The Savannah Situation Pt. 01

I fucked it up all afternoon at work, pissing off my coworkers as we lay metal sheets over fucked up asphalt we were working on until they just stopped talking to me, and I couldn't eat dinner I was so fucking anxious.

This is basically what I thought as I was two hours away from ten o'clock, then ninety minutes from ten o'clock, then an hour, then a fucking half hour to ten o'clock and the idea of going over there appealing enough that I had to not think about it, and then it was time to go, and I was thinking this the whole time: fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What the fuck are you doing. What's wrong with you. How can you do this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Stop this now.

But I was at her door anyway even though I'd been thinking that for so long, and she opened it before I could knock.

"Hi, Chris," Savannah said. She looked like she always had since graduation: polished, tasteful, poised and smooth. But she was wearing a black silk sleeveless top that tied around the back of her neck and a pair of those khaki shorts but they're made out of suit material, so they were drapey and hit mid thigh, and I had to admit I wasn't going to deny to myself how good I thought her legs looked and I took a second to admire them. It didn't escape her attention, and the smile she gave me wasn't like she was delighted I'd noticed her, happy that she'd pleased me. It was an expectant smile, and if her eyes could've said something on her behalf I think they might've said, 'It's about time.'

The big windows in her living room looked out at nothing. Nothing that mattered, anyway; it was a greenbelt, hers was the last townhouse at the end of this street that terminated in a greenbelt so you looked out her windows and there was her lawn and a lot of green pines and that was about it. I mean, I was in a basement with views of the neighbor's foundation so comparatively it was a beautiful view, but there wasn't much out there. No people, for instance.

So I followed her into the living room and the Eames chair was angled toward the corner, where two of those big windows met and one plane of glass was right up against the other, some kind of construction magic. But the leather chair was pointing that way, looking over a forest darker than the night sky. It was a dense forest, dense enough that when you got inside it and the sun was down, you couldn't make sense of anything.

She'd pushed the other furniture back some and had cleared a space to the side of the chair. I was confused, but she clearly had something in mind, and I was smiling some when I said, "What's this?"

"I wanted to do something for you, Chris. What you do is up to you," she said, and went into the living room. We stopped in the cleared spot. "You know how I feel."

"Yeah, I know."

"How I feel," she reiterated. "Not how I think I feel. Because if you thought that this is just how I think I feel and I'm mistaken and you're here anyway, I don't want you here. That's fucked up."

"Savannah, I'm still not sure what to think. You can imagine how this would legitimately never enter my mind as a possibility."

She regarded me for a beat and I didn't look away. "Okay, that's fair. So here's what it is. You're going to sit in that chair. And I'm going to dance. Over here, in your peripheral vision. And I'm going to take off my clothes, and dance some more, and eventually I'm going to get dressed again. If you want to look, all you have to do is turn your head. But you don't have to look."

She was so methodic and matter of fact it would've made me laugh if the interest it piqued in me hadn't scared me so much. "Sav-"

"Either sit down or leave. Those are your only two options tonight. If you leave, I won't be mad. But I'm really hoping you'll sit."

I was scared, yeah. But I didn't want anything more right then than to watch her turn around and reach for the black silk bow at the back of her neck and watch the knot coming undone, so I sat down in the chair before my heart gave out.

She dimmed the lights and I realized I could see her reflection in the window, although it wasn't strong enough to make out much detail. I don't know if she meant to do that, but it was reaching into me and wrapping itself like a fist around something dirty in there and it wouldn't let go. I could see her without even turning my head, and maybe I should've told her, but I told myself there was no reason she couldn't see her reflection, too.

She started a song. It wasn't what I would've guessed from her, which shouldn't have surprised me, given everything. But the song was some dark iteration of outlaw country, with a deep guitar and this low, shape-shifting cello or some instrument like that, and it was like that rhythm was talking to me from the start, right through my head and down to my core.

I could see her out of the corner of my eye, too; she had her back to me and the window and was swaying in time. She tilted her head back and her hair was like a mane down her back, and I thought that seemed right for her. It took all my effort not to look at her and all my effort to look at her. I thought maybe two separate forces in me were fighting for diametric opposites with equal strength and conviction. There was a lyric that went 'drink the water' and another that went 'don't drink the water' and I appreciated the topicality of the advice.

That I wanted to see her as bad as I did made my head spin and I swear I almost got sick. Fuck me, but I wanted to know what she looked like moving like that. I wanted to know how I'd feel about looking at her, and that's what I told myself when I turned to look the first time.

If hips can hypnotize you, hers would, the way she was moving them. Right along with the sweeping of the cello and I felt like we must be feeling the same thing with that music. When she reached for the button on her shorts, I looked away, and when they were pooled on the shag rug, she stepped out and used her foot to fling them out of her way and they landed just ahead of my chair. Even if I wasn't looking right at her, she sure planted the suggestion.

When I looked the second time, Savannah had her hair piled on top of her head with both hands, her eyes closed and that black silk top skimming the tops of her thighs, and she turned away from me again over a four count. I was still looking when her hair tumbled down her back again, when her fingers curled under the hem of that black silk top, when it started lifting up and showing me the smooth, tanned backs of her thighs. And I was watching real close when it lifted over the swell of her butt. I saw a full, luscious ass that looked like it was made for my hands, and she had on this ruffly black underwear that reminded me of cake frosting, and that was when my dick got hard thinking about my daughter.

I could've stopped it at any time. I told myself I was too freaked out to stand up and leave, but I wasn't; I just wanted to see the rest of the show.

She danced in that state of undress for another minute and I didn't look away the whole time. So no, I wasn't freaked out. Not enough to stop doing what I was doing, anyway. She knew I'd been looking a long time now, that after I looked at her the first time, I was only able to look away once before I couldn't take my eyes off her.

So she held my gaze as she pulled that bow behind her neck but turned away when it started to slip off her breasts and down her body. She'd stopped dancing and was standing there in just her underwear with her back to me again, breathing hard and trembling, and I didn't want to have to work so hard to watch her anymore and the Eames chair swiveled so I turned it toward her. The movement made her look over her shoulder at me and I wondered if she was scared I was getting up to touch her.

"You can walk out of here anytime you want, honey," I said quietly.

She turned, and her hair was over her shoulders and long enough that it covered her nipples. "I know what I want."

I held her gaze, searching her eyes for anything that was wrong. If it were there, I couldn't see it, and she didn't look away. She was still looking into my eyes when she pulled her hair back, and it was her who broke eye contact to look down and I followed her gaze.

I wanted her nipples on my tongue, was the first thing. They were dark, like a bullseye on the tawny cushion of her areola and the curve of her breasts glimmered in the low light. It made me think of caramel, the shade her skin was.

She didn't have any tan lines and the second thing was I wondered if there were any tan lines under those panties. I was rock hard in my jeans and I realized where my hand was about the same time I was mindlessly pressing my palm to the head of my cock and dragging it roughly down the length of my shaft. She saw and her lips parted, and then I really was too freaked out and I got to my feet.

"I don't think it's a good idea for me to be here right now, Savannah," I said, hoping my flannel was obscuring my goddamned boner from her notice.

"Why?" she said. She didn't move from where she stood. I don't know what would've happened if she took a step toward me.

"Because it's not supposed to be like this." I could've put it a million different ways and that's what I said, so if I ever try to claim I didn't realize where this was all heading, you'll know I'm full of shit. I knew exactly where it was heading and as long as she didn't start saying no I wasn't going to stop saying yes.

"But it is," Savannah said, and her shoulders squared up a little.

I eased around the white shag rug like it was lava and headed to the door. She did move then, following me there, coming to me in that black underwear and nothing else. "I don't know if I shoulda came here tonight, Sav. This can't happen."

She watched my eyes go from her face to her breasts and back. And back to her breasts. And when they got back to her face, she looked very satisfied. "What you do is up to you."

This was the last time in the world I should've bestowed fatherly affection on her. Had she been clothed, that's what it might've looked like. But she was basically naked so when I put my hand on her hip and leaned over to kiss her forehead, nothing about it seemed fatherly, least of all the way my grip tightened on her hip because I had to work not to pull her to me.

She was still standing in the doorway when I pulled out of the driveway, and the light from the living room, dim as it was, nevertheless outlined half her body for me. Those cake frosting panties and the curve of her waist and the perfection of her left breast. And in that half-light her smile looked like a smirk, and it didn't make me any less hard.