Chloe and Cy

Chloe

My name is Chloe Louise Rawlins. I am 23-years-old, and I have red hair. I work as an EMT and am about to start medical school in Boston, MA. I enjoy reading, cycling, hanging out with friends, and the occasional camping trip.

Oh, and I might be sorta falling for my Step-dad.

Before you get all judgmental and jump to conclusions, I have to establish the Copperfield shit, I suppose.

Cy and my mother got together when I was still in grade school, and they were both in their middle-to-late twenties. They had apparently grown up in the same small town out west but ended up in Boston as complete strangers to each other.

He was working as a traffic cop for the Boston P.D. in those days. He pulled mom over one spring day after she’d blown through a red light in her old ’87 Mustang.

I was in the back seat chattering away, and she hadn’t been paying attention. I remember looking through the rear window of the little cloth-top and seeing him swing his leg over his shiny motorcycle. He strode up to the side of the car and leaned over to flash mom his dark cobalt blue eyes over the rims of his mirrored glasses.

“Do you know why I stopped you, Miss?”

Mom, in those days, could flirt her way out of any traffic ticket.

“Sorry, Officer, I– have we met before?”

“Chrissy Rawlins?” He smiled, pulling his shades off entirely.

“Cy Brown! Oh my God, you actually became a cop?”

In this case, she pulled away from the curb with a “warning” and the handsome policeman’s telephone number. That night, when we got home, I made my Ken doll into a cop who kept arresting Barbie for being “too pretty.”

After the initial dating phase, Cy would come over and cook us dinner, and then he and mom would read me to sleep before closing my bedroom door. Mostly I think they just watched old movies or split a bottle of wine and talked. At any rate, eventually, Mom sublet our apartment and moved us into a three-story walk-up with “Officer Cy.”

I should clarify that his name is actually Leroy, but nobody calls him that. Any telemarketers who called the house asking for “Leroy Brown” got a laugh and were promptly disconnected.

I assumed for most of my life that his middle name was something like “Cyrus.” However, he looks less like a Cyrus than he does a Leroy. Cy is the name on his cards, although I can’t recall even a piece of mail coming to our house listing a middle initial.

Anyway, Mom has always called him Cy, so that’s what I called from the time they first started dating.

He was really sweet to my mom. And he was always making time to play games and give me piggyback rides. When mom started working on bigger real-estate deals, Cy helped with my homework and read me stories at night. Always very innocent and above board.

I had never really known my birth father, and mom said he’d been a brief fling she’d had right out of college, and he’d left her practically in the middle of her first Lamaze class. So Cy was a good fit in our lives.

“Nighty night, Cy.”

“Sweet dreams, Chlo-worm.”

It was a nickname that had started as a tease one weekend he had taken mom and me to the beach. While applying sunscreen to my face, he remarked at how pale I was. “You could glow in the dark,” he joshed.

From that sprang the nickname “Chlo-worm.”

Mom eventually switched from selling commercial real estate to selling residential real estate out in the country. Cy, who had made the leap from traffic cop to the detective bureau of the Boston P.D., allowed her to convince him to leave the city. He took a job as the police chief of Lawrence, a medium-sized town in Essex County.

It was bittersweet moving out of Boston proper. Both Cy and I loved the hustle and noise, but Mom said it was better to raise a kid out in the suburbs to get into better schools.

At any rate, we put in for the two-story neo-colonial with the picket fence and the three-car garage. Cy made it official and offered mom a ring, and mom said “yes,” and they were married at the courthouse three months after we finished unpacking. I was both the “best kid” and “the kid of honor.”

After that, it was a bit awkward transitioning from adolescence to young adulthood as the town police chief’s kid.

Mom and Cy were both staunch believers in education. I made it all the way to my high school graduation without going on a single unchaperoned date that wasn’t a church social or a school dance. After my prom, both Mom and Cy rolled up in his police cruiser promptly at 9:30 sharp, and Mom blasted the horn.

“My date has a car, Mom,” I’d scowled, tossing my corsage in the back seat and climbing in, making sure my prom dress didn’t get caught in the door.

“She knows,” Cy said, shooting me a glance in the rearview. “She made me run his plates after you two drove off.”

“Any felonies?” I asked.

Cy had simply shaken his head and put the cruiser in gear, driving us past the ice cream parlor on the way home.

The thrill of my prom night, three weeks after my 18th birthday, was a scoop of mint pistachio ice cream. Mom had Vanilla frozen yogurt, and Cy had an iced coffee before going on patrol.

The summer after graduating, I risked sneaking out to a summer party with a few other just graduated seniors. I hadn’t been there twenty minutes before Cy showed up with a swarm full of cops and stormed into the fray. I recall him peeling the varsity swim-team captain off me just as things were starting to get interesting.

“Chloe! Car!” He barked.

I’d never seen him so livid. This was a man who’d never raised a hand to me or my mother in all his time with us. He was a cool customer, level-headed, like Andy Griffith with biceps.

“I’ve got a mind to get my nail gun and fix your balls to the flipping Civil War monument, Cavenaugh!”

Cy never did tell me how he tracked me down that night. Instead, we had driven all the way home with me hugging my knees in the back of his squad car, totally miffed.

Mom had been livid with me, too, of course. Even though I was over eighteen, she was determined I would not go through college as a single mother juggling two jobs and an infant daughter like she had done.

The story of “Bad Chief Leroy Brown” and his nail gun kept me celibate and single through the first two years of junior college. Any future comers interested in doing the no-pants-dance with good old Chloe had to wait until I saved up enough to make the leap to a four-year school.

I kind of recall not talking to Cy for the rest of that summer, actually.

Of course, the other reason I avoided Cy had to do with something else that happened later that same summer.

I had joined the girl’s intramural soccer team as a way of keeping in training and possibly landing some scholarship money for my eventual transition to a University.

And one day, after a very intense and gruelingly hot practice, I walked in on “my parents.”

I was covered in dirt, sweat, my hair sticking to the collar of my grass-stained uniform. All I wanted was to ditch my uniform in the wash before heading to the bathroom for a hot shower.

I passed by the den, where suddenly I heard sounds of hips slapping thighs and mom yipping like an excited pomeranian.

I inched a glance around the door to find Cy, still in his uniform shirt, and mom, her house-showing skirt and blazer combo pulled up to her waist, as he corkscrewed into her.

I felt my eyes widen at the sight of the two of them together and realizing I was in nothing but a sports bra and panties, I beat a hasty retreat to my room. I dressed quickly in a spare uniform and then snuck downstairs to make a loud and pronounced entrance into the house. “Anybody here? I’m home!”

I’ll never forget Cy appearing in the hallway a few moments later, tucking his shirttails into his uniform pants. He cooly ran his fingers through his dark black hair. “Hey, Kiddo,” he smiled. “How was practice?”

He took in my flushed face and messy knees but puzzled over the cleanliness of my uniform.

“I took my spare,” I said, shaking my practice bag. “The one I wore for practice is pretty ripe.”

He nodded. “Throw it in the washer and I’ll start a load, then. You want a snack from the kitchen?”

“After I grab a quick shower. Oh hi, Mom. I didn’t know you were home.”

Mom had managed to put her hair back in a neat ponytail and looked amazingly unrumpled considering what she’d been doing only minutes before. “Cy and I hooked up for a quick Lunch,” she said, kissing him on his cheek. “Thanks, Honey. See you at dinner?”

He gave her a polite peck as she grabbed her briefcase and went out through the garage.

Now, I keep saying I’m not a freak or a perve or anything. Let’s just say, that afternoon, after I had showered, as Cy made me a peanut butter sandwich, I saw him in a new light.

My step-dad was sort of a hunk.

Since mom had had me so young, she was only just hitting 40 when I finished high school, and Cy was only a year older than mom.

“You alright, kid?” He asked, re-wrapping the wheat bread and putting it away.

“Huh? Yeah.” I wiped the goofy look off my face. “You think someday you can teach me how to ride your motorcycle, Cy?”

He’d bought an old BPD bike at auction and spent a summer or two tinkering with it in the garage.

“If it’s okay with your mother,” he said.

I fantasized for the first time about him then. Nothing major, just him smoothing the orange-red strands of my hair back over my ears and leaning down to kiss me.

But I knew the moment that little spark ignited in my belly that it was wrong to think of Cy like that.

The kiss fantasy was as far as it went for a while.

I varied it a little. Different rooms of the house. Different set-ups. I’d be lugging a heavy box or need help down off a ladder, and he’d be there, helpful and handy. Or he would just suddenly grip my shoulders gently or tilt my chin up to meet his lips.

That fall I’d gone out for the Junior College Fall Play and landed the part of Hamlet. Very few guys went in for drama in my town.

Cy ended up running lines with me after dinner most nights while he did the dishes.

“How do you memorize so much without any effort!?” I’d groaned in exasperation, having read through all my dialog three or four times with none of it sticking.

“It’s hard to explain. But come on, you’re doing great.”

“I can’t believe I let Jolene rope me into going out for this. I was expecting something easier. Spear carrier number two. Or assistant grave digger, maybe?”

“That’s no way to be. Besides, you get to stab your step-father at the end.”

“After he poisons me,” I scowled.

“Try again,” he smiled. “From Where wilt thou lead me…”

“Where wilt thou lead me? Speak! I’ll go no further.”

“Mark me,” he said in his best raspy voice. “My hour is almost come when I to sulfurous and tormenting flames must render up myself.”

“Alas, poor ghost…”

Even as he washed and put the dishes in the Maytag, doing his best to sound like a wheezing old ghost, I found my thoughts drifting towards our imagined kiss.

“But know, thou noble youth, the serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown.”

I blinked.

“It’s you,” he smiled, pointing a potato peeler at me.

“Oh,” I looked down at the lines. “My prophetic soul, My Uncle.”

“Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, with witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts– O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power so to seduce!–won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.”

“So, is Gertrude in on it, do you think?”

He scowled. “We’re running lines, not analyzing the play.”

“No, but if you were a cop investigating the case, you would totally suspect the queen of helping bump off her husband, am I right?”

“Someone trying to avoid learning her lines?” Mom asked as she appeared with a basket of laundry for me to help fold.

“Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her.”

“I would have bumped him off,” Mom nudged with a smile.

I ended up getting a dean’s list certificate for my performance. Both mom and Cy were very proud.

I keep a picture of the three of us on the nightstand in my apartment in Boston. I’m dressed in my doublet and hose while Cy and Mom both have their arms around my shoulders, grinning from ear to ear.

I keep drifting back now to all the everyday family things because I dread having to go into the depravity of it all.

This was the guy who’d put bandaids on my scraped knees after disastrous roller-blading accidents. Every time I’d drift off into my little fantasy after that summer, I would quickly shake it from the etch-a-sketch of my mind.

Bad, Chloe. No. Wrong. Utterly and irredeemably wrong in the wrongest way.

Anyway, the time eventually came for me to head off to U-MASS. I left after my 20th birthday in mom’s old Mustang with a hug and kiss from her and a quick side-shoulder hug from Cy.

“Keep gas in the tank,” he said. “And there’s mace on the key ring.”

“What if he’s cute?” I asked.

He scowled at me. “You come back with a Bachelor’s degree before you bring home a boyfriend, alright, Chlo-worm?”

I saluted. “Yes, Chief.”

I enjoyed college. In junior college, I had decided my degrees would be in pre-med and psychology. I had my first long-term boyfriend, Matthew, a guy in my dorm, who wore thick-rimmed glasses and old concert t-shirts.

By my third year, I had my EMT certification and my nursing degree. Also, I like to think I had an average “body count” for a moderately good-looking ginger-haired coed with long legs, B-cup boobs, and porcelain skin.

Then that summer, just as I was beginning to study for my M-CATs, Mom started bringing up how much she missed having me in the house.

Cy had apparently become a ghost in her life, coming in from working long hours on patrol to crash out on the sofa watching the day’s sports highlights. Or else he was brewing coffee in the morning without speaking and just casually reading his newspaper.

“I don’t know what’s happened,” mom sighed one night over the phone. “Just a few years ago, we were still like a couple of teenagers. Now, he’s just this stone-faced cop who lives in my house.”

By the end of the summer semester, I had agreed to come home for a few weeks before the fall term commenced.

I took the commuter train out of Boston to Essex County on the Friday afternoon before July Fourth. I arrived just as the sky was turning orange and pink over the Lawrence Metro station.

“Chloe!” Cy waved to me on the platform and scooped me up in a big lifting hug before I could say anything. “What are they feeding you at that college?” He asked. “You’re practically a toothpick, Chlo-worm!”

Arms. Big solid arms. Holding me. Clad in a brown leather motorcycle jacket that creaked softly against the swell of his muscles.

Oooh, the sound of well-weathered leather, even in summer.

A quick mental image of him kissing me hello. And then…

Harsh repression and guilt1.

“A leather jacket in July?” I teased.

“Hey, I’m from Arizona. So this mid-60s crap is fall weather to a kid who grew up with it hitting 120 in the desert shade. Seriously though, you’re a stick.”

“My gentleman callers have yet to complain.”

He grabbed my pack off my shoulder and hefted my suitcase like it was air. “Har har,” he said, obviously staring at my hair.

At the start of the summer, I’d decided to ditch my long red braided ponytail for something sleek and low-maintenance.

“You don’t like it,” I said, brushing my fingers through my short pixie cut.

“No, it’s nice,” he said. “Just reminds me of Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, is all.”

“Mia who in what?”

“It was a horror movie in the 60s. One of Polanski’s early films. How are the grades?”

“You sure you don’t want to see my phone? I’ve got a whole stable of boyfriends for you to track down with your nail gun.”

“I never actually had a nail gun,” he smiled. “At least, not in the trunk.”

“Don’t tell the guys I went to high school with, and you’ll ruin their favorite urban myth.”

“Grades,” he prompted again. “And the job I got you.”

“GPA through the roof,” I said. “And I’m the best underpaid, overworked part-time EMT Liberty Med Rescue ever had. My captain says, ‘hey,’ by the way. Or, let me get this right.” I paused, grabbing his aviator glasses from where they hung from his undershirt and pushing them up onto my nose. I cocked a hip doing my best to look sultry and scintillating. “Hey,” I said breathlessly, pulling down the shades.

He laughed. “Rosie Payne,” shaking his head. “There was a summer.”

I returned his glasses. “She jokes that if mom hadn’t come along and snapped you up, you would have been her biggest mistake.”

“Well, there’s a rule,” he said.

“If you wear a uniform, don’t date a uniform,” I said. “EMTs shouldn’t date cops or firemen–too much drama.”

“There is something a bit off-center with people who run towards gunshots, gaping wounds, and into burning buildings.” He nodded. “They aren’t altogether sane. A lesson I learned from Rosie Payne.”

“She says she learned it from you.” I wiggled my eyebrows.

“Hey, I’m a quiet small-town police chief. I clean out old lady’s gutters and jump people’s cars in the winter. I’m sound as a pound. Rose isn’t giving you a tough time for being my step-daughter, is she?”

“She speaks not on the sins of my father,” I said. “Though I do ask. She’s a real sweetie, actually. Makes sure I do my job, finish my homework, and get to bed by nine every night,” I smiled. “Except when I stay up blowing firefighters and injecting heroin into my eyeballs.”

“Hardy har har,” he said again. “You couldn’t be a bad kid if you tried,” he said, leading me out of the train station to his patrol vehicle. It was a late model Explorer painted in ghost black and silver. “Tease me all you want, Chlo-worm.”

“Oooh,” I said, taking in the cruiser. “New wheels?”

“Raptor conversion,” he smiled. “Town bought it from the state and gave me the budget to soup it up,” he said. “Those lucky stiffs on Highway get new cars every year. This one only had 84,000 miles on it. With the new engine, she’s practically cherry,” he smiled.

He tossed my bags in the back, and we climbed into the cruiser. He fired it up and chirped the siren the way he always had from the time I was a little girl.

“I thought mom was meeting me,” I said.

“She got called out of town,” he sighed. “Some big house outside of Boxford she needs to prepare for a showcase in the parade of homes. She wasn’t happy about it. But, she’s the only one her boss trusts with the sale. Blah blah blah. So it’s just you and me for dinner tonight.”

“Ooh, ice cream and gummy-worms then?” I smiled.

“Your mother still hasn’t let me live that down.”

“I was 10,” I smiled. “I tasted colors on that sugar high!”

“I’m thinking I’ll order us a pizza,” he said. “Maybe split a six-pack now that you’re legal.”

Legal.

Now, of course, he meant legal drinking age. I knew that. But somehow, my mind popped to an image of him stripped bare and slamming into me, my own yips echoing off the ceiling of the bedroom I’d had since I was 11.

Wow. Where did that come from? I mean, it was one thing to think about a sweet little stolen kiss. But…

I swallowed hard. I wasn’t that sick, was I? It had been just an innocent fantasy when I went off to college.

No! Bad Chloe! He’s your dad!

We stopped at Ralph’s and bought a large Brooklyn Style pie. Then we hit the liquor store, and Cy came out with a sixer of light beer for me and him to split.

“Need anything else before we head for home?” He asked.

“Na, I’m good. I just want a hot slice, a quick shower, and to slip into my jammies with a good book.”

“The acorn falls not far from the tree,” he smiled. “That’s your mom’s routine for signaling to me that any attempt I might make at fooling around is ill-advised.”

“How are things with you and mom? She says you’re both working a lot and aren’t connecting as much as you used to.”

He shrugged. “Empty nest syndrome,” he said. “Delayed empty nest syndrome. Without a kid to shuttle to and from soccer and softball and school play practice, the need to get home on time has sorta drifted to the wayside.”

I looked at him sideways. Something in his expression didn’t match his innocuous words.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “Your mom and I are working on it. We’ve started seeing a marriage counselor, and we have a regular date night where we listen to each other and share our feelings.”

“That’s good,” I said, looking to change the subject. “Mind if I choose some tunes?” I pulled an aux cable out of my bookbag and plugged it into the dash.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “But I reserve veto privileges.”

I scrolled and found Demi Lovato and hit play on “I love me” before turning my attention out the window and taking in the July New England scenery.

Cy

I really hated lying to the kid. I mean, here her mother does the whole song and dance to get Chloe up here for a real vacation, and the afternoon she’s set to arrive, I get home to a note from Christine ending with a polite request “not to call.”

Six months of weekends with notes like that. “Working on a house for a showing. Sorry, babe. Don’t call.”

I’d have probably been angry had I stopped to give myself time to think about my feelings. But with Chloe due at the train station, I simply pasted on my best “everything’s peachy” smile and tried not to let on that my world was burning down around me.

I’d found the divorce papers from a lawyer I’d never heard of, addressed to Chrissy in the briefcase she’d left behind.

Over a stupid argument…

I watched Chloe looking out the window of the Explorer. She picked up her phone to Google Rosemary’s Baby. I smirked as she thumbed the stills of Mia Farrow and read the brief synopsis of the film.

Her hair was a brilliant shade of red she must have gotten from her biological father, whom I had never met and who Chrissy rarely talked about.

The song she picked was one I’d heard on the radio. What was this singer’s name?

“Flippin’ through all these magazines, tellin’ me who I’m supposed to be. Way too good at camouflage. Can’t see who I am, just see what I’m not…”

She finished with Google and Wikipedia and flipped over to update her Facebook.

I thought of asking about the music but didn’t want to seem uncool. Instead, I flicked my wrist Fitbit and activated my Spotify. My cell phone buzzed, and I checked the display.

“So, Demi Lovato, huh?”

Smooth, Cy. Could you sound more ancient?

“I like some of her lyrics,” she said, a bit distracted, almost like she didn’t want to look at me.

I shrugged it off. Growing up was tough. It seemed like the little girl who used to jump on my shoulders and demand tickle fights was gone forever.

It was okay.

College had taken away the little girl in her ponytail and rainbow socks and sent back a young lady. I hadn’t been prepared for the woman with short-cropped red hair in hip-huggers and who vaguely looked like a kid I’d spent over a decade helping to raise. She seemed taller, more poised, and when I’d hugged her at the station, I felt a little heat on the back of my neck as I pushed away thoughts about how her body curved “just so” into mine.

I was imagining things.

I flicked my watch and downloaded the album to listen to later. Then, I could try to stay current, although I was picky and quickly turned off by contemporary pop.

At least this Lovato girl had a decent beat, and as I listened to the lyrics, I found myself nodding in approval.

“How’s studying for the M-CAT going?”

She made a face and put her All-star sneaker up on the dash. “Slow but tedious,” she said. “I had this guy tricked into being my study buddy, but more and more, he seemed more into the buddy-ing than the studying, if you catch my drift.”

There was a mental image. I shook it away.

“Do I need to visit Boston with my trusty Dewalt 18 Volt Electric?”

She smirked. “The rumor was just that it was a nail gun,” I said.

“I know. You got to be specific when building up an urban myth,” I smiled. “Well, you’ve got three weeks to get all prepped up without distractions, and I’ll even help with the studying.”

“You’d probably be better at both studying and buddy-ing all around,” she joked.

Odd choice of words.

I was just pathetic and overly horny, misreading her meaning. After all, before the note today, it had been six solid months since Christine had even looked my way, let alone let me get a leg over.

I ran a hand through my hair and blew a hot breath out as we turned into the old street, and I hit the button opening the garage door.

Chloe climbed out and bounded into the garage, surveying my old patrol bike parked in front of my broken down old Hemi Roadrunner.

“How’s Kid Galahad running?”

“Smooth as ever,” I said. “Just gave it a tune-up last week, actually. Want to take it for a spin after dinner?”

“Are you kidding?” she flashed a smile that I felt in my gut. “That’d be great!”

“Motorcycle therapy,” I smiled. “In fact,” I went to a storage tub, one of several at the front of the garage, and pulled out a dark brown leather jacket with black mesh armor. “Since you weren’t home for your birthday, I just tucked it away until needed.”

“Sweet!” She said, grabbing the jacket and sliding it on.

“Yeah, and if you lay K.G. down on the freeway, you’ll avoid some major road rash.” I flicked the armor over one forearm.

“Thanks, Cy.”

She twirled. “How does it look?”

Sexy.

“Um,” I coughed. “Durable.”

I took the key off my ring and tossed it to her. “I suppose you’re old enough to fly solo. Just go easy on the beer with dinner. I don’t want the chief’s daughter booked for D.U.I.”

She turned to the Roadrunner. “What about the Green Dream?”

“I keep saying a solid day or two of work, and she’d be purring like a jungle cat,” I said. “Just can’t seem to squeeze out the time. Every day off I get, your mom leaves me a list of Honey-Dos around the house. Maybe while you’re here, you can grease-monkey with me?”

“I know enough to keep Pony going,” she shrugged. It was her nickname for her mom’s ’87 heap that had oxidized paint and torn leather seats but still ran like a dream.

“It’s a date,” I said. “If only so I don’t have to chauffeur you around the whole time you’re here.”

We headed inside, and I plated two slices of pizza. She cracked open a beer for me and made a show of going to the fridge to fish out a Coke for herself.

“So, how are the psychology classes,” I asked. “Getting to the point you can give your mom and me free marriage counseling yet?”

She shook her head. “Actually, I’ve been leaning towards forensic psychology.”

“No!” I mock-screamed. “Not Law Enforcement! Say it ain’t so?”

She smiled, taking a dainty bite of her mushroom and pepperoni. “It’s not like everyone accused of a crime is completely sane,” she admonished. “Like poor Charlie Cavanaugh when I was in the 9th grade. You acted like he was trying to rob me of my virtue when in fact, I had come onto him.”

I took a pull at my beer. “Little punk ended up knocking up your best friend, Joline, didn’t he?”

She shrugged. “I suppose I do owe you for that. He still working at his dad’s carpet store?”

“He manages it,” I shrugged. “And he assistant coaches the boys swim team. Joline does the books for him. Last I checked, they were on baby number two in three years.”

She winced. “You’d think they’d invest in a better form of birth control.”

“How about you?” I asked. “I hope you were just joking with your old man about all the guys chasing after you.”

“There’ve been a few,” she shrugged. “None to write home about, though. I’m being good, Cy. Just like I promised. Degrees before Ds.”

We both managed between the two of us to get half the pizza eaten. I put the rest away in the fridge and then strolled into the laundry room to peel off my uniform.

“I’m sure your mom would be the first to tell you how important it is to get an education,’ I called out.

“Yeah,” she called back. “Did mom leave a number for the place she’d be staying?”

“No,” I said, pulling a pair of jeans off a hanger and sliding them on. “I think she has her cell phone with her, but you know how she is. Always leaving charging cables everywhere but where she needs them.”

Chloe appeared in the laundry room door just as I tugged my zipper up. “Oh,” she said. “Sorry. I forgot this part of your routine. I was just looking for some hangers. I have a couple of tops and a dress I need to steam, or else they’ll wrinkle.”

I passed her a few hangers from over the dryer. There was something odd about her expression as she walked out of the room.

I reached down a fresh button-up shirt from over the washer and shrugged into it. “Better go for that ride,” I called. “The weather is supposed to turn bad after sundown.”

Chloe

I’d checked in on Facebook, letting my friends know I was in Essex for the next few weeks.

Upon checking, I had a message from none other than Joline, my BFF from High School.

“Hey, Red! Back home? Missed you. XX. Coffee tomorrow? I drop the kids off at daycare at 9. Say 9:30?”

I responded. “Yes! Came home to domestic strife. Mom’s off somewhere, and The Chief is sulky. Text you tomorrow?”

My phone chimed. “If he needs company, I can come over. My life could use a dose of prime DILF!”

I texted back: “Perv! Ttyl.”

DILF. Dad I’d Like to…

I pocketed my phone.

No.

Then, I remembered how he always went into the laundry room to strip out of his uniform after dinner.

Don’t ask me why I found myself inching toward the laundry room. He was just around the corner.

Steel a peek. Just a peek.

When he slipped out of his uniform pants and boxers, I felt myself swallow hard.

What age was Cy now? 45? 46? And he was still in better shape than most of the guys at college. I’d once heard my mother describe him as “black Irish.” His skin looked the color of ancient parchment and was covered in the dark manly hair right off the brawny paper towel logo. His full head of dark hair was only just beginning to show streaks of grey at his temples, and his eyes were a shade of gun-metal blue that made them almost the color of the ocean in the moonlight.

On his right shoulder was a simple U.S. Army tattoo.

He could have you right now on top of the dryer.

When he turned, I thought quickly, walking in just as he put away the star of the show.

“Um,” I said something about steaming some clothes and needing hangers, I think.

He handed me the hangers and advised me to get a move on if I wanted to ride the motorcycle before dark.

Good idea, I thought. Just get some fresh air. Tour around for a few blocks. Let the wind blow all these weird thoughts out of your head.

When we opened the garage door, the sky appeared reasonably clear, with only a few thick grey clouds off in the distance. A hot wind had picked up, and the air was growing thick with humidity.

“I might be a while,” I called, pretending not to see the storm or at least pretending not to care. “Been a long time without something that powerful between my thighs.”

Chloe, what are you saying? Get a grip!

“Don’t go too far,” Cy said. “If it starts to rain, head straight back here. You don’t want it stinging that pretty face of yours.”

The bike, Kid Galahad, fired up with a loud rumble. I took the old helmet off the seat and strapped it on over my short-cropped hair. I pulled out of the garage into the fading afternoon sunlight. Cicadas were just beginning to start their evening symphony. Cy was probably just being overprotective about the storm. It looked like I had at least an hour or two before it blew in–plenty of time.

I felt the wind in my face and on my knuckles as I opened the throttle on the old Harley-Davidson. It was strange that mom would have gone off to work, but then again, maybe Cy wasn’t telling me everything.

Knowing mom, it was likely there had been a fight, and she’d stormed out, perhaps renting a motel room a few towns over just to depressurize. Mom was like that sometimes. She would get hot under the collar and need a day or two on her own.

It had only happened once or twice when I was growing up that she and Cy would take a break from each other for more than a day or two. Cy adored mom. And mom, well, she knew a good thing when she saw it.

I quickly flashed back to the time I’d caught them. Her face flushed with sheer ecstasy as he pumped into her. The thought distracted me enough; I almost lost control of the bike.

That man is your mother’s husband! Your father for all intents and purposes. Stop thinking about his cock!

Cy

Once I’d waved goodbye to Chloe on the Harley, I went back inside and fished my phone out of my trousers in the laundry room.

Chrissy’s note had said not to call. But it hadn’t said I couldn’t text.

I flipped over to the picture of Chrissy from our trip to Cape Cod three summers before. Her hazel eyes seemed happy in the picture.

“Hey,” I texted. “Kiddo made it home safe on the train. I told her you were off selling a house and wouldn’t be home till late. Fed her pizza. She’s out on the bike.”

I sent the text wondering if she could see the words “I love you. Come back?” written between the lines.

After a few moments, I watched the three tiny dots under my sent text dance a bit, and then they simply stopped. It was as if to show she had briefly thought of a reply and instead opted for radio silence.

For the hundredth time since we’d begun having problems, I imagined her with another man. I felt my fist tighten around the screen on my phone, almost to the point of cracking it.

Please don’t be with someone new. Please don’t be with someone new.

I set the phone on the charger in the kitchen and surveyed the empty house. I checked my watch and then walked over to where Chloe had left her backpack and suitcase in the kitchen entryway.

Why not be a good dad and unpack for her?

I grabbed the bags and the few hangers she’d taken from the laundry room and headed upstairs.

I hadn’t had much cause to go into Chloe’s room since she’d hit puberty. But pushing the door open and putting her case down on the purple down comforter, I took in the posters of boy bands and photos of her with her high school girlfriends.

In a place of honor, though dusty, was the old ukulele I’d used to play her to sleep with during thunderstorms. All of it seemed suited for a little girl and not the attractive young woman whom I’d collected from the train station.

Attractive. It’s Chloe. The kid who used to blow bubbles in her chocolate milk.

I unzipped her suitcase, humming a few bars of that Eddie Vedder song I’d learned just for thunderstorms.

“I know you belong to somebody new, but tonight you belong to me.”

I found two silken-looking blouses and an impossibly short dress.

These were the items I assumed she’d talked about steaming. I put them on the hangers and walked them down the hall to the bathroom, flipping on the shower to hot and closing the door.

Good dad. Thoughtful. Helpful. Not freaking out thinking about your wife shacked up in a motel with some scuzzball.

I returned to Chloe’s room and took out t-shirts, pants, shorts, socks and put them in the chest of drawers. At the bottom of the bag, I found a familiar smiling face.

“Benji Bear,” I nodded. “How’s thunderstorm duty these days?”

I put him on the bed. Next, I found myself examining a series of lacy and increasingly skimpy pairs of bras and underwear.

Whatever happened to My Little Pony and The Powerpuff Girls? I caught myself smirking to see there was at least one pair of briefs with the Supergirl logo on them.

“Still a DC nerd,” I shook my head.

Suddenly I thought of Chloe lying on her bed in nothing but her underwear, reading a comic book.

Okay. We are not going there.

I shoved her lingerie in the top drawer of the bureau and shut it.

You haven’t been laid in six months, Cy. Your sex drive is just charging at windmills.

I went to her backpack and found an M-CAT study manual, a few paperback books, and a laptop. I set the books on the nightstand and plugged the computer in at her old desk.

The paperbacks were summer beach reads. Janet Evanovich and James Paterson. I picked up one well-thumbed book that was obviously a trashy romance novel.

I flipped to a random page and read:

“She leaned in, kissing me as her finger tripped down to find my clit.”

I paused, looking out the window at the driveway. Chloe said she’d be a while, but I could see a few raindrops already dotting the concrete. I turned back to where my finger marked the page.

“The kiss was just as sweet as the one had been by the pool. I’d felt a heat in my belly ignite then and, frankly, a dampness in my bikini bottoms that had nothing to do with swimming. The hunger in her mouth coupled with her cherry-cola lip-gloss and the brazen way she seemed to know I’d let her — that I wanted her — tiny little nymphet that she was.”

I set the book down, swallowing hard. Did this mean Chloe was into women now?

I shook the thought out of my head, returned to the bag, and opened the side pockets.

I stopped.

There was a small cellophane bag. I fished it out and examined it.

It definitely looked like pot.

I opened the baggie and sniffed, fingering the colorful buds –prime purple kush.

Being a cop since the late 90s, I’d had to adjust to the changing laws concerning drugs. Most of the people in town now had a medical marijuana card. The reasons they gave were anything from glaucoma to anxiety to an inability to dance at weddings.

I dug in the dime bag and drew out a tightly twisted joint. I sniffed it, smirking, clicking my tongue.

“The moment I smell smoke, I’m demanding to see your weed card, kid,” I said.

The thought was petty. I knew it, and I also knew it was best just to pretend I hadn’t found anything. Discretion being the better part of Valor.

After all, this would make it seem like I was snooping when– my eyes fell to another thing in the tiny side pouch of the backpack.

It was a toy. It was small, cylindrical, and hot pink, and I definitely needed not to be staring at it as long as I did.

I stuffed the dime bag back in and zipped the pocket shut.

Cy… your step-daughter plays with her pussy while reading dirty books.

I quickly moved out of the room, shutting the door behind me. After doing so, I realized I still had the joint in the palm of my hand.

I considered going back in and replacing it in the bag, but– thinking of the little pink vibrator– I stopped. I shoved the joint in my jeans pocket and went instead to the steamy hall bathroom. I ran some cold water from the sink into the cup of my hands, splashing a bit on my neck and then taking some to drink. My tongue had suddenly become very dry.

… you’re thinking about it.

I shut off the hot water and moved out of the bathroom down the hall to the stairs. I bounded down, taking them two at a time, and jumped over the back of the couch, grabbing the remote.

Maybe there was a ballgame on?

… Nobody’s here. It’s not like you can go to jail for just taking the fantasy for a bit of a walk, right?

I found a Padres game on ESPN-2.

Okay. San Diego. Not the Red Sox, but a decent team. We can get into this.

… IT’S NOT LIKE SHE’S YOUR REAL DAUGHTER.

I sighed, wishing to Christ it was three weeks later already, and Chloe was back at school torturing boys her own age with thoughts I definitely shouldn’t be having.

Chloe

I lasted about ten minutes on the rumbling motorbike before I had to pull off the road at a gas station. I went to the counter.