnings, that a lot of men are essentially incapable of feeling real desire for their daughters, maybe even most of them. That it's just boxed off, psychologically, sealed away, that-

"I guess you're right." Pleasant. Soft. A rueful chuckle interrupts my chain of thought, pulls me from my gloomy introspection. "Probably better if I don't know, hm? Don't want me bursting in to try to flirt with her when you girls are trying to have a get-together, after all." Familiar humor laced amongst the words as his arm shifts at my back, squeezes gently. Not even a hug, not really. Just a touch, a nudge, faintly conspiratorial...so it's absurd, how much I find myself affected by it, almost overcome with mingled warmth and longing. Wishing once again I could just turn and crawl into his lap, throw my arms around his neck, his around my waist. Just to hold him. Just to be held. Daddy...god, I'm being crazy. I know that. I do, when I stop to really think, to self-reflect. I have a dad who loves me. Who's there for me, who will gladly throw away his weekend on some stupid little picnic just because I asked him to. So many people don't have anything that's even close. It's ridiculous of me to wish for more, to obsess about him, about these stories, fantasies. I should be happy here, with the relationship I have. I should be content.

It's just, I love him too. I love him. I say it in my head, and it doesn't feel like enough, like I could repeat it an eternity and still not truly speak the depth and strength of the emotion that inhabits me, the affection aching in my soul. The devotion. Like it's at the very heart of me, more true than anything I know, more important. I love him. I'd do anything for him - and it feels right to think it, stubbornly insistent, as though I'm the only one who sees the way things ought to be. It could be so simple, sweet, if he only wanted me. I'd be his own, his little girl, his princess and his pet.

I wouldn't hesitate. I'd give him everything, because I owe him everything, because there's something that I feel when I'm sitting here beside him that I can't imagine every having with anybody else. There's a comfort in his touch, in his voice, his presence. Security. Belonging. What would I hope to be, without him? What future on my own, or with some man who can't mean half as much to me as him? My dreams these days aren't of the boardroom, aren't of expensive cars or huge and sprawling houses. They're of him. Of being guided, guarded by a powerful and loving hand. Of doing everything I can to make my Daddy happy.

"Anyway." He speaks again, a bit settled, final - though there's a tiny ambiguity that I can still hear inside his tone, hesitation largely hidden. "I'm flattered. Very flattered. And you can, ah, tell her that, if you want. Unfortunately, I figure that I'm past the point in my life where I ought to try to chase down teenagers. Had my chance already, after all." Another pause, lingering a moment. "Now, what do you think? You ready to head back home, call it a day?"

I move my head a bit against him, a gesture vague and wavering, neither quite a nod nor a refusal. Not any kind of answer, really. Just a bid for time, a chance to take a breath, to swallow down my feelings in the hopes of sounding something close to normal. This whole conversation must be pretty strange, from his perspective - I don't want to make it worse by sounding like I'm near some kind of an emotional collapse. "I don't know." My voice still small, despite my efforts, slightly husky. My smile weak, but fervent. Not that he can see it. "I think I'd like to stay a little longer, yet. If that's okay."

"Of course, sweetheart." Affectionate and welcoming, the gentle rumble of his voice. His arm still at my back, his shoulder there beneath my cheek, a broad and sturdy pillow. We could be almost anywhere, if I only closed my eyes. Anywhere there's grass and trees and wind. Some lush, deserted island, where there was no one else to see us, where we'd never even have to think of what society would say. Only what felt right, inside of us. "Anything you want."