The first time you have sex with your best friend’s father is no accident. You’ve been watching him for weeks at Stacia’s house after cheerleading practice, calves burning and shoulders sore from supporting girls fifteen pounds lighter than you. You watch your best friend put the key in her front door to turn it. Everything comes to her naturally. Like smiling and singing and stringing along boys. You ask to use her bathroom. She waves an arm upstairs. You go up the paisley steps and bump into her father at the top.
He is a soft-spoken man with a beard trimmed to neatly curl around his jaw. His thick arm brushes your shoulder, and you can’t get his scent out of your nostrils. After you pee, you splash water on your face and look hard at yourself. Sixteen. Bumpy forehead and untameable hair, eyes peeking back at the mirror like saucers. You don’t have your friend’s dimples or dimpled chin. You have no dimples. No one can love you without dimples, so you wash your hands and shrug when Stacia asks what took you so long.
The first time you have sex with your best friend’s father, you don’t tell him you’re a virgin. He doesn’t manhandle you. Stacia’s mom is a flight attendant, only home twelve days each month. The father carries this burden well and is eager to go to parent-teacher conferences, bake cookies for bake sales, and take Stacia’s little sister to ballet class.
You suspect your best friend’s father knows how to please a woman. He always has a faint smile on his face. His eyes are always a little red, like he’s just been crying. It makes your heart hurt to look at him. Your own father never cries or emotes. He just goes to work, drinks a beer to go with his dinner in front of the TV, and goes to sleep.
The first time you have sex with your best friend’s father you don’t feel like a bad person. Yes, you plan it to some degree, but he wanted it to some degree, otherwise he never would have helped you with those geometry proofs. Let his hand linger on the small of your back. Said nothing when you pressed your head into his chest for a hug. He smelled like aftershave, sweat, and flour. You’re silent some weeks later, walking home with Stacia from cheerleading when she tells you, “My dad likes you. He says you’re poised.” She hardly waits a beat before saying, “I’ll call Jordan tonight. I think he feels weird about the handjob I gave him.”
You make sure you smell good. A spritz of Clinique Happy on your armpits and thin wrists. Peppermint mousse massaged into your hair. An unsteady application of Ruby Woo on your lips. This is the night your best friend is at a party you weren’t invited to (what else is new?). Her little sister is at a sleepover. So you bake some brownies for him, with a thank-you note in cursive for the geometry help. When you ring the doorbell his eyes are still a watery red, and he beckons you in. He’s drinking wine and offers you a small glass. You sip slowly, feeling your tongue purple and moxie grow bigger. When you’re in his lap, hand on his face, you see how many ridges are in his skin. Cracks and valleys the width of a pin. Cracks you’d fill up with clay. When you put your lips on his, you taste his desire and it makes yours bolder. When he takes your hand and leads you up the stairs, he kisses each of your fingers on the way. Suddenly you feel twenty-five years old. You know how easy it is to sin.
You are sixteen and you want to know what it feels like to be loved. It’s not that your parents don’t love you—they do, in their distanced way. Mother caring for senior citizens, father operating cranes. They are good people who pay their taxes and passed their citizenship exams on the second try. Obedient children who Western Union money home and entertain 3:00 a.m. phone calls from siblings. They blink and expect you to make the honor roll because they didn’t come to this cold country for nothing. The weight of expectation threatens to break you. No boy has ever looked at you twice, except to borrow a pencil or try to cheat. But you always said no; you have honor. Well, you had it. You are not sure what you have now.
When you turn seventeen and your parents take you out for dim sum, you can’t stop looking at your phone. It’s been six months since the first time. Your best friend has no idea you’ve been fucking her father for the past half- year, whenever he has a spare moment and an empty house. He still offers you wine when you come over. He’s taken to marking up your body like he owns it. A line of hickeys on your tummy, a bite-sized one at the nape of your neck.
Why hasn’t he texted you back? He texted happy birthday earlier, and that was it. You get home and he finally texts again, i can come get you. the girls are sleeping. After you give your parents an excuse involving friends you don’t have, you get into his car parked in front of your apartment building. You ask where he is taking you.
“Down by the lake. I won’t drown you, promise.” He chuckles and places a hot hand on your knee. “You’re a woman now. We should celebrate.”
The next day your best friend doesn’t look at you any funnier, only comments that her dad’s taking more late night drives. “He’s probably boning some chick and doesn’t want to tell Annie and me. Well, me, really. I don’t know what he’d tell Annie.” Stacia pops her gum. “Did you like your birthday gift?” You nod. It’s a perfume that looks suspiciously similar to the nameless bottle you once saw on her mom’s dresser. Part of you wants to feel bad, but you still love fucking her dad. You love getting on top of him and putting your fingers in his mouth. You love groaning into his ear. You love grabbing a fistful of hair when he tongues you where no one’s ever tongued you. You only feel slightly guilty when it ends. Because you want more.
Stacia never asks how your folks are, only makes offhand comments about your decidedly un-American lunches (“Why is your rice so orange? Is that pudding next to it?”). She likes you because you’re an outcast with unusually good acrobatic talents that earned you a spot on the cheerleading squad. So you straddle her father and watch his eyes turn dark. You get on top of him and feel every inch the woman of your dreams.
The last time you have sex with your friend’s father is in his Buick. Her little sister’s report card is strewn across the backseat. Afterwards he asks if he can be honest: “Maybe it’s wrong, but I love you.”
Love. Your lips pucker at the word like it’s an Icebreaker on your tongue, while he cups your chin.
“I’m not just saying that. I can’t be with you now, but will you think about it?” You tell him you’ll think about it when you get out of the car. You go home. A week passes, and your period and sense of shame are both missing. I can’t be with you now, but will you think about it? Will you think about it? You don’t. You think about the color of your bedroom walls, which are the same color as Stacia’s—lilac. Her dad, like his daughter, had never seen them.
Ola Faleti is a native Chicagoan who loves her city. Her work has appeared in Moonsick Magazine, Wahala Zine, Lunch Ticket, Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology, and elsewhere. She currently writes grants for 826CHI, an organization that uplifts the stories of Chicago’s rising authors. Ola believes there’s no such thing as too many flowers. Or cupcakes.
