As long as his name wasn’t mentioned he didn’t exist. Yeah I was playing the shit by ear; the fuck did I know about letting her go off to have a life separate from me? Besides she was too fucking young, she was still my little doll.
Then came the mad dashes to her room, as soon as she came in from school. I would hear her giggling with her friends of which there were many, behind her bedroom door. Then on weekends when she had half that school of hers in my damn house, I’d have to go into hiding to get away from teenage bullshit.
I’d shake my head at the whispers and blushes that would appear as soon as I walked into a room. It got so as soon as I saw the million and one cars pulling into the driveway I’d high tail it to the other side of the house. That became the norm whenever she and her friends were in residence.
I was still in the habit of being there when school let out. Still over protective to a fault where she was concerned no matter how she claimed that she was old enough to be home alone with the staff for a few hours until I came home. Now I can’t get away from my home fast enough, but that’s another story. That shit only came after I started suspecting who her real target was.
In the beginning, all I saw were the changes that mom convinced me were natural. I guess it was a shock to see my little girl growing up right before my eyes. It was happening too fast. Yesterday she was a little urchin getting into mischief to keep her uncle Sol occupied. Today she’s a half woman with opinions that differ from mine, where once before she lived by every word that came out of my mouth. What the ever-living fuck!
Then came the clothes debacle. We’d had some major brawls over her new style of dress. I’d once seriously started researching a designer so I could hunt him down and rip his throat out for making the shorts she was now so fond of way too short. I would’ve done it too if mom hadn’t laughed her ass off and told me I was being stupid and that Alexandra would grow out of it.
Then I noticed that she stopped avoiding me, only we didn’t go back to the way things had been before the change. Now I saw what I could only call sneak attacks, but these weren’t the innocent tickle attacks of the little girl who would make me laugh until my sides hurt, oh no. These shits were designed to drive me batshit crazy.
Her favorite scheme was to come into whatever room I was in, wearing one of her latest scandal worthy getups and turn my life upside down. I was miserable as fuck. No matter what she did, or what game she was playing I was the adult, the man who’d raised her for fuck sake.
She was just sharpening her feminine wiles on the only man she knew, the only one she could trust. I made all those excuses for her behavior while fighting my own growing and totally unwelcomed feelings.
No way was I going there, it was sick. She was practically my daughter. I was the one person she had in this world that she could trust implicitly. How could I betray that trust with these thoughts that were plaguing me of late? I was convinced she didn’t know what she was doing, the danger she was in. And if she was doing that shit to me I didn’t want to think about the teenage fucks that were always sniffing around her.
I couldn’t find the words to warn her of the consequences of her actions without damaging her in some way; so my answer was to make myself scarce. That shit only made her ramp up her shit and our home became a battleground.
Then she took to waiting up for me at night, calling to me as I passed her bedroom door. I’d have to go in and stand there, talking to her while she innocently moved around on her bed in the skimpy shit she slept in, while telling me about her day.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. No, that came the day she turned eighteen and I lost my fucking mind. I’d thrown her a party to end all parties; shit had cost as much as some high society weddings. Her dad had left her a shitload of money, even with a special stipulation for her eighteenth birthday party, but I’d matched it dollar for dollar.
I’d given her the run of the show with the help of a kick ass planner and mom as overseer of course. I’d planned to drop in in the middle of the festivities, stay long enough for her to cut the cake and then leave her and her crowd to it. I’m sure they didn’t want an old man hanging around cramping their style. The guards I had planted on her twenty-four seven would be there, so I had no fear of anything going wrong.