The Savannah Situation Pt. 01

You could tell it was a place where people felt like they had to take their hats off inside, and I felt like that, too, so I shoved the hat in my back pocket as I reached the bar and raked my fingers through my hair.

"Hi," she said, and circled my neck to hug me. "Thanks for coming all the way over here."

"Of course. Great dress, by the way."

She smiled and slid back onto her stool and patted the one next to her. "Sit down so I can fix your hat hair," she said, and fuck me, but I did it, and she brought one hand to my forehead and used her fingers to push my hair into place and I watched her face as she did it. When she made eye contact with me, she kept it for only a moment and the pink in her cheeks deepened and she finished the job. "That's better."

We had two drinks, not 'a drink,' and then I decided I had to get back home and go to bed and we walked out to our cars together. She walked me to mine, actually, and asked me if I was going to be okay driving home. I leaned against the driver side door, hands in my pockets and told her I would and asked if she'd be okay driving home, no matter it was just a few minutes away.

"Yup, I'm good," she said, and came in to hug me. I hugged her tight; it'd been two weeks and it felt good to have her so close. She put her head on my chest and I felt her pressed against me, was very aware of her breasts on me, and it was neither the two drinks nor fatherly love that made me keep holding her tight. She felt good.

This wasn't how fathers felt when they hugged their daughters. Not good fathers, anyway, so I let her go, kissed her forehead, and said I had to get going.

I don't know what she was doing in her spare time before med school started. Probably racking up the benjamins and curing cancer or something. But I didn't want to sign a lease on another place, not when Savannah had put the account with $80,000 in my name and washed her hands of it. It was weird, having that much money. I felt like it was my duty to start spending it, and when I thought about shelling out for a nice hotel, it seemed like such a waste that I asked my buddy Marcus if I could crash in his basement for a while. He was a good enough friend that when I offered to pay him, he said no.

He lived alone with this pitbull mix that was terrifying to behold. He was that super ripped, tank-build type of pitbull, and some asshole had cropped his ears and used him in fighting. He had a lot of scars and was missing part of one of his lips so a couple sharp teeth were always showing. But Marcus named him Marshmallow because he was round and white like one and gave him all the affection he ever wanted and Marsh was, in fact, even more like a marshmallow now - too sweet, and softer than he'd been before, approaching sausage status. He'd always sprawl on whoever's lap was first available, and he would roll over on his back and expose his belly and wag his tail until you started scratching him, and even then his tail didn't stop wagging. He loved to be loved. He was a great dog.

"Marsh has been on you like glue, my man," Marcus said. We were in his living room three days after I'd crash landed there and I'd just sat down after getting us both Buckley darks - my treat - and Marsh vacated Marcus's lap to take up residence in mine. With his head back his big lips flapped open and he looked like he was grinning with the most ridiculous grin. You couldn't not pet him. "What's going on?"

I debated whether to tell him as I scratched Marsh's belly. Took a long drink, scratched some more. "Marcus, I gotta tell you something, and I haven't told anyone because it's so fucking weird I don't even know where to start."

"Lay it on me. If you tell me you're into kids or human trafficking, I'm calling the cops, just FYI. And look, I'm a black dude ready to call the cops on a white man, so you know that shit's bad. You better not be fucked up in that."

I laughed. "No, it's not like that. Dude. My daughter thinks she's in love with me."

"Lots of daughters go through that, I hear. It'll pass."

I looked at him, eyebrows raised. "Do you know how old my daughter is?"

His brow furrowed and he said, "No, I guess not."

We'd only known each other a few years, from work, and I'd mentioned Savannah briefly, in passing, but we'd never talked about her, so there's no reason he'd know. I guess I didn't talk about her, a lot. It was easier than talking about her and thinking about what a sorry father she'd had. And all I'd told him when I asked about staying was that I just needed a few nights to find a new place. "She's 22, man. And she said she's felt like this since she was fucking twelve."

It made his jaw drop. I think he was a little pissed something could shock him so much. He took a long drink. "Fuck, Chris. I'm so far out of my element here I can't think of a single goddamned thing to say."

"It's super fucked, right? It's not healthy. It can't be."

He agreed, as anyone would, as I did, and there was a twinge of disappointment in me that he hadn't said maybe there was some way it could make sense.

Some way anyone could understand.

Marcus said I could stay there as long as necessary and let me store some stuff in his garage. He was a super chill guy and I don't know why he was so chill, but I really appreciated it. So eventually Savannah wanted to see where I was staying, and when Marcus said he was cool with it I said okay. I think he kind of wanted to see it in action, too, how Savannah, my daughter who's in love with me, would be around me. So I told her to come over, we'd have a cookout, she could meet Marcus and we could just hang out for a while.

She did, and she had on this pink dress that had a faded red rose print on it and she looked stunning in it.

It's not fair.

It came unbidden to my mind, barely a whisper but I heard it and it scared me. Marsh had run up to greet her and she knelt and cooed at him and he flipped over for her right away, right onto the warm pavement, tongue lolling. She had that effect on men, I felt like. It gave me a minute to breathe deep and not think about how fucking disturbing it was that I'd looked at how beautiful my daughter was and thought 'it's not fair.'

I didn't mean not fair that she was so beautiful. Or not fair that she was my daughter. I meant it wasn't fair we couldn't be together. The worst possible way I could've felt and I didn't know why that thought had come at all.

Marsh licked at her bare heels as she came up the drive, making her laugh and jump away from his tongue. "This dog is outrageous," she said, and pulled me into a brief hug with an arm around my neck. "Hi."

"Hi, Savannah," I said. "That's Marsh. Short for Marshmallow."

"And I'm Marcus," Marcus said, holding out his hand.

Savannah smiled brightly and shook it. Her cheeks rounded so much when she smiled and looked so pink I thought I could kiss them. "Savannah. Great to meet you. Thanks for having me."

"You bet. Come on back, hot dogs are almost ready."

Marcus told me later if he didn't already know, he wouldn't have been able to tell. But since he knew, he realized she was watching me closer than felt natural and was always looking to me for my reactions. It's a good thing Marcus was paying more attention to her than to me, because he would've seen me looking back at her more than felt natural. At one point her skin looked so dewy on that humid August afternoon I had to start looking at Marsh instead.

We went to the basement after the cookout. Just me and Savannah. The basement wasn't terrible, but it also wasn't finished, with concrete floors and the pipes all exposed so every time a sink drained or a toilet flushed, I heard it all going down the pipes. Marcus had been using it as a weight room so he had some area rugs in there and a couch, for, I guess, smoking a joint and chilling for a while between sets. He'd moved a few weights upstairs, put the rest in a corner, and dug up from a different corner an ancient CRT television that sort of got NBC. It seemed like it was always playing old Star Trek episodes whenever I turned it on. It was weird. So I showed Savannah the couch and the television and a duffel bag I was living out of.

"Jesus, Chris. This isn't even a room."

"Technically, it's a room. And don't call me Chris."

"What should I call you?" She started walking the perimeter of the room, touching things.

Dad. Daddy. Papa. Pops. Papi. Father. Any goddamned one of those and I couldn't say it. I sat down on the couch instead.

She ran her fingers over the contours of my duffel bag. When I didn't answer, she said, "Okay, Chris."

"Savannah, stop."

"What, you want me to call you 'daddy'?" she said, her eyebrows raised, and it was like she knew I was lying through my teeth about her not calling me Chris. That she knew she wasn't the only one who didn't want her calling me 'daddy' anymore.

I'm just telling you what I thought at the time and how it made me feel. All the other things I had to think about came later, when she wasn't standing right in front of me.

"Not if you don't want to," I said, and she held my gaze.

"I don't want to. It's not like I can ever forget you're my father, too."

"What do you mean, 'too'?"

"I mean you're the man I love and you're my father. It's all I've thought about for ten years."

"I guess you should call me whatever you want, then." When she sank onto the couch next to me, it made my heart race, and she stretched out across the couch and put her head in my lap.

"Play with my hair," she said. It wasn't something we did when she was little or anything, and I tried to write it off as just another father-daughter thing we finally got to do, but it was a forgery and I felt it. I did it anyway, raking my fingers through her hair, brushing it back from her skin while she closed her eyes.

We'd been like that for a while, an old Star Trek sort of on the television that we weren't watching because I was looking at her and she still had her eyes closed, when she took hold of my wrist and moved my hand from her hair down toward her cheek. It brought my fingers right over her mouth, my index finger resting on the cushion of her lower lip before I realized it was there, and her lips parted. I didn't move it right away, and she was looking me right in the eye when the warm, wet tip of her tongue touched the tip of my finger. Just barely.

Just enough to make me want to feel all of her mouth on that finger, and she was still looking me dead in the eye when her lips parted more and I put a little pressure through that finger and onto her tongue. She accepted it readily, tongue sinking under my finger and it disappeared into the hot wet of her mouth. I watched those full lips of hers close around me, felt on the inside all the soft, wet parts I couldn't see from the outside, and it was doing things to my cock I wasn't too excited about and I realized I had my finger in my daughter's mouth, so I slowly pulled it out.

She stared at me unwavering, breathing hard. "Chris."

"Yeah, all right," I said, because it wasn't a matter of acknowledgment anymore, not really; just a matter of time.

I was surprised when she called me the next week. It was the first time she'd called me since she moved out, and she asked if we could go to Lisonbee, the town on the far side of the genetics facility. Lisonbee was the biggest town within a bearable driving range, so a lot of people in the area went there for stuff you can't get in the more rural spots. She said she wanted to use my truck because she needed a chair for the living room.

My truck was a piece of shit, and it was clear to both of us that she could easily pay for professionals to move whatever chair she bought, but I said yes anyway. She said she would buy me lunch, I told her she didn't have to, and I picked her up at 10 on Saturday morning. She was opening the passenger door before I could get out and knock.

"Hi," she said, and leaned across the console and kissed my cheek. "Thanks for doing this for me."

I didn't look at her, as I was extremely focused on shifting into reverse and backing out of her driveway. "Of course, honey. Happy to help."

"Okay, I want to go to Satellite first, I like their stuff," she said, pulling out her phone to bring up directions. "Have you been there?"

My furniture had historically come from Craigslist or with a piece of paper reading 'FREE' taped to it from where I found it on the side of a street. "No."

"Maybe you'll see something you like. For when you find a place."

"Yeah, maybe," I said. "Sav, I feel real weird about the other night."

"Okay."

I'm not sure what exactly else I was planning to say, but when she said that, I realized there was no honorable direction I intended to lead that conversation, not a lot I was going to deny with real conviction anymore, and I didn't know why I'd started it at all so I just said, "Okay."

"Which do you like?" Savannah said. She stood between two chairs. One she said was an Eames lounge chair with a matching ottoman, the other she said was a Barcelona chair. The Barcelona chair looked more like a very short section of leather-upholstered, button-tufted armless airport seating, but it was a lot more comfortable. The Eames chair, though, felt like it was made for you.

"I don't know who this Eames guy was, but he sure knew what he was doing. This thing's amazing," I said as I sank into it again. I lifted my feet to the ottoman - covered in plastic for just this reason, I suspected - and it got even better.

She laughed and stood by my knees. "It was a married couple. They designed it together. Don't be sexist."

I held up a hand in surrender and apologized. I don't know how she could know so much all the time. Then she stepped over my knees with one foot, facing me and straddling my legs and I just looked up at her, frozen, for a long moment. Then I gingerly pulled my feet off the ottoman and stood. "You try it again, honey. This is your chair."

She did, as a sales clerk came up on us. "Hello! Thanks for coming in today. I take it you're looking for an arm chair?" he said, to me.

"Yes," Savannah said. "We'll take this one."

He looked from me to her and back to me again. "Well, okay then. Let's get you squared away."

I couldn't believe the price tag on that thing, but Savannah didn't blink when he gave her the total with taxes. She just passed a black credit card over the counter and the sales clerk looked at me again but kept quiet. He probably thought it made sense I wasn't the one paying. It was a store for someone who looked like Savannah, not someone who looked like me, and I thought, 'Jesus, I should at least buy some new shoes.'

It was almost noon by then and we told the guy we were going to get lunch and come back to pick it up, rather than let it sit in the back of my truck. So we did that, and I let Savannah pay because it was easier to let her do what she wanted if it meant avoiding talking to her. I wanted to be there, wanted to be with her, but I wasn't about to talk about anything real.

We got back to her place and I got to feel useful: she couldn't move the chair alone so I did it, got it all set up in the living room, adjacent to the velvet sofa and angled toward the fire place. I stood up from checking the screws in the ottoman and stretched and yawned.

"Hard week?" Savannah said. She was testing out her new chair and she seemed to like it.

"Guess so," I said. Mostly I couldn't fucking sleep and it wasn't Marcus's couch's fault.

She glanced at her phone. "Do you want to stay for dinner? You could take a nap if you want. I can run to the store and get stuff and get it going for when you wake up. What do you want?"

I sank into the sofa and rubbed my face. I knew I was gonna say yes. I knew I shouldn't, so I didn't want to look at her. "I don't know, Savannah. Anything you make is gonna be good."

She smiled real wide at that. "The chaise part of that is really good for napping." It looked really good for napping, I thought. "Go on. You did so much for me today. I'm going to the store. You take a nap."

I had the opportunity to change my mind while she was putting her shoes on and whatever, but I just sat there, like I could convince myself if I wasn't doing anything, I wasn't doing anything. That inaction wasn't action. She squeezed my shoulder on the way to the door. "I'll be back soon."

I didn't have to stretch out on the chaise part of her velvet couch and fall asleep but I did, and when I woke up, it was because Savannah was sitting next to me and she had her hand on my cheek.

"Hey. Man, I passed right out. Dinner ready?" I said. Her hand felt good where it was so I didn't move, not even to rub my eyes.

"No. I just got back," she said. She took her hand away of her own accord and I missed it. "Can I lie with you for a minute?"

I stared at her, half asleep still but fully aware what was going on here. "Yeah, all right."

So she did, snuggled up to my side and resting her palm on my chest, and I just laid there for a while feeling it, and then we fell asleep.

It was dark when we woke up. Past dinnertime. There weren't any lights on in the living room, so it was dark in there, too. We were facing each other now and I'd hung my arm over her and she had her head under my chin. My fingertips were touching her bare shoulder and her skin was smoother than seemed fair.

"I guess we should get up and make dinner," she said, and I could feel her breath on my neck again.

"Guess so." I said it, but I didn't take my arm from around her.

"This feels really nice." She pressed her face against me and made a contented little noise and kissed my neck. I just laid there and let her do it again, and again. Then she lifted her hand to my cheek and held it and kissed my neck again. This time I felt the wet of her tongue there and my cock started to respond.

"Sav," I said.

She stilled, then moved her mouth away from my skin, although when she spoke her breath was still warm on me. "I'm going to make dinner. Please stay."

I went back to Marcus's with a plateful of leftovers and when I went to put them in his refrigerator, he was in the living room with Marsh. They were both watching a nature show about hyenas.

I leaned against the door frame and extended a beer to him. "Hey, man. How's it going?"

Marcus took it and gestured with it toward the screen. "You know hyenas are in the cat family? And they can snap bones like twigs? Like I heard it, it sounds like a twig snapping and it's nothing to them."

"You're shitting me. The cat family?"

"That's what I said. But that's what this show said, my dude. Where you been all day?"

I took a long drink. "Went to Lisonbee to get Savannah an armchair. We had lunch, got the chair set up, had dinner at her place."

"Was it weird?"

I shrugged. Yeah, but not how he meant it. He still thought I found the idea as innately abhorrent as he did. "Kind of."

"I've never heard of nothing like this, man. Get that girl into therapy."

He was right.

"I've been to therapy," Savannah said on the phone when I called her. She sounded displeased.

"You said you never told them who you were talking about. You left out the most vital piece of information."

"Because they wouldn't understand. They would immediately say it was unhealthy and wrong."

"Doesn't that tell you something, Sav?" I said. Gently.

"It tells me they don't understand."

"There's no way I'm gonna do this with you when you refuse to see a doctor about something this fucked up."

There was a long silence. "So there's a way."

She knew and I knew that I wanted her to see a doctor not because they would convince her something was wrong with her, but so I could say I made her go see a doctor and everything, before anything had even happened.