Father's Keeper

by Parker Ford

  “Jenny,” he said but I pressed my mouth to his and stifled his words.

  “And here,” I said, half desperate and half terrified. I put his hand to the front of my panties and arched my hips so that I moved against him.

  He made a sound in his throat. A strangled, tortured sound that made me press his hand harder to the front of me. His thumb found the split of my nether lips through my panties. He pressed the nub of my clit with just his thumb, his hot tongue stroking over mine.

  “Gil--” I started but he shook his head.

  “Shh. This isn’t happening. Hush, Jenny.”

  I hushed and tried to remember to breathe when his fingers slipped below the elastic of my panties. I tried not to cry with relief and gratitude and arousal when he dipped a finger into my cunt and painted my throbbing clit with my own juices. I pushed my hand to his fly, feeling his cock and he backed up a step. “Don’t do that. Stay still. Don’t move.” The way he said it, I knew to obey.

  I dropped my hand and pushed it to the wall. I stood there, legs splayed as he rubbed circles over my clit, his mouth traveling my throat, my lips, my shoulders. Gil sucked my nipple through my tee, the heat and moisture of his mouth surrounding that small, hard bit of skin. It was so intense I felt my knees go. That intimate action but with the barrier of cotton between us. His fingers stroked me and the orgasm in my pussy swelled with each stroke of his finger.

  “Let me touch you,” I begged him. He thrust two big fingers into my cunt and fucked me, pinning me to the wall with his hips as his fingers delved deep into me. I wished for all the world that it was his cock he was shoving into me, but I knew better than to say. I could feel the unspoken warning in the air.

  “No,” he said an that was all. Not why it was a no--just a no.

  I shook my head but stopped arguing as Gil thrust deeper with his thick fingers, brushing my G-spot with a final firm stroke, his thumb pinning my clit with a wet, perfect pressure. I came, head thrown back, fingers clawing at the dark paneling in my hallway. Gil’s mouth covered mine and he swallowed my cries, his hand moving like warm silk over my pussy until the last spasm worked through me and I hung my head.

  He kissed my nose and straightened my panties, my tee. “Goodnight, Jenny. Sleep well,” he said, head down. And then he left before I could mention the thing that had just not happened.

  * * * *

  I heard Carl coming, his drunken shuffle audible, about an hour and a half later. I lay there staring at he street lights dappling the ceiling and daydreaming about tiptoeing down and crawling into the marital bed with Gil. I tortured myself wondering if Gil was down there thinking of me. Or had he fallen asleep, the smell of me on his fingers. Or my favorite, he’d gone down there and he’d beaten off, licking the taste of me off his fingertips as he came.

  When Carl curled himself against me and spooned me, I let him. When he parted my thighs--thinking I was sleeping--and tested me with the tips of his fingers, I let him. And I responded. My body giving Carl the rush of fluid I had created by fantasizing about Gil as I lay there.

  “You awake?” Carl asked peeling me out of my panties. He shoved my tee high over my head and pulled it back.

  “Yeah. Here I am, wide awake,” I said and rolled to my back, let him lay over me. I parted my thighs, arching up to allow him to slip is cock into me and sway over me. He kissed me and I let him. He fucked me and I let him. When Carl twined his fingers in mine and held my hands flat to the mattress, getting me off before coming himself, I let him. But when I was coming and he was kissing me, in my mind, in that secret part of me, it was not Carl. It was my stepfather kissing me, getting me off, fucking me, holding me tight. And it was his arms around me when I fell asleep. At least it was in my fantasy and the fantasy followed me way down into the dark spiral of sleep.

  Chapter 6

  Carl was gone when I woke up late. Eleven was really late for me. Before and I came back to Pleasant Parks I had been a nanny for three little boys. I woke at five every morning to arrive at my job by six. I nearly felt as if I’d slept my day away, but it also felt good. A note waited for me on the counter. “Coffee’s on” and that was it in Gil’s handwriting.

  I sat listening to the grandfather clock tick and looked at my mother’s angel figurines lined up along the shelf in the dining room. There was a white statue I had given her when I was twelve, for Mother’s Day I think. There was a copper one that Gil and I had picked for her at a small antique store downtown. There was a blue angel holding a moon that Gil had scoured every local store to find after she saw it but couldn’t remember where.

  I had the urge to knock them all off and watch them shatter into multi-colored bits of plastic and plaster. Much like I imagined Gil felt somewhere on the inside. Once we had gotten past our turmoil, we’d grown close. Over the years we’d had an odd mix to our relationship. Sometimes there was the parent and child element. Sometimes friends. More than once there was a brother sister vibe. When I was unaware of my own emotions I’d found myself attracted to him. Fleeting zips of urges and wants that I would quickly shake off.

  I sipped my coffee and wandered into my mother and Gil’s room before I did something stupid like wreck her collection.

  Their room was the plushest room in the house. Done in dark plums with accents of a golden honey color and apple green. The thick bedding always seemed so opulent and my mothers jewelry still took up most of her dresser. “She didn’t take this? Shocking,” I said. Cleary the people she had left behind weren’t important, I just hadn’t expected her to abandon her material positions too.

  I sat on the bed, fingering a string of black pearls still sitting on her nightstand. There was a framed photo of me from high school graduation next to her antique alarm clock and I gently put it face down on the wood. I didn’t want to see my own stupid, optimistic grin at the moment. I studied the room for signs of Gil, sipping more of my coffee and realizing I’d added too much sugar.

  There was a ball cap on the door knob. A picture of me and him on his tall dresser. I was holding a huge bass and he was laughing his ass off. I remembered the trip. He’d taken me fishing and I’d nabbed the biggest fish of all. No one, not Gil or his fishing buddies even came close to catching anything to rival my fish. I had also lost my balance and fallen in the lake. Which was why he was laughing in the picture. That one I left face-up. I looked happy and so did he.

  Gil was a simple kind of man. For all the obvious reminders my mother had employed that this was her room, her domain, her space, he had a few things here and there. More content with the family in the home than the appearance of it, or his claim on it. Gil’s domain had always been outside. The lawn and the trees, the vehicles and the fire pit. And he’d been happy with it.

  Aside from the ball cap and a book by some mystery writer and that photo there was only a jar of money on his dresser and a mug I’d given him when I was fourteen. #1 Step Dad. I had loved that mug and bought it with my allowance because he was the best step dad I knew and I had come to peace with the whole real father versus new father thing. And Gil had helped me through a lot.

  “And now that my mother has left me, he’s still helping me,” I said to the ceiling. I sat my coffee on my mother’s nightstand and flopped back on the bed. I watched her fancy ceiling fan do lazy loops and I shut my eyes for a moment, vertigo having swept in out of nowhere.

  When I shut my eyes I felt Gil’s fingers slipping into my panties. I felt his lips crushing down on mine and smelled the outdoor, campfire, leather smell of him in my nose. I remembered the sweet rush as I came from his fingers penetrating me and the taste of his tongue in my mouth.

  I touched myself, thought better of it, stopped. When I rolled to my side, my head hit his pillow and that smell of him--so distinct and welcoming to me--flooded my nose and all I wanted was for him to touch me again. And that would probably never ever happen. Knowing Gil he was somewhere beating himself up for ever having done it the one time.

  I pushed my han
d back in my panties, touched my clit. Rolling to my belly, I pressed my fingers deep in my cunt, the smell of Gil having provoked a wetness between my legs. I pressed my pussy to the heel of my hand, delving deep with my fingers, fucking myself with my face pressed to Gil’s pillow. Calling up the image of his hands on me, of him swallowing my sounds with a kiss when I’d come, I moved like a wave over my own thrusting fingers, pressing my clit to my hand. Moving, moving, moving softly but surely until I came, my lips pressed to where he’d slept the night before.

  My heartbeat rushed and thumped in my ears and I felt like I was trapped underwater for an instant as my body let loose its final rush of release. And then I lay there panting. Breathing hard and wishing he’d come in and catch me, touch me, love me.

  The phone rang and I jumped.

  I’d grown up in the house so I didn’t give it a second thought. I answered it.

  “Jennifer?” There was shock in that voice. And chagrin.

  I almost hung up. Instead I said, ‘Yes, mother.”

  “What are you doing there?” she asked, her voice sounding almost petulant. How had I forgotten that my mother never liked to be anything but the center of attention. Me being here meant that maybe Gil wasn’t focused solely on her and her disappearing act.

  “Pit stop,” I said, offering up as little information as possible just to drive her crazy. “Carl and I were passing through. I figured I’d check on my father.” I’d also said that to drive her crazy. Because for all of her protesting and insistence that I accept Gil as my dad, once I did she’d seemed all tweaked about it. Reminding me often that he wasn’t really my father but that she was my mom. She couldn’t stand anyone else to be viewed favorably, it seemed.

  “Ah, I see. Is Gil there?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where is he?” she snapped, not at all happy with my brevity. Which made me smile, if you must know.

  “Don’t know.” I laid back on her bed, smelling my own sexual actions on her perfumed air.

  “Well can you take a message, Jennifer, or have you lost all your manners?”

  “What was I thinking, mother? I mean it’s a sin to be rude isn’t it. If you were here I’d be in trouble.” I made sure to drag out if you were here and she caught it. She went silent for a moment and I waited.

  “Would you just tell him that I have some things I’d like him to send and I’ll call later with an address.”

  “Fine.”

  “Thank you, Jennifer. I have to go.”

  “Oh, okay,” I hissed. “And I’m fine, by the way, thanks for asking.” And I slammed the phone down so hard my fingers tingled.

  I put her pearls in my pocket and smoothed the bed. No reason for Gil to be upset and know what I’d done. No need for him to have to deal with it all. He’d have enough to deal with tonight when Marian called back.

  * * * *

  I realized at one point that Gil was in his workshop. I could hear him moving around in there, working on his latest stained glass project. I was pretty sure he’d said it was for the church and I pictured some Archangel, flaming sword in hand, gracing the table in Gil’s space. I thought of Gil’s hands and where they had been. I thought of the sweet stolen orgasm he’d worked out of me and the way his lips had felt and I finished my coffee. Then I hit the shower.

  I lingered in there, not doing anything other than focusing on the feel of the rivulets of hot water running down over me. I washed my hair and felt it tangle under my fingers.

  When I dried off and tossed on jeans and a yellow top, I checked the time. I had a few hours before I had to go to the tavern for my short shift. I braided my wet hair and briefly wondered what Carl would think. What Gil would think. Shit, what I would think. Then I walked the three miles to Josie’s.

  Chapter 7

  “You want to what?” Josie’s hair was pink lemonade pink and I’d done a double take when I walked in. Her bright blue eyes were still as startling as ever, especially with the candy colored hair.

  “Chop it off. Whack it, hack it, donate it.” I flopped in her turquoise styling chair and she kissed my cheek.

  “We missed you around here. Still crazy and impulsive I see.”

  “Come on! We’ve been best friends forever. Are you really surprised that a new life means I want new hair?” I twirled the long dark caramel colored strands around my hand and eyed myself in the mirror. No makeup, pale skin, blue eyes, freckled just above the apples of my cheeks. Defiant. Above all, I saw a defiant woman who was going to announce via her hair that shit was going to change, thank you very much.

  Carl loved my hair. Loved it long. Loved to twine his fingers in it and use it as a rein in bed or just played with it. He liked to twirl it and brush it and even braid it on occasion. Carl was going to toss a nut. The thought made me laugh.

  Even Gil would be surprised because my hair was one of my best features just like my mom. Maybe that was why I was cutting it. With my hair long I was a dead ringer for Marian.

  You think he did that with you because you look like your mother…

  I shook the thought off and focused on Josie. “I think if we go close to the chin we can donate to charity,” she was rambling.

  “Good, chop it. I’m thinking a chin length cut--fierce obviously and a crisp bang.”

  “Say fringe, baby. It’s so much more chic,” Josie said, misting my hair with water and then putting the cape on me. She started to comb me out.

  “Like I said, a crisp bang.”

  Josie snorted and hovered her sharp shears near my hair. “You ready?”

  “Wait,” I said, feeling a little blip of fear. “What about color?”

  She grinned and the blip turned into a wave of fear. “Don’t look so terrified!” Josie said.

  “I can’t help it.”

  “I’m saying keep it natural color and all but how about a blazing blue streak near the front?”

  “What in blue blazes,” I laughed.

  “Exactly.”

  “Fuck it. Let’s go for it,” I said.

  “Done and done,” my best friend said and turned me from the mirror and started to cut.

  I sighed, fidgeting with the edge of my cape. “I heard you’re working for John again.”

  “Yep.”

  “You moving here?”

  “Don’t think so,” I said.

  “How’s Gil doing?” Her voice was soft and her shears clickety clacked like chattering birds in my ear.

  “He’s hanging in there. No one likes to be dumped right?” I tried to sound breezy and uninvolved but she knew me too well.

  “Stuff okay between you two?” Her face held the possibility of suspicion.

  “Carl really likes him,” I said quickly, to reintroduce Carl into the equation.

  “That’s nice, but are things okay with you two?”

  “Of course. I could kick my mother’s ass, but things are fine between me and Gil.”

  “You watching out for him?” she asked, looking at my hair and not my face.

  “As best as you can look out for a grown adult male set in his ways,” I snorted. “And why does everyone think I’m Gil’s keeper or his handler or something?”

  “Do they?” she asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Does everyone think that?” Her bright blue eyes studied me then and I felt like she could look in my head and see what had happened between me and Gil the night before. My cheeks blazed and I looked away.

  “Well, it feels that way,” I said.

  “Sorry, toots.” She handed me an eight inch section of my hair and I stroked it.

  “Wow,” I said, rubbing my fingers in the silky hair.

  “yeah, wow. Gorgeous hair. It’ll brighten someone’s day for sure.”

  “Good. Glad I could do some kind of good.”

  “Oh, honey, you always do good. It’s just sometimes you fuck up along the way. Join the club.”

  “Thanks for having me,” I joked but when she turned me to the mirr
or and left me to mix my color, I said it again. “Wow.”

  * * * *

  John whistled through his teeth and Greg, the busboy, did a double take. “What’s happening hot stuff?” John asked.

  “Not much.’ I tied on my tavern apron and wiped down the bar. Old tasks from old jobs come back fairly easily. Too easily for comfort sometimes.

  “Loving the ‘do. What’s your boy toy gonna think?”

  John had found out that Carl was a whole year younger than me and would now proceed to tease me mercilessly--boy toy, cradle robber, MILF, cougar. The list of teasing would go on and on and on until I either died or broke up with Carl.

  I shrugged and cracked a bottle of water from the cooler. “It’s my hair. Doesn’t much matter what he thinks.”

  “Wow. Someone is grumpy tonight.” His smile faded and he leaned in. “You okay, kiddo? Something up?”

  I blew out a sigh and watched a tiny strand of cobalt blue hair flutter by my cheekbone. I was still catching sight of my cropped locks in my peripheral vision. It would take some getting used to. “My mother called earlier. I guess it freaked me out.”

  And I masturbated in her bed while smelling her husband’s pillow like a teenager. That freaked me out too.

  A burble of laughter escaped me at my own errant thought and John frowned. “You wanna start tomorrow instead?”

  “Hell, no! I need to work. I need to move and do something, earn some money and not be in my mother’s house all the time,” I said.

  Mr. Jenkins, the town boozer yelled “Jennifer, Jennifer! A beer, if you will.”

  “How long’s he been here?” I asked John. I was shocked Mr. Jenkins wasn’t dead. He’d opened and closed the bar when I was in high school. He should be pickled or buried at this point.

  “How long we been open?” John said, drawing a beer. Mr. Jenkins didn’t drive. He’d lost his license long before I’d ever even gotten mine.