At home, Carl was torn between shock and confusion. Kathy? Sex? There was no claim that Barb had inferred otherwise. Barb would have taken the thoughts that were not sufficiently nailed. She couldn’t have projected teenage fantasies. She talked to Andrea and Kathy wouldn’t lie to her best friend. Barb had spoken with the knowledge that such things happen. Why shoot the messenger?
Fathers can’t think of their child, can they? It’s not natural. Maybe it’s biologically natural, but it’s not supposed to happen. It’s not fair! Everyone knows that. It’s wrong to make love together. Sex is something…
Nothing would happen because Carl knew it wasn’t good.
It’s so complicated. Sex is something…
Of course, Kathy could feel ready to become a woman (a shallow view, anyway, he recognized, but she was only 14 years old), but why would he not be with a 16-year-old boy with a driver’s license? He answered it before he finished the question. The kid believes in herself in the future. She’d look at the relationship. She probably saw beyond what a 16-year-old could come back. Of course, he knew, she would sooner or later digest a mentality from behind, but maybe she wasn’t out to press her.
What would she see in him? A father she could trust. She should have known she could flirt with him. She noticed her eyes when she was in a towel. She knew he was smiling after he planted his morning kiss. Of course, he admitted, she saw someone who in turn saw her as a young woman.
Was he handsome for her? Certainly not, as she saw too much. But then, how is it even in its equation? He was safe.
At dinner, she was exactly the same. No eyes or comments on the fear of darkness. The conversation spread around the school chorus. She wanted to go out. Fair enough, he realized; She took more of her own decisions.
But looking at Kathy eating peas and chatting about the tests for Junior Rally next year, he saw things that he had never noticed before - the vibration, the softest smile, the fullest face, the necklace. Shoot, he admitted, he saw someone he wanted to know better.
When she took a second help of fried onions, he saw the cup of her bra. He probably saw his daughter’s bra that morning, but he didn’t really see it. It wasn’t a consequence. Now it was very photo, a very nice bra.
No, he said, it didn’t give him an erotic feeling. Her chest was pretty, that was all. He was his father, as Barb said. He looked again; He seemed rounder, fuller than once. If he swept it while liberating the table, it would be sweet.
It was sweet.
And it was just the first night.
The four weeks of rollercoastered, Kathy giving more signals every day. He tried not to see, but they were there! Not that he didn’t notice Kathy’s emergence before, but his sexuality was now so apparent. Not only his femininity, he realized, but his playful opening with her for him.
At least he had a friend to help him. Speak a little and it’s easier to have perspective. If only Barb could tell him how to stop him, but Barb stood firm, “Let her think for herself. Go into her world, tell her what you don’t think, fuck her and you know the rest… a buttonhead with a blister on her dick! Keep your vent for me, buddy. I have time and, what matters, I care.”
“She kisses me differently at breakfast. I feel it. You know it won’t happen, Barb. You know that!”
“Tongue? Right?” Barb replied as she was inclined to do. “Maybe she’s getting bigger. Children sometimes get worse. Kiss her like a father should. Brush your teeth first, though.”
“She leaves her panties at the top of the laundry room!” He did not add the color she had chosen when she revealed above the back of her belt. Today they were his pale blues. She was looking for grapefruit juice.
“Watch the laundry in the machine. If you know how to say it, her panties could say where she is with her pills. "
How did you say it, asked Carl, but he didn’t ask. He didn’t see anything different.
“She doesn’t even tighten her bra half the time.”
Barb made him look embarrassing. “So you say, “Here girlie, let me do the violin with your strap?” God no! Don’t drop your nose.
“I don’t know how to show him I love him. She wouldn’t want sex to prove it.”
“What I know is that you’re the father Kathy needs.”
Once Kathy pretended to steal his hat after training, he grabbed her, maybe getting goosed back. It was probably an accident, maybe a elbow. But this kid is so smart. He felt his chest with his forearm, accidentally dug on it and they back, but he didn’t tell Barb.
“You weren’t hard or anything, were you?” in Barb’s dilapidated mode, as if they had already spoken of erections. Of course not. “But after?” she continued. Not especially, first. “It would be normal like hell,” she concluded, but added, “More in this way to remember this,” but not to pursue it.
When Carl had jogged too much on the edges (the girls ran 20 times more without such wear), Kathy rubs his neck before dinner. She knew that he loved her enough that sometimes she wouldn’t even have muscle cramps. Her fingers could relax the tendons several layers. Are you okay?
“Your neck?” Barb twisted like a coach. “I think so. You think she’s planning to drop? When these fingers get to walk, do you ask me the map?”
She laughed, “Tell me what if Kathy starts refreshing, you come to me and I’ll hit you a little.”
A chest sometimes showed when Kathy wore pajamas. She was a sole of young women, not enlarged like Wendy’s, who had become a maternity ward. A larger diameter for a baby’s target, Carl hoped, would be the Darwinian explanation. He tried to think of the scientific part.
Barb said that Kathy’s boobs were totally normal, that it was the age when the nipples started out more. He noticed it too.
Kathy was pretty obvious. She’d leave the door unlocked, suggesting “sometimes someone has to pee.” Of course, he never went, but knew that the sliding shower wall would not hide much.
When he finally succumbed, “Papa, it’s you?” she asked from behind the glass. “It’s okay. It’s fog, she assured him.
He almost turned back, but instead of shit, I had to brush my teeth. He didn’t plan to complain, but he thought enough of Kathy’s dilemma asking him to do his shoulders. She doesn’t, fortunately. Although it stood away from the partition, it could discern the tones of flesh from its figure. It was too loud to really see, but between his legs was dark.
“Do the door, Dad. He leaves in the cold.” He panicked.
When he admitted the meeting in Barb, she was adamant. “Look at your slim ass in this bathroom. She’s not safe yet. "
Sometimes father and daughter were watching TV… “Mash,” sometimes a movie. If the movie had an actor serving a bare boob actress (that’s why the subscription chains made money, Carl guessed), Kathy wouldn’t have pretended not to look while Carl pretended to deflate. It wasn’t porn because maybe the plot was on a writer’s life, just a life that included a breathable fornication. He listened to the sounds, knowing she saw the picture.
“Can you see their organs?” Barb asked, as if the actors played for a church service. No. Being Mr. Censor would have told Kathy to look at the X reported to his friends, Barb agreed. Let the kid be honest about his curiosity.
“Barb, it’s strange, but it’s just Kathy and I in our house. I could be in his room. Or she could enter mine. If something like that happened and her pill doesn’t work yet…
“Don’t go in there to check on her window, or any,” Barb thought obvious. “Don’t tell her there’s a more comfortable place when she rubs your neck. You have a couch.”
Watching TV together put Carl a less passive challenge. Sometimes Kathy escaped, and some of these times she would almost be against him.
“Like this time at the hotel, Carl,” Barb remembers, “when you have the girls to wake me up. Maybe. I fucked you not to delight me, but honestly, you’re a real gentleman. Be like that with Kathy, okay?”
He pointed out that there was no teammates to call.
“Carl, did you touch her?” Just where his hand was on his side. Maybe a little more. “Did you come, maybe?” No, it was a shame. He did not add how his hand had slipped his sleeve from where it would have been so easy to slip inside his collarbone. No. He wasn’t sure how it would have been, if she had been in a shirt with buttons. He thought one or two were flying.
“Shit fire!” Barb started when she read Carl’s mind. “She could’ve waked up! As if she was wondering about sex and she wakes up with dad who’s running it! Fuck, Carl, do you want me to hit you? So keep your action together! Don’t spy on him! You could go to jail and fuck yourself!”
Barb was shaken, he could say it. She told her she knew he’d end up doing it, and she found out how right she was. Is she surprised? He seemed strange to Carl, but not up on his “to solve” list.
But Barb was there for more than advice on not being seduced.
When Carl felt completely confused, it was when Barb did his best coaching. It was usually quite simple. “Women are frustrated. Men are frustrated. Same thing. We’ll take care of it. We need to clean our systems. If we decided to be lovers, that’s what we’d do. But we have the limits on which we have agreed. You and Kathy. She’s not ready yet. You’re still on it, but maybe more alone. Shit, that’s how we’re fired. You don’t tell me shit, but blink your eye or something so I know.”
Both succeeded in a smile. Barb said, “You’re not going blind or anything.”
PLAYOFF
“Carl, we need to talk.” The coach and assistant coach were on the edges, watching the girls play the last lap. They’d practice well.
It was time for the playoffs, Carl knew, the real one. Barb didn’t want to talk about a football game. Kathy was ready to go with her, her choice was too obvious. But himself? It wasn’t to be able or wanting. God, he wanted it! He went to sleep too many nights to see Kathy. She would have drawn it to the couch. She’d get dressed. Nue, she would crawl on her knees, face to her, her pressing breasts, the virginity giving, closing around him. She would be responsible, as Barb said. When her seed finally satisfied her, they’d kiss. Carl would drift into fullness. I did a good job. She’s so happy!
But he wanted Barb to keep his determination. To give him the assurance that he’s going to be a loving father. To tell her again, it’s for Kathy. Barb knows.
“I’m ready,” he agreed. “I love the kid, but I needed those weeks to come here too. As you said, I’ll let her do our rhythm. Maybe we’re starting to cuddle.”
Barb spoke slowly. “Forl, it’s like the grass was listening. Can we go somewhere?” turning to a bench a few yards behind.
“Yes. Not on the ground.” Both hit the team and sat down. “It’s time, right? She told Andrea it was time.”
“No, Carl. She’s not.”
“Not?”
“She stopped the pill and won’t sleep with you.”
“She’s not?” Carl felt the void before denying it. She didn’t want to?
Barb took his hand to warm him up. “She knows she’s too young.”
“She’s almost 15 years old. Many countries are when they get married!”
“She’s not here, I guess.” Barb rubbed his back. Are you okay?
“I guess,” a mumble.
“You think. Carl, damn it, you think? Look at me! You’re ready to cry!”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, be an idiot and make a statue. You want Kathy to take you on your fucking couch! You think I’ve been nowhere?”
“I don’t know… It’s just that she’s so ready.”
“Like you’re not?” as to wake him. “As who seduces who?”
“She still loves me?”
“Shit yes. She’s not ready. Maybe she should wait for someone of her age,” suggested Barb. “Sex doesn’t work, it’s normal, Carl.”
“Oh, my God, Barb. It worked together, Kathy and me.
“Oh, God,” he heard his groan. But she didn’t leave her hand.
A minute ago, he built a life around Kathy. Maybe it would look weird, father and daughter living together, but people used to get used to it. They would have their two rooms. Maybe they could have a baby and say she adopted it or something. Consumption would lead to everything.
Now nothing. When he divorced, he had at least one little girl to plan. And now? A teenager who gives her a kiss to the fly and flees to practice the rally.
“How lonely all of a sudden?” Barb interrupted his thoughts. “But Carl, it’s not over if a friend is still here.”
He looked more closely at his companion. She was close. “It’s you. You were with me,” he realized. She looked like Kathy.
“Kathy is the one who did the job, to whom you almost made love. You have to make love, Carl, a lover, again and again. I am not Kathy, but I am.”
“You are you.”
A kiss was how they sealed it.
Barb looked, then back, “Look over there, Carl. See that basketball? He looked. “You know, Carl, my father was my basketball coach.” She thought. “And Mrs. Griffin, we called her Claire, was her assistant. It was different now, but it was the same.
“And I loved my father. Always. Maybe it was a stupid decision, but maybe not. Anyway, it was my choice. Shit, after I fucked my way out of all the borders, but at least I found it.
“Well, yes, dad and Claire must be lovers. It must have been a barbecue or something I saw them wandering around the garage and I knew it was shit. They were there, holding hands like us. I spit, I already knew the rest. Claire is my mother-in-law now,” enlightening at the end.
“As I said, Barb returned more personally, I screwed things for myself, I had not understood the limits. We always have them.” She raised her hand and brought her to see her eyes. “But a few meters wider, maybe?”
Carl thinks. “How would I know?”
“I’m not your coach, just a partner. "
Carl burned, took a break and tightened his hand. “Why me?”
“Because we’ve been teammates for a long time, good teammates.” He had always loved that they mock him, didn’t expect him to do it anymore, but perhaps asked more than he had sometimes shown.
“But, almost forget Kathy, you never saw me play.”
“So we’re just trying,” resting the hand behind his elbow and looking around. “Maybe not here, though.”
Without leaving a chance to doubt his instincts, “One on one?” his decision.
Barb reached behind him, as for a foolish object, and Carl stopped himself like his breast drug through his arm. “Shit! We had this border somewhere, but it escaped. I guess it’ll wake up, you think?” she explained, not having to answer.