Page 5 of Off Limits
I turn my face to the window, heat fully spreading over my cheeks. Why am I even telling him this? That I was kissing someone? Where are my boundaries?
“You kissed?” He sounds surprised. For a moment neither of us says anything, and the awkwardness in the car gets hot and palpable. “That’s not nothing, sweetheart,” he finally continues. “Kissing is, well, it means something.”
“Oh my God, stop please.” I cringe and turn further towards the window. This is too uncomfortable. I cannot have this conversation with my dad.
Luckily for me, he doesn’t push it. He laughs, probably not wanting to have this conversation either, and says, “Okay, fine.”
I turn on the radio and he asks me about my day, and when we get home and get out of the car, he looks over at me with a curious look and says, “Kye, eh?”
I roll my eyes. “Oh my God, stop.”
But he just laughs affectionately, taking my knapsack from my hand and wrapping an arm around me as he leads me to the front door. I lean into the solid mass of him, feeling grateful, suddenly, to have had the time with him on the way home instead of Kye. Kye might be the hottest guy in school but there’s something about Jean-Luc that makes me so happy. He’s so warm and strong and safe. Is it weird that I’d rather spend time with my dad than with boys my own age? I wonder absent-mindedly. He opens the door and winks at me as I walk in and I realize I don’t care if it is weird. I’d rather be with Jean-Luc than most anybody.
Jean-Luc
“WOULD YOU SAY this is characteristic of your wife, Mr. Rochat?” the social worker, Annette, asks me, her pen scrawling over the page as she takes notes. She looks up at me. “To leave on a whim, I mean? Is she impulsive?”
I bite back my smile at her question. Is Melanie impulsive? Is grass green? Is fire hot? Calling my wife impulsive is putting it kindly. Melanie is selfish, chaotic, and destructive in the immediate pursuit of whatever has caught her fancy. I close my eyes for a second, summoning patience, and reply, “Yes. This has happened before.”
Dani, sitting beside me on the couch, slips her small hand into mine and I squeeze it but let go. I don’t think we should sit in front of a social worker holding hands, but I know that Dani is trying to comfort me—as if it’s the job of a child to comfort her father.
Dani was twelve the first time it happened. Melanie had gone to the wrap party for the movie she’d been doing makeup on and gotten into drugs with the lead actor. They ended up flying to Los Angeles for a week, binging on coke and sex, until his PR agent broke up the party and Melanie came home with her tail between her legs, begging for my forgiveness.
It was the same story when Dani was fifteen.
When she was sixteen, Melanie didn’t go anywhere, but she’d decided to stop hiding the fact that she was cheating. We were in an open relationship, she told me. Whether I liked it or not.
That’s when I knew I couldn’t stay anymore, not even to protect Dani. Melanie had crossed too many lines for me to pretend that things might ever go back to the way they were. I let Mel keep the house so that Dani wouldn’t have to move, and I bought the new one. I didn’t want to leave Dani with her mother, but there was no way I could win custody from her biological parent.
Sitting here with the social worker now, though, I can’t help but blame myself for not trying harder. I should never have let it come to this. Being afraid of overstepping my boundaries with Danica is what led to her being abandoned. I find Dani’s hand again and squeeze it.
“You and your stepdad are pretty close,” says Annette, speaking directly to Dani. She drops her eyes down to our hands, and I relax my grip, even though she’s smiling.
“Yes,” answers Dani. “I feel safe with him.”
The comment takes me by surprise, but pleases me. I know I can never really be Danica’s father, but all I’ve ever wanted is to make her feel safe.
“Okay, good.” Annette closes her notebook and slips it into the large tote bag at her feet, standing up. “You have my number.” She looks at me. “If you hear from Ms. Holland in the next few days, please give me a call. Otherwise, I’m happy to know that Dani has a safe place to be, and this is our goodbye, since somebody is turning eighteen soon.” She grins at Dani, who smiles back.
Eighteen years old. Technically an adult. Maybe that’s what Melanie was thinking when she left. That Dani was old enough. That they’d gotten close enough to the finish line that Dani could make it on her own from there.
I shake the social worker’s hand and walk her to the door, feeling a surge of protectiveness for my stepdaughter. I want Annette to leave so that I can be alone with Dani, so that I can enfold her in my arms and never let her go.
Eighteen is not old enough. But then again, I would never abandon Danica at any age.
The next day, I spend the morning taking care of personal affairs. I call my lawyer, Patrick, and let him know I want the Kitsilano house put up for sale, and the tenants evicted. I have him call my wealth manager to stop the monthly payments to Melanie. By the time Dani needs to wake up for school, I’ve severed the generous income Melanie has been enjoying at my expense.
She’s been M.I.A. for more than five weeks, but I expect now I’ll hear from her soon.
The housekeeper was in yesterday, and I head downstairs to the laundry room where she often leaves my shirts hanging after she’s ironed them. On top of the dryer, I find a folded stack of Dani’s clothes, which Gisele must not have known what to do with. She doesn’t even know I have a daughter, and glancing at the clothing in the pile I’m sure she’s wondering who the new woman in my life is.
At the top of the small pile of folded shirts and pants is a neat stack of small silk triangles. Lifting one up, I’m shocked to realize that I’m holding Melanie’s panties in my hand, a lacy red g-string I have enough X-rated memories of to recognize immediately. I lift up two more pairs, both Melanie’s, both slinky and inappropriate for a teenager, and before I know it I’m tearing through the pile of folded clothing looking for any evidence that Dani has panties of her own.
This is a mistake, I think finally, when I find nothing. She’s grabbed her mother’s underpants instead of her own. But even as I think it, I know it can’t be true. I watched her pack her bag myself.
Stuffing the panties into my pocket, I grab an ironed shirt and head back upstairs. I don’t want Dani wearing her oversexed mother’s indecent lingerie. It’s unsuitable…but, worst of all, it’s causing a low ache in my groin as I imagine her young, firm ass in the very panties I once pushed to the side and fucked her mother in.
I go into my bedroom first and shove the panties into a corner of my sock drawer, to be dealt with later, then I head over to Danica’s room to wake her up, trying to clear my head of inappropriate thoughts.