My Daughter’s Friend
By Logan Lee
Rev 1.0
Copyright Logan Lee 2011
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This is a work of fiction, and all names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
My Daughter’s Friend
This past summer was very rough on me. My daughter Julie, who had just turned eighteen left at the end of the summer left for college on the exact opposite side of the country. I’ve been a widower for almost twelve years now and my daughter Julie and I had grown very close. We actually spent more time together than any other father and daughter that I had ever met. I know without a doubt that this closeness grew from the way we clung to each other after Donna passed away.
About two years after Donna died I tried to start dating. Julie had nothing to do whatsoever with the way it always failed, that was entirely my fault. Donna and I had met in eighth grade. We started dating in ninth grade and had never even dated anyone else before we were married. So when Donna died and I was left with a seven year old daughter by myself at the age of twenty seven it would be an understatement to say that I was new to the whole dating thing.
By the time I was ready to try dating again, I was twenty nine years old and had never even kissed another woman besides Donna. It didn’t take me long to figure out that women in their late twenties and early thirties expected things from men that I wasn’t really prepared for. Women in their thirties were the worst in my opinion; they all wanted to rush into a serious relationship is what it seemed like. I know that they had the whole ticking biological clock thing but some of them were downright weird and creepy the way they threw themselves out there. After a few embarrassing scenarios I just sort of gave up.
I became absorbed with my career. I spent all the time that I could afford to spend away from Julie focused entirely on my career and being able to provide for her. So when Julie was ten and I was thirty we were able to move into a very nice housing development going up on the edge of town named Silver Firs. Since I was a real estate agent my co-workers tried to talk me out of a development and they were probably right about all of the arguments that they made. I really just didn’t want to deal with an old house. I didn’t have the time for that as a single parent. I wanted a new house where everything worked and all the appliances were new. I never planned on living here as long as I have anyway.
Silver Firs was one of those cookie cutter developments where there were hundreds of houses but only about five different models. If you bought early you got to choose some of the things going into the home and I bought very early. Early enough that I got to choose the paint for Julie’s room, and let Julie help me pick out counter tops and other things. What can I say, as a single father I’ve always spoiled her far more than I should have.
About a month after we moved in, Mike and Stephanie Chambers moved in next door. They had a little girl the same age as Julie whose name was Carly. The two girls immediately hit it off and spent every day together. Separating them was impossible. I didn’t mind since having close friends was something that I figured was good for Julie. They would spend every hundreds of nights sleeping over at each other’s houses over the next eight years until Julie left for college.
Mike and Stephanie were pretty nice too. We had tons of barbecues together over the years and Stephanie didn’t mind having Julie around. She even went out of her way to take Julie along for girl things with her and Carly. I’ve never been much for getting my hair and nails done and I suspect I’m not the only single guy who would say that.
When the two girls reached high school was when they became interested in art. Personally I thought that both of them were very, very good. But Julie was more interested in classical art work and things that appealed to a wide variety of people. Carly on the other hand, was interested sculpting and abstract art. She was very talented and the few times that I saw her do anything conventional I was impressed, that’s just not where her heart lay.
As a result of that one difference Julie was accepted to the Art Institute of Seattle. Carly applied to the same places, they just weren’t interested from the portfolio of her work. The girls had a pretty sad parting. I think Carly knew in her heart that not getting accepted to the places didn’t really mean anything about her as an artist, but it still hurt. It always hurts to be rejected and especially so when you’re a teenager.
Carly was over one night about a week before Julie left and I found myself alone with her in the kitchen. She had grown up into a very attractive young woman. Carly stood about five foot six inches, and had long black hair down past the middle of her back. She loved to wear heels and she had the legs and the figure to pull them off in jeans or in skirts and dresses. She wore her makeup in a way that I know irritated her mother; it was sort of punk is I guess how an old guy like me would describe it. That’s how I would describe it in public at least, in my own head I think that I would be like most guys and think about how it made her look like a whore, but a damn fine one if you ask me. I would be surprised if she even weighed a hundred and twenty pounds. She was just a little thing.
Julie was upstairs taking a shower and Carly sat at the breakfast bar while I finished loading the dishwasher after dinner. She was lost in her own thoughts, twirling a straw around in the Shirley Temple I had made her. It was the same drink I had been making the girls for almost a decade now. Thinking about that made me feel old. I was going to be thirty nine soon, damn I was getting old.
“Hey kid,” Carly looked up at me and smiled, “Whatcha thinking?”
“Oh, nothing much. My parents want me to get a job, like, a full time job so I can start paying them rent and all in the next few weeks.”
“Ah bummer. You mean they, like, want you to be an adult?” I teased. Carly grinned at me and stuck her tongue out. “Well, you know, I’ll make you a deal if you’re interested. I’ve got years and years of work that I have been putting off around here. Most of it’s not too crazy. I wanted to paint the dining room and Julie’s room and stuff like that. I bet there’s at least a month’s worth of it I can come up with though. If you’re interested I can pay you like . . . ten bucks an hour?”
“Wow that would be awesome. That would be so cool. My parents would love it and it keeps me from having to look for a real job for at least a little while.”
“Cool, so you want to plan to start right after Julie leaves? I don’t want to cut into your last few days to party it up.” I grinned.
“Oh yeah, because we really party it up,” Carly rolled her eyes, “You know us.”
Right about then was when Julie came downstairs. She was wearing yoga pants and a little Victoria’s Secret top. As I watched the way that she cocked her head to the side while she towel dried her long dirty blonde hair and smiled at us I couldn’t help but compare her to her mom. She really was all grown up. The boys would be beating down her door in Seattle in just a few weeks.