My Best Friend's Dad Fills Me

Chapter 2 : House Rules

The upstairs bathroom had a particular quality of warmth in the evenings that Méry had always liked. The towels were thick and slightly mismatched, there was an inexplicable collection of small decorative ducks on the windowsill that had clearly been there since Lonie's childhood and that no one had ever seen fit to remove, and the mirror had a tendency to fog at the edges even when the shower hadn't been running. It was a bathroom that had been genuinely used by a family over a long period of time, and it showed in all the right ways.

Méry stood at the sink in her bra and the loose trousers she'd changed into after dinner, washing her face with the methodical care she applied to most things, when Lonie appeared in the doorway holding something small and folded and looking tremendously pleased with herself.

"I got you something," Lonie said.

Méry looked at her in the mirror. "You got me something."

"A while ago, actually. I kept forgetting to give it to you." This was entirely untrue. Lonie had been waiting for precisely the right moment, and had decided, with the quiet strategic satisfaction of someone playing a long game, that this was it. "Pyjamas. Yours are boring."

"My pyjamas are perfectly adequate."

"Your pyjamas are an oversized t-shirt from a museum gift shop and cotton shorts from three years ago." Lonie set the folded items on the edge of the sink with the confidence of someone who has already won the argument. "These are much nicer. I thought they'd suit you."

Méry dried her face and picked them up.

They were pale, an ivory cream colour, and very small. The shorts were high-cut with a delicate lace trim along the hem, the sort of cut that would sit just below the curve of one's hip and not especially far below it. The crop top was similarly lace-trimmed, with thin straps and a neckline that was, to put it charitably, ambitious.

Méry held them up and looked at them for a moment with the mild, uncritical expression of someone who has not yet fully processed what they're looking at.

"They're very small," she said.

"They're meant to be small. They're pyjamas, not a hazmat suit."

"Lonie, I don't think this top is going to," Méry paused, measuring the crop top against herself with the particular resignation of a woman with a generous figure who has encountered optimistic sizing before. "I'm not sure it's going to contain me adequately."

Lonie's expression did not flicker. It was a masterpiece of innocent concern. "Really? I thought I got the right size. Just try them. They might be fine."

They were not going to be fine. Lonie had, with considerable deliberation, ensured they were not going to be fine. She had spent a very focused twenty minutes in a shop three days ago selecting these specific items based on a set of criteria that had nothing whatsoever to do with comfort or practicality. But she said this with such genuine-sounding uncertainty that Méry simply nodded and began to change, because she had known Lonie long enough to trust her judgement on most things and had not yet fully updated that trust to account for the particular category of situation she was currently in.

Lonie leant against the doorframe and examined her nails.

A few moments of rustling later, Méry said: "Lonie."

"Mm?"

"This top."

"What about it?"

A pause. "It's quite, my chest is rather,"

"Let me see."

Méry stepped into the doorway. She had the slightly uncertain look of someone who suspects they are presenting a more dramatic picture than they intended but cannot quite confirm it without a second opinion. The opinion, in this case, was not going to be an impartial one.

The pyjama set, on Méry, was extraordinary.

The shorts sat high on her thighs, the lace trim brushing the very tops of them, leaving the full length of her legs entirely uncovered. The crop top, ivory, thin-strapped, lace-edged, had done its level best and fallen somewhat short of the task. It covered what was strictly necessary, but only just. The thin fabric pulled softly across the full, unrestrained weight of her chest, shaping her with an openness that was entirely unintentional and entirely unavoidable. Without a bra, the warmth and softness of her was simply there, present, generous, impossible to overlook.

It stopped the conversation entirely.

Lonie looked at her best friend for a moment with an expression that moved rapidly through several phases before settling on something that was trying very hard to be neutral and not quite managing it.

"See?" she said. "Fine."

"Lonie, I am overflowing."

"You look amazing."

"That isn't what I said."

"You look amazing *and* you're slightly overflowing, and both of those things are true simultaneously." Lonie pushed off the doorframe and headed towards the bedroom with the brisk energy of someone closing a subject. "Come on. I was thinking we could go downstairs for a bit. Papa said he'd be up watching something, we could steal the good sofa."

Méry looked down at herself. Then at the mirror. Then at herself again.

She was not, by nature, a vain person. She was aware of her appearance in the abstract, distantly and without particular investment, the way one is aware of the weather. She did not spend long examining herself, and when she did it was usually a brief and functional exercise. But even she could see, with some clarity, that *this* was something other than presentable. She pulled absently at the hem of the crop top. It made no meaningful difference.

"I don't have anything else to change into," she said, to no one in particular.

"No," said Lonie, from the bedroom, with a smile that Méry could not see. "You don't."

---

Lowell was exactly where Lonie had expected him to be.

He was on the large sofa in the living room, one arm stretched along the back of it, the television murmuring at low volume in front of him. He had changed out of his blazer into a simple dark shirt with the sleeves pushed to the elbows, and he had the settled, unhurried quality of a man with nowhere to be. He was not, in truth, watching the television with any real attention. He had been thinking, in the loose and unguarded way one thinks when alone in a quiet house, about the kitchen. About the tea towel. About the particular warmth of Méry's hand beneath his, and the way she had not moved away.

He heard them on the stairs and looked up.

What happened in the next two seconds happened entirely in his face, and he was very nearly quick enough to contain it.

Nearly.

Méry came into the living room in ivory lace and next to nothing, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, her arms wrapped loosely around herself in that self-contained way she had, and Lowell's expression did something that he did not entirely sanction, a swift, comprehensive, involuntary assessment that moved over her once from top to bottom and arrived at a conclusion that hit him somewhere solidly behind the sternum. He felt it the way one feels an unexpected step in the dark, sudden, full-bodied, impossible to pretend hadn't happened.

He looked back at the television.

*Christ*, he thought, with considerable feeling, and arranged his face into something pleasant and unremarkable.

"Couldn't sleep?" he said.

"Lonie wanted to come down," Méry said. She settled into one of the armchairs, curling her legs up beneath her with the natural ease of someone who was entirely unaware of the picture she made, the lace shorts riding up just slightly, the crop top shifting with her movement. She seemed genuinely unconscious of it, which was, Lowell reflected with an internal discipline that was costing him more than he would have liked to admit, somehow considerably worse than if she had been aware.

He was fifty years old. He was, by any reasonable measure, a composed and self-possessed man. He had no business whatsoever sitting here cataloguing the way thin ivory lace interacted with the lamplight.

He catalogued it anyway. Briefly. Then he stopped. Then he did it again.

"I thought we could play something," Lonie announced, appearing from the direction of the sideboard with a board game under her arm and the bright, purposeful energy of someone who has been waiting to say this. "The three of us."

Lowell looked at the box with mild recognition. "Where did you find that?"

"Cupboard." She set it on the coffee table and began unpacking it with a familiarity that was slightly suspicious for something she'd supposedly just retrieved at random. "It'll be fun. Unless you're tired."

"I'm not tired."

"Good." She sat cross-legged on the floor across the coffee table from them both, positioning herself, though neither of the other two registered this as a deliberate act, with a clear and unobstructed sightline to both Méry's armchair and the sofa. "I've added some house rules."

"Of course you have," Lowell said.

"The original rules are dull. These are better." She produced a neat stack of small folded cards from her pocket and set them beside the board with an air of casual legitimacy. "Forfeit cards. If you land on a red square or lose a round, you draw one and do what it says."

Méry looked at the cards with mild curiosity. "What do they say?"

"Different things." Lonie's expression was serenity itself. "You'll see. The point is you have to do them. No skipping."

"And if we refuse?" Lowell asked, with the slight narrowing of someone who has known his daughter for nineteen years and has learned to read certain frequencies.

"Then you lose two turns and everyone judges you." Lonie met his gaze with perfect equanimity. "House rules."

He looked at her for a moment longer than necessary. She looked back at him with the frank, open innocence of someone with absolutely nothing to hide.

He picked up the dice.

---

The game itself was a path-based thing of moderate complexity, involving a degree of strategy that Lonie navigated with the confident ease of someone who had chosen it for exactly this reason. She moved through the board with a steady, unhurried precision that kept her well clear of the red squares and the forfeit pile. It was, in retrospect, quite impressively managed.

Lowell and Méry were less fortunate.

Méry landed on a red square in the second round. She reached across and drew a card from the folded pile, unfolded it, and read it with the attentive expression she brought to most reading tasks.

"*Sing the first line of the last song you listened to,*" she read aloud.

Lowell looked at her with the particular quality of attention he had been applying to her all evening, focused, warm, slightly more deliberate than it needed to be. "Go on, then."

Méry looked briefly, endearingly uncertain, a small crease appearing between her brows, her lips pressing together in consideration. Then she sang, quietly and without great ceremony, the opening bar of something slow and orchestral that she had been listening to in the car. She had a low, soft voice. She stopped after one line and looked up.

There was a beat of silence.

"That was lovely," Lowell said. He said it simply, without making a performance of it, which somehow made it land with more weight than elaboration would have.

Méry looked at the board and did not say anything, but the tips of her ears went very slightly pink, which Lonie, from her position on the floor, noticed immediately and filed away with great satisfaction.

---

Three rounds later, it was Lowell's turn to draw.

He unfolded the card. Read it. A slow, quiet smile moved across his face that he did not particularly try to suppress.

"*Brush the hair of the player to your left for thirty seconds,*" he read. He looked up at Méry, who was, by the arrangement of the seating, directly to his left. His expression was pleasant, easy, carrying that particular warmth that seemed to exist specifically in the register he used with her. "It appears I have instructions."

Méry blinked at him. "My hair?"

"Unless you'd like to dispute the seating arrangement."

She considered this for approximately one second, found no strong objection to it, and reached up to pull the loose tie from her hair, letting the great dark mass of it fall around her shoulders in the unhurried way it always did, thick and black and rather a lot of it. She did this entirely without self-consciousness, with the simple practicality of someone making access easier, and then looked back at the board as though this were an entirely unremarkable development.

Lowell looked at her hair for a moment.

He was aware, had been aware since she'd walked into the room, of the specific discipline required this evening. He had managed it, he felt, with reasonable success thus far. He was fifty years old. He was a grown man. He had excellent self-control in most areas of his life and had always rather prided himself on it.

He reached out and ran his fingers slowly through the length of her hair.

The thirty seconds, he decided, were going to be used in their entirety.

Her hair was extraordinary, dense and soft and very dark, and it moved through his fingers with a weight and warmth that was deeply, unreasonably pleasant. He was not brushing it in any particular hurry. He took his time with it, drawing his hand from the root to the ends in long, unhurried strokes, and he let his fingers spread through it slowly, the way one might explore something one has wanted to touch for a while and intends to be thorough about now that the occasion has been provided.

He watched the back of her neck as he did it.

Méry, for her part, went very still.

Not with discomfort. That was the thing about her, it was never discomfort. She went still the way a cat goes still when it is being stroked somewhere it particularly likes, with a quality of concentrated pleasure that she was clearly not performing because she was clearly not aware enough of being watched to perform anything. She blinked slowly. Her shoulders dropped by a fraction. And then, very softly, almost below the threshold of sound, she exhaled.

It was the quietest, most unguarded little sound. Entirely involuntary. Entirely honest.

Lowell's hand stilled in her hair for just a moment. Then continued, slower than before.

From the floor, Lonie had stopped pretending to look at the board entirely. She had her chin in her hand and was watching with the unabashed, delighted focus of someone watching the best scene of a very good film. She was almost entirely still. She did not want to make any sound that might interrupt anything.

"Time," she said, when the thirty seconds had elapsed. Her voice came out slightly huskier than intended. She cleared her throat. "That's thirty."

Lowell withdrew his hand from Méry's hair with the measured, unhurried quality he applied to most things. Méry straightened slightly, blinking as though surfacing from somewhere, and reached up to smooth her hair back with one hand, a small, automatic gesture that was unbearably endearing.

"Your turn," Lowell told her, nodding at the dice. His voice was exactly as it always was. It cost him something to keep it that way.

---

Two rounds after that, Méry drew another card.

She read it. Her brow creased slightly. Then she read it again, as though a second reading might clarify things.

"*Let the player to your right trace your hand with their finger, starting at the wrist,*" she read aloud, with the careful pronunciation of someone reading instructions in a language they are mostly fluent in. She looked up at Lonie, as though for context. "Is this, what is the purpose of this one?"

"It's a sensory exercise," Lonie said, with tremendous authority. "For focus. It's based on a real technique."

This was entirely fabricated. Lonie had written it herself at her desk two evenings ago with a glass of juice and a very clear objective in mind.

Méry absorbed this information and found it broadly acceptable, because she had no particular reason to question it and because the world of games and social activities was, to her, still somewhat mysterious in its conventions. She turned to her right, and found Lowell there, because Lonie had rearranged the seating after the second round under the pretext of being able to see the board better.

She set her hand on the coffee table between them, palm up, with the simple and undefended openness of someone who has decided to do a thing and is doing it.

Lowell looked at her hand for a moment. At the soft, pale inner length of her wrist. At the card. At Lonie, very briefly, with an expression that was not quite accusatory and not quite grateful and resided somewhere between the two with considerable amusement.

Then he reached out and placed his fingertip at the inside of her wrist.

He moved slowly. That was the thing, he moved with a slowness that had nothing to do with following instructions and everything to do with intention. He traced the line of her wrist with one fingertip, following the soft skin to the base of her thumb, then along the edge of her hand, then, very lightly, the length of each finger to its tip, as though he were drawing her from memory and wanted to be accurate.

Méry watched his hand.

She had a very particular expression, the expression of someone experiencing something new and finding, with some surprise, that they like it rather a great deal. Her lips were slightly parted. There was a small, soft line between her brows that was not quite a frown but was concentration, the look of someone paying very close attention to something happening inside their own body. When he reached the tip of her index finger and drew his fingertip slowly back down its length, she made a tiny sound that might have been, from someone else, entirely unremarkable. From Méry, quiet and unguarded and entirely unintentional, it was something else altogether.

Lowell did not hurry.

*She has no idea*, he thought, with an ache that was part tenderness and part something considerably less noble. *She genuinely has no idea.* And that was, it was entirely the wrong thing to find as arresting as he found it, and he was fully aware of that, and it made no meaningful difference to the fact that he was tracing her fingers with the focused, deliberate attention of a man who has found something he is not ready to stop touching, while his daughter watched from six feet away with her chin in her hands and the expression of someone at a very private and very satisfying cinema.

"That's time," Lonie said softly.

Neither of them moved immediately.

Then Méry drew her hand back, slowly, and looked at it for a moment as though it belonged to someone slightly unfamiliar. She looked up at Lowell. He was already looking at her, with that pale, knowing gaze that had the quality of a question he already knew the answer to.

"That was strange," Méry said quietly. She said it with perfect honesty, the way she said most things, without editorialising, without pretence. "But not unpleasantly strange."

Something shifted in Lowell's expression. It was very small and very warm and he did not entirely intend it.

"No," he agreed. "Not unpleasantly."

On the floor, Lonie picked up the dice and rolled, and her shoulders were shaking with the effort of containing something that was not quite a laugh and not quite a sigh and was in fact just the profound, helpless satisfaction of someone watching the world arrange itself exactly as they had hoped.

---

The game wound down an hour later in the unhurried way of games that no one has really been playing for the game's sake. The forfeit cards had thinned, Lonie had managed hers with the deft efficiency of someone who had never really intended to draw any, and the conversation had settled into the warm, easy register of an evening that had gone well and was simply spending its last hour being pleasant.