Wet For Mom’s Husband(2)

I slept across the hall from the man who had his fingers inside me two weeks ago, and my mother called that a blessing.

I stayed in my room for the rest of the night.

Not because I was tired. Because if I opened that door I was going to do something I couldn’t blame on vodka. The house was too quiet. Too clean. Too full of her new life. I heard them downstairs. Her laugh. His voice. The easy sound of two people who had already chosen each other while I was still learning how to swallow the word Dad.

I sat on the bed with my bag unpacked at my feet and stared at the wall until the wall started looking like a bathroom sink.

I hated him.

I hated that he had seen me shake.

I hated that he had said no like he was doing me a favor.

I hated my mother more.

Seven days. That was all she gave my father before she put another man’s name on her mouth and called it moving on.

A floorboard creaked in the hall.

Then her voice, soft, disgusting.

“Night, baby.”

Baby.

I pressed my face into the pillow and waited until the house went dead.

Sleep didn’t come.

The ache did.

It had been sitting between my legs since the foyer. Since sweetheart. Since the same mouth that had been on my neck looked at me in front of my mother and pretended we had just met.

I did the only thing that ever shut my head up.

I reached into the drawer for my vibrator.

Normally I could do this empty. No face. No name. Just the buzz and the dark and the little death that let me breathe after.

Tonight a face showed up immediately.

Richard.

My mother’s husband.

Daddy.

“Fuck,” I whispered.

I should have stopped. I turned it higher instead.

The toy slid through the mess I had been walking around with since the club. I bit the inside of my cheek and chased it anyway, hips rolling into the mattress, the sound too loud in a house where he was sleeping a hallway away. His hands were in my head. His fingers. The way he had held my wrist and still been hard when he told me no.

I came angry.

Ugly. Fast. Not enough.

I lay there after with the toy still humming against my thigh and my pulse going stupid, and the truth finally sat on my chest where I couldn’t dress it up.

I was supposed to hate him.

I was supposed to hate her.

This need was not going to die because I hid in a guest room and called myself disgusted.

It was going to die when I fucked him.

And if that was also payback for a wedding that happened before the funeral flowers wilted, I could live with being that kind of daughter.

I fell asleep on that thought like it was a plan.

Morning made it worse.

Sunlight. Guest-room white sheets. A house that smelled like coffee and someone else’s marriage. I heard the garage, then her keys, then her voice calling that she’d be late and there were leftovers and be nice to Richard, Alessia, he’s trying.

The door shut.

The house changed shape.

I got up and put on the shortest thing I owned.

Not cute. Not accidental. A shirt that barely covered the tops of my thighs and nothing underneath that would survive a bend. I looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t smile. This wasn’t seduction school. This was a girl with no rent money and a body that wouldn’t shut up, walking into the parlor to see if the man who had refused her in a bathroom would refuse her in his own house.

He was already there.

Black coffee. Phone in one hand. Same chain. Same calm mouth. He looked up when I hit the last stair, and for one second the bathroom was in his eyes again.

Then he locked it down.

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning, Dad.”

His jaw ticked. Good.

I went to the couch like I lived here. I dropped. I reached for a remote that didn’t matter and let the shirt ride. When I stood to grab a glass from the low table, I bent too far on purpose. Slow. Careless. The kind of careless a man would have to work not to watch.

He watched.

Then he looked away like it cost him.

“Go put some clothes on.”

The words landed low. Not loud. Not shaky. Tough. Composed. The same voice that had told me no with his fingers still inside me.

It made me wetter.

“Why?” I asked, straightening just enough. “You didn’t mind the dress in the club.”

He set the mug down too carefully.

“That was a mistake.”

“You made me come.”

“You were drunk.”

“I’m not drunk now.”

I walked closer. The parlor felt smaller with every step. He didn’t stand at first. That was the act. The tough exterior. The married-man spine. I wanted it broken. I wanted to watch that composure crack and know the pleasure that wrecked it came from me.

I stopped between his knees.

“You remember,” I said. “Don’t do the stranger thing. You had your hand in my panties two weeks ago and now my mother wants me to call you Dad.”

His eyes dropped. Shirt hem. Bare thighs. The truth I wasn’t hiding.

He stood so fast I had to tip my head back.

Up close he smelled like coffee and the same trouble from the club. His hands didn’t touch me. That was worse. The space between us was filthy with the fact that he could.

“You don’t get to use me to punish your mother,” he said.

“Who said this is about her?”

“Everything you do in this house is about her.” His voice went quieter. Meaner. “You want to hate somebody, hate me. You don’t walk around my living room with your ass out and call it grief.”

My pulse slammed. “Then stop looking.”

“Go upstairs, Alessia.”

I didn’t.

I put my hand on his chest. His heart was not calm. That tiny break almost made me smile.

“Do you want me to say please?” I asked. “You like that. Girls who beg. You just don’t like finishing.”

His hand closed around my wrist.

Not like the bathroom.

Harder.

He backed me up until my calves hit the couch and I had to sit. He didn’t follow me down. He stayed over me, breathing like a man holding a door shut with his whole body.

“Do that again,” he said, “and I won’t stop.”

The garage door started to roll.

Both of us froze.

Mom’s car. Mom’s keys. Mom coming back for the phone she always forgot.

Richard stepped away from me like I burned.

“Upstairs,” he said. “Now.”

I stood on legs that didn’t feel like mine. The shirt suddenly felt like evidence. My mouth was dry. My panties — what I hadn’t bothered to put on — were a problem I could feel when I walked.

At the bottom of the stairs I looked back.

He was watching me.

Not like a stepfather.

Not like a stranger.

Like a man who had just told the truth and already regretted giving it to me.

Do that again and I won’t stop.

I went up anyway, heart slamming, already knowing I was going to do it again.