1
Titus
“Let’s have a toast!Raise one up to my number one best friend for making it back from overseas without having an arm blown off, a leg torn to shreds, or worse yet—a hole blown through his chest!”
Douglas, my best friend since we were teenagers, raises a beer bottle. I clink mine, and we both take deep sips and smile. I grin, chuckle, and take a deep breath. Today is a celebration of my return from my recent, and hopefullylast, tour overseas, and we’re grilling up some burgers.
“I can’t tell you how good it feels to be back home,” I say with a sigh of comfort that I can’t even describe. When I was over in the Middle East, there were times when I thought this day would never come, but it was picturing momentsjustlike this that got me through it.
“Hey, I hear ya, buddy,” Dougie replies, taking another swig. “Can’t even imagine what you went through over there. Couldn’t have paid me to take your place.”
And he’s not kidding either. Dougie’s a play-it-safe kind of guy. When I joined the Marines, Dougie applied to colleges, went and got his degree in computer science and works for a major company now handling all their tech stuff doing way all kinds of things I can barely even pretend to understand.
I still remember the day we met.
It was the first day of school, and Dougie was working hard on a project for one of those programming classes of his that I still have no clue about to this day, and a group of drunk dickheads came into his dorm and thought it would be funny to try to smash his laptop. Since he was on his own and there were three of them, there really wasn’t much he could do about it.
However, never having been a fan of bullies, drunk or not, I knocked their lights out and salvaged his workload for the night.
We became best friends from that moment on.
“Thanks for stopping by today.” Dougie smiles as he gets up from his chair to flip the burgers. “Damn good to see you. I know Lucy will be excited.”
“You kidding? Where else would I be headed? My empty apartment to watch bad television?” I get up and go get a couple buns ready along with the chips. “No place else I’d rather be, bud. How is Lucy anyway? School treating her okay?”
Dougie chuckles and glances over at me like I’ve just said something slightly stupid.
“I think you’ve lost track of time while you’ve been gone there, buddy. Lucy’s nearly graduated.”
“You’re joking.” My jaw nearly drops. When I deployed last, Lucy was barely a freshman.
Dougie shakes his head. “Eighteen years old, just waiting on hearing back from her college applications.”
A feeling of shock runs through me. I was just about to take another sip of my beer, but I stop just as the bottle is touching my lips.
“Dougie, I feel like I’ve just entered a Star Trek episode where they go through a time warp or something.” Dougie cracks up laughing and gives me a hearty slap on the back. “I come home and expect you to lookmostlythe same—which you do—but Christ, you’re blowing my mind with this one. Just too weird…”
“I’ll tell you what, Titus. As a father, watching it happen right in front of you is weird too. They just grow up so fast.”
“I’m getting the distinct sensation that you two are talking about me!” The sound of a very female voice rings out behind me, and I do the only natural thing someone would do in that circumstance: I turn around and see the most gorgeous, unbelievable vision of beauty standing behind me.
“Hey, sweetie,” Douglas says so casually that there’s absolutely no mistake: This is his daughter Lucy all grown up.
She’s wearing those short jean shorts where the pockets are actually longer than the denim, and with every single step she takes toward us, the fabric pulls away from her thighs, leaving a gap that pulls at my eyes with a force that’s nearly impossible to fight. Her top is thin and white and loose and leaves hardly anything to the imagination. Hell, I can see she’s wearing a sea-green bra beneath it, and in the four-years it’s been since I’ve seen her, I can tell she’s filled out from an A-cup to a big C or a small D.
How Dougie let her out of the house in this outfit is beyond me. She is absolutely, without a doubt, the sexiest eighteen-year-old I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean, Dougie may be my best friend, but his daughter is a piece of fucking ass, and my cock is already swelling up beneath my jeans as all the blood in my body rushes to it. In fact, I have to lean back and grab the handrail of the deck as I feel myself go lightheaded.
This is so wrong.
I’m thirty-two years old. I can’t be fantasizing about a girl nearly half my age. On top of that, she’s my best friend’s daughter. She’s off-limits insomany ways, but right now, she’s skipping toward me with her arms wide and joy in her eyes, clearly looking for a hug.
“Uncle Titus!” she cries out, throwing herself into my arms.
I manage to twist myself to the sidejustas I catch her. Shit. Just in time. If I’d caught her flat against my body, there’s no way she wouldn’t have felt the ridiculous bulge I’m already packing down there.
“Hey, how are you?” I reply, doing my best to sound harmless but probably coming off creepy in the process. “Feels like the last time I saw you, you were a completely different person.”
Lucy giggles, not helping my situation at all.