I checked my phone for the tenth time in the past 15 minutes.
12:15 am
She was late. I told her to be home by midnight.
Just as I was about to call her phone, I heard the turn of the key in the door followed by the soft click of the door closing behind her. She silently walked down the hall towards where I sat in the dark, not even bothering to turn on the hall light.
As she rounded the corner into the kitchen, I growled, "You're late."
My daughter gasped and dropped her purse, her phone briefly lighting up the dark as it skidded across the floor.
"Jesus, dad! You scared the shit out of me!"
I stood and turned on the light above the dining table, watching as she settled to her hands and knees on the floor and started gathering up the contents of her spilled purse. The tight black dress she was wearing, already too short for her to be going out in, rose precariously high on her thighs.
"I could say the same to you. Don't ever make me worry like that again."
She paused with an arm outstretched as she reached for an escaped tube of lipstick, turning to look at me over her shoulder. Her long chestnut waves cascaded over one shoulder, grazing against the tile.
"Seriously, dad? It was fifteen minutes. Not my fault that the stupid Uber driver was an idiot."
The thought of her dressed like that in the back of a strangers car made my blood boil, but we had already had this argument too many times to count and I was far too tired to start again.
She stared up at me from the floor, her blue eyes popping against the sparkly, dark eye makeup she wore. After a beat, she put the lipstick back in her purse, gathered her heels by their undone straps and stood back up, facing me.
I stepped closer to her, yanking her shoes out of her hand and held them up between us. They screamed "Fuck me" with their rhinestone straps and 3" chunky heels.
"Who the fuck are you wearing these for?" I snapped.
"Don't start this again!" she whisper-shouted before yanking them back out of my hand and turning for the stairs.
"Go to bed, dad. You can give me the same tired speech tomorrow," she called over her shoulder.
My mind reeled as I watched her ascend the stairs, her long hair swaying against her exposed back. Unclenching my fists, I shut the light off and headed upstairs to bed.
***
The sheets on my side of the bed were cold and unwelcoming, causing a shudder to make its way down my legs.
"Was she late?" my wife asked, not bothering to roll over and look at me.
"A little."
Deana scoffed. "Figured. Your daughter is a wild one, for sure."
Sighing, I rolled onto my side away from her. "And she needs to be tamed," I said under my breath.
***
The past few weeks, or even months, had been....difficult. My daughter, Skylar, graduated from high school and immediately flew the nest, leaving me and her stepmom alone for the first time in four years. She was only going away with her friends for the summer and would be returning before college classes started in the fall, but it had felt like an eternity to me.
Deana and I had not been on great terms in about a year. We had even broached the subject of divorce a couple months before Skylar's planned trip, but we had decided to give it a real try once we had the house to ourselves. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, it just led to us fighting louder and sleeping in separate rooms.
My relationship with Skylar had also been strained. Being a single dad since her mom died when she was four, we had been close. Very close, in fact. I loved her more than anything and she loved me right back. When Deana came to live with us, I felt the tension brewing. Skylar was fourteen then, so I chalked it up to normal teen angst. I thought Deana would be helpful during Skylar's blossoming years, giving her another woman to talk to about girl stuff, but I could not have been more wrong. The more time they spent together, the worse they got along.
Skylar had been itching to get out of the house and away from her stepmom which was really the only reason I allowed her to go off with her friends for the summer. That and she had just turned eighteen so I had to allow her some freedoms, as much as it pained me.
In true Deana fashion, she loathed how much I missed my daughter when she was gone. According to my wife, I coddled Skylar and turned her into the "brat" she had become. I saw things differently but arguing never got us anywhere. In an effort to not stoke her flames, I kept my contact with Skylar to a minimum. Besides, no teenager wanted their dad to constantly call and text them to check on their safety several times a day, which is exactly what I wanted to be doing.
When the fighting between Deana and I got really bad, I had taken to sleeping in my daughters room since it was the only functioning bedroom in the house besides the one Deana and I had shared. More fuel for Deana's fire, but I didn't care. It was more comfortable than the couch, and what was wrong with wanting to feel like my only daughter was close to me?
After a couple of weeks of sleeping in Skylar's room, I started to get a little nosy. I dug through her clothes, finding all the dresses and heels she had accumulated. During high school, she had been the athletic type, usually dressing in hoodies, plain t-shirts, yoga pants or running shorts. I had been a little surprised to find this new style of clothing though I knew she had the body to pull them off.
Which was exactly the problem. She was out there now, probably wearing dresses just like these while she grinded against some young guy in a dark, sweaty club, his grabby hands all over her. The thought had me worked up in a rage as I slid open her underwear drawer, rifling through the plain cotton panties until I found the lacy ones in the back.
I pulled one out and held it in front of me - hot pink, lacy floss. That's what it looked like. She probably had a similar pair on right now as she let that college kid slide his hands up her dress and fist them in his greedy hands.
Tossing the thong back in the drawer, I laid down on her bed and shoved a pink ruffled pillow over my face, trying to will the thoughts away.
She's eighteen and beautiful. Guys are going to want her and that's okay. As long as she uses protection, she can do what she wants with her body.
That's what I told myself even as I found my hand snaking down my belly and into my shorts, gripping my erection as I pictured some guy peeling off her dress and gazing at her supple young body.
"Fuck," I muttered into the pillow that still smelled like her as I jerked myself off.
Then every night turned into the same routine. Go through her clothes, imagine her fucking some young guy, jerk off to the image. Rinse, repeat.
***
It had been three weeks now since she had been back and I was once again sleeping next to my estranged wife. We had barely even spoken since Skylar's return, much less mentioned divorce again. Whatever was going to happen between us was going to happen sooner or later, regardless of how much we fought about it. I had just decided to leave the sooner or later part up to her.
I was in the kitchen the morning after Skylar's late night curfew-breaking when she trudged down the stairs a little after 10am. I was grateful to see that she had washed her face and put on her normal plain tee and short sleep shorts, her long dark hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head.
"Mornin', Sky," I chirped to her, a little too happily.
Grunting as she rolled her eyes, she poured herself a cup of coffee then sat down across from me at the table, pulling her knees up as she sipped from the mug.
Glancing at her over my laptop, I took in how beautiful she truly was. Long, lean legs. Flawless sun-kissed skin, a sprinkle of freckles across her nose that you could only see when you were standing close to her. Her dark brown hair was thick with a natural beach wave that every rockstars girlfriend from the eighties would have killed for.
As she yawned and stretched, I glimpsed a sliver of her taut belly. Her shirt stretched tight across her full breasts, the peak of her nipples proving that she was not wearing a bra.
Deana walked into the kitchen then, her heels clicking against the tile as she made her way to the coffee pot and cast her eyes our way.
"So have you punished her yet?" she sneered at me, not bothering to look at Sklyar.
Skylar scoffed and muttered "bitch" under her breath, loud enough that Deana heard her.
