I was asleep when he came into my room. It took me several minutes to realize what was happening. By then, my father had already undone his belt, dropped his jeans to the floor, and taken off his shirt. By the time he crawled into my bed and under the covers, I could smell the booze emanating from him and was awake enough to understand that this was not a dream. My dad had just stripped down to his underwear in my bedroom and gotten into my bed in the middle of the night.
It wasn't entirely his fault. For starters, he was drunk. He started drinking more after my mom was diagnosed. It wasn't a problem at first, but then, when the bad news came after the second round of chemo, the drinking intensified. The second reason why it wasn't his fault was I had just swapped bedrooms with my parents the week before. The cancer was spreading fast in my mother and their bedroom at the top of the stairs was becoming difficult to get to and from. Last week, my Daddy and I spent the day swapping the bed and dressers from my room at the foot of the stairs with Mom's things. After all, I was an 18-year-old woman, soon-to-be high school graduate and college student. I could climb some stairs.
The decorating stayed the same since... well... the doctors... they didn't think... the bedroom swap wasn't expected to be permanent.
And to top it all off, I was lying in bed facing away from my father, so how could he have known in his state that he was in the wrong bed?
If anything, it was my fault; I should have spoken up. I should have warned him. I should have said something. To this day, I don't know why I didn't say something. Maybe it was because I loved my dad so much. Even though he wasn't my biological father, he had always been there for me as far back as I could remember. And soon... he would be all that I have left.
I felt the bed shift from his weight, and it was pulling me backward like the mattress wanted us together. Fighting gravity, I remained on my side as I felt Daddy's warm body scooch closer to me until I was his little spoon to his big spoon. He kissed the blade of my bare shoulder, and I felt the scruff of his well-groomed short beard. My night light was behind him, so there was not enough light to see me. That and my long brunette hair was draped over my shoulder and cheek.
"I love you, Tracy," he whispered my mom's name into what he thought was his wife's ear.
I looked a lot like my mother, my only biological relative. We both were shorter at 5 foot 4 and had matching hair. While my mom had always had more weight on her love handles, she had become skinnier since chemo. On my darkest of nights, I often wondered what would come of me after she... It was revolting to think of such a thing like it was an inevitability, despite the doctors saying it was. It didn't feel right. It didn't feel okay.
Will I be alone in this world? I will become an orphan. After all, I was just a stray pup brought into my father's life. I was just a child my mother had from a previous relationship. What does he owe me? Nothing. I'm 18 now. If my mother was gone, he could wipe his hands clean of me.
I imagined myself alone in a cool desert in the middle of the night. The predators howled and stalked in the distance. Sand and blackness stretched as far as I could see.
Alone.
But I wasn't alone now. The kiss on my shoulder turned into a kiss on my neck. Shivers shot down my spine and back up again as his hot breath panted on the back of my neck. Daddy had never kissed me there. His hand palmed my upper thigh over the blanket and rubbed over my butt cheek. My lips parted as I gasped. When he squeezed my bubble butt, I clenched, holding my breath.
This, along with many other moments, would have been an excellent time to 'wake up' and stop my daddy, but I didn't. The covers moved slightly, and I realized he had moved his arm under them. Daddy's rough palm was so warm when he cupped my butt; it felt as though he had a furnace inside him. Even though the boy's boxers I wore to bed, his hand instantly permeated heat through my body.