I indulged in a room on one of the higher floors, giving me a good view of the city.
“God, this place is amazing. The place we were staying in was such a dump. Two twin beds, worn carpet, and the walls were so thin I could hear the guy in the room next door fart,” she said. She walked over to the bed and flopped on it and made a low, pleasant, groaning noise.
“You are the best daddy,” she said, with her eyes closed, enjoying the moment. She was much happier than she had been less than two hours ago. Of course, now that I had her here, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do next.
She sat up on the bed and looked at me with a grin.
“Daddy,” she said in a little sing-song voice. “Did you say this place has a pool?”
***
Which is how we ended up near the top of the hotel, where they kept the pool and jacuzzi. It was a Friday night and most people were out on the town so the pool and jacuzzi were mostly empty. Turns out Ashley’s Scarlet Witch costume from the day before could also double nicely as a one-piece swimsuit. I was content to sit in the jacuzzi and press hot jets against my knee and watch her do laps. She’d clearly been on a swim team or something. Her form was flawless.
Eventually, she came over to where I was. She took off her swim cap, and quickly worked some magic involving elastics so that her hair was piled on top of her head and slid into the jacuzzi with a small groan of pleasure. Surprisingly, she didn’t cuddle up next to me, but sat across from me. She wanted me to look at her in her swimsuit. Somehow, there was more cleavage showing now that she was in the jacuzzi.
“You’re a good swimmer,” I said. “Swim team in high school?”
She nodded, sinking down lower into the jacuzzi. It was now just the tops of her breasts and face above water. Her toes came to the surface, just out of my reach. A look of relaxing bliss crossed her face.
“I was good and I loved it, but genetics made me a tiny thing. I could never compete against the tall ones with the huge wing spans.”
“Gymnastics?”
She scrunched up her face. “Every gymnast and ballerina I’ve ever met are seriously messed up people. Teenage girls have enough body issues without getting into those things.”
She splashed her toes in the water a bit, and sank further into the jacuzzi. Her feet came within reach and I gently grabbed one and started to massage it. She let out a surprised moan.
“Ohhhh, such a good daddy,” she said. “I love those yellow Doc Martens, but wearing those for 10 hours at a comic con, plus the heels yesterday, my feet are killing me. This is good brownie points you have building up here.” I smiled and kept massaging her feet for a few moments, before she sat up, and then scooted over next to me, laying her head on my shoulder.
“So what does my little girl want to do for the rest of the evening?”
She looked at me, and I realized what I just said. She just smiled, as if glad I was getting into the proper role.
“I have given this some serious thought,” she said. “I want to order some pizza delivered to our room, which I am going to pay for because you’re saving my butt and I have done nothing for you so far.”
“You’ve done more for me than you know,” I said. “Not everything is dollars and cents.”
“I know, daddy, but I still want to do this, ok?”
“Ok, what else?”
“I want to eat pizza in that huge bed, curled up next to you, and then I want to watch some cartoons on that ridiculous TV and then fall asleep burrowed into you. Is that ok?
“Sounds like the best idea in the whole world.”
“I thought so,” she said, and lifted herself out of the jacuzzi, showing me a very cute little ass. She knew I was looking, “Coming?” she said.
***
Which is how we ended up on the king-sized bed watching Avatar: The Last Airbender because she was horrified I had never watched it. Trying to explain you can’t consume all the geekery got me a mild scolding.
I was wearing just my boxers, as she insisted she wanted to cuddle against my bare chest. When I came out of the shower she had claimed one of my geek related t-shirts. It hung down to almost her knees. I couldn’t tell if she was wearing panties and she seemed content enough to keep me guessing.
We both seemed happily content, munching on pizza and soda, watching cartoons while she kept rubbing her face in my chest every now and then. I had chest hair and apparently she liked the feel of it.
“Teenage boys lack this texture,” she said.
But still, every now and then I caught her glancing towards my right knee. It wasn’t a pretty sight. It was covered in scar tissue, was enlarged and just didn’t look… right.
“It’s just a knee, little girl,” I said.
“Sorry daddy,” she said, a little embarrassed she’d been caught. “I don’t mean to stare. I just know it must hurt. I wish I could make it better.”
Her hair was out of her bun and was somehow managing to spread everywhere. I ran my fingers through her hair. It felt like running my fingers through silk.
“I got off easy. This is nothing.”
She pushed up off my chest and sat cross legged on the bed next to me. She took my hand and, somehow, made her eyes as wide as an anime character.
“That’s another veiled reference. I think it’s Secret Origin time, daddy.”
I nodded. Yeah, it probably was. This was fun, but she had the right to know how damaged I was – physically and mentally – and walk away if she wanted.
“So once upon a time there was a very boring kid who grew up to be a very boring adult,” I started.
“Daddeee,” Ashely said, rolling her eyes.
“Not all Secret Origins involve radioactive spiders or being the Chosen One waited for by the people for generations, little girl. Sometimes, you’re just boring,” I said. “It’s not always a terrible thing.”
“Fine. Ok.”
“Anyway, before I was rudely interrupted…”
She licked out her tongue at me. Her brattiness was honestly making things easier. Instead of crushing despair or even annoyance at her, she was making me smile, which is not something I thought I could ever do recounting this.
“Anyway, this boring kid was ok with it. Because he saw a lot of drama around him. Friends whose parents divorced, or lost a parent through cancer. Or people who were awesome and cool and struggled with drugs. So he came to the conclusion that boring was ok. It was safe, but if you were happy doing your boring things, what was wrong with that?
“So he got his geek on and studied at school. And one day, after university and though massive dumb luck, he met another geeky girl. And they decided they were perfectly ok being boring and geeky together. And life was good for many years. And yeah, they couldn’t have little geek babies, which sucked, but they both decided after a while that they were both really lucky to still have and love each other.
“And then COVID hit,” I said, and with that Ashley clutched my hand, afraid of where this was going to go. “They both got stuck in the same place for an awfully long time. And you can love someone a lot, but a year stuck in a small condo, even with all your toys, can get to you after a while. So when they both got vaccinated they decided to go home to see their parents and some friends they hadn’t seen in awhile.”
I paused and took a breath. I didn’t look at her face. I couldn’t. Here we go.
“I was driving back to her mom’s house from a bar where we had just seen some friends. And it was good. We were both laughing. And the light ahead of me was green, so of course I just drove through it, like I had with thousands of lights.
“But the other guy, the guy that later blew a . 20, he didn’t see it quite that way. So he went straight on through the intersection and slammed into the driver’s side of the car, hitting us so hard the car actually flipped over.
I looked at her now. Her eyes were welling up, and my emotions were getting wobbly too. Just keep breathing, I reminded myself.
“I got this,” I said, pointing at my knee. “It’s taken three surgeries to get it working as well as it does. I nearly lost it. I’m still lucky.
“The motherfucker who hit us got a broken nose from when the airbag inflated. There’s a whole ton of drama around him, but let’s just say for now that he’s not going to enjoy the next five years very much, and when he gets out he’s disbarred and a lot poorer. And he’s still a lucky bastard.
“My wife… I take comfort in two things. One, they say she died instantly. That she never knew what hit her. And that in the seconds before we were hit she was laughing her ass off at something that happened earlier at the bar. She died happy.
Ashley was crying and, too my surprise, there were tears coming down my face as well. I hadn’t realized I’d started. She looked like she wanted to hug me, but I held her back for a second.
“I went insane, Ashley. You need to know that,” I said. “You take someone whose whole life is about playing it safe and being content with what you have, and then rip it all away in an act of staggering selfishness and stupidity, I lost my mind. I was committed for three months. In court I had to be physically restrained from beating that asshole to death with my cane.
“I alternated between incoherent rage and being suicidal. I wanted to kill him, I wanted to kill myself. I lashed out at everyone who tried to help me. It’s only in the last six months or so that I’ve become ‘normal’. And even now if I saw him, I genuinely don’t know what I would do.”