Reality is Different Ch. 02

The chair squeaks quietly beneath me as I lean back, looking over what I've written with a faintly disapproving eye. It's rough. Very rough. Short, too - I mean, not super short. There are some confessions on the site that are basically a single sentence, hardly longer than their titles, but still. Short. It makes it sound like I'm taking all this pretty lightly, too, like I'm just some impressionable idiot who read a story about a girl having sex with her father and said "Hey, that sounds like fun." Which is...god, which I hope isn't really the case, though it strikes me at the moment as an uncomfortably accurate synopsis of what really happened. Maybe I should take some time to try to make it sound a little nicer, make it clear that what I'm feeling here isn't just a moment's foolish fancy, that I've been seriously thinking about this, struggling with it. That this is something real to me, important.

Or maybe I shouldn't send it through at all. Second thoughts, grasping cold and biting in my mind - for all my explanations and excuses that I'm only doing this for information, that I'm just trying to find out what paths are open before I have to pick which one I want...this is still a decision of its own. A step I'm taking, however, small, in the direction of an attempt to make this real. I mean, what are the odds that anyone I contact like this would ever tell me not to pursue it, even if it's the worst thing I could do? If I get any response, it's only going to be because the person gets off on the idea of me sleeping with my dad; they're not going to be an unbiased advisor. They're just going to tell me that he definitely wants me, that I should try something, even if he doesn't, and what if I listen? What if I ruin what we have right now because I asked a bunch of perverts how to decide what I should do?

I should just forget it, probably. Follow the advice of the psychiatrists that I conjured up inside my head. It's a phase. It's a crush. It's me being silly and lonely, ruled by my imagination, clinging to the one person in my life that I've been able to love without reserve and trying to make him take on all my needs. If I just stopped reading those damned stories, stopped letting myself slip off into daydreams at a moment's notice...I bet it wouldn't even take that long for me to realize how weird and foolish the idea really is. To move on to something else. Maybe just switch genres, read about some sexy werewolves and vampires instead, fantasize about them sucking out my blood and...doing whatever werewolves do. Howling, I guess.

I turn a little in my chair, glance over at the doorway as the subtle sound of creaking timbers carries quiet to my room. Familiar. I know it well - it's the third step of our old and weary staircase, sighing slightly beneath my father's weight as he makes his way upstairs. Coming up here just to say goodnight, the way he has for years beyond my counting. For my whole life. When I was just a little girl it was to tuck me in, to tell me fairy tales, to give me that brief and loving kiss upon the forehead as sleep was crowding in...I'd felt that everything was perfect, everything was right, as long as he was there and watching over me.

Maybe that's where all this is coming from. Or some of it, anyway. Because even if I don't think about the lurid, sweaty sex that forms the center of the stories, it still feels like there's something nice in it. The moment that I thought about before, of slowly waking up downstairs in my father's bed. Of him being there beside me, his big arm curled around my waist. Both of us naked - not doing anything, just naked, bare, revealed to each other, and the warmth that I would feel with his skin on mind, his hair chest against my back. Being safe and sleepy there beside him, cradled in his arms, protected from the world. It feels so...sweet, the image of it, aching softly, deeply in my heart, and I know a feeling like that doesn't necessarily mean anything at all. But I can't bring myself to just ignore it, either. Not when I don't know if there's a chance that it might feel the same to him.

The knock is gentle at my door. His voice familiar from the other side, rough and pleasant, light. "Mind if I come in, sweetie?" Respectful of my privacy, of my space. I have time to click the little button on the page that says 'submit,' time to let a whisper of excitement thrill nervous up my spine for the half a second's pause as it goes through before I close the window, turn around again to welcome him inside. Wondering again, as my waiting eyes find his, what he sees when he looks at me. Allowing myself a sliver of hope, that perhaps I might soon know.