The Quiet One

The Quiet One

Honestly, I didn't really notice her for years. And, in retrospect, that was for the best.

When you're raising a daughter on your own, you take the moveable feast of friends as they come. There's always someone who's in and someone who's out, so what was remarkable about Sophie was that she was always in the mix from elementary school on, sometimes in Mabel's inner circle of friends and sometimes exiled to the outer planetary rim, but never completely out of the picture. I don't blame Mabel for that, just the shifting social calculus of early adolescence, the unbearable frightfulness of belonging. There were mean girls and Mabel wasn't one of them, but she made her choices, and sometimes they were middle-school cruel. Sophie's position was liminal, because she was studious and quiet but also smart and loyal, and only later did I notice that she was the one constant among my daughter's friend group from first grade all the way up to college. She was there and she was supportive, and Mabel supported her too, with the loyalty you extend to the friend who has been there from the beginning, before everything got complicated.

Which, I repeat, isn't to say I really noticed her. Of the scrum of girls of who surrounded my daughter, Sophie was almost invisible - not the clamorous bestie or the problematic pal. Just there, steady and unremarkable. Awkward in middle school, all knees and braces. One of twelve at the sleepover and the only one who offered to help clean up. Which made me like her but still not pay much attention.

Mabel spent half her time with me and half her time with my ex-wife, splitting the difference of our bitterness. She handled it well, all things considered; she's a functional adult today, with love and patience for her parents and a battle-scarred confidence in herself. Her friends were crucial to that as her parents' marriage fell apart when she was 12, and I only later came to appreciate how critical Sophie's presence was. Other friends were louder but less reliable.

When you're a single dad surrounded by high school girls, there's a bit of self-policing. Some of the pals have bloomed, others are acting out, a few are flirtatious in ways they don't really understand. I remembered my own high school years and kept my laughter to myself. To Mabel's friends I was an oddity - not a "cool dad" who allowed beers and bongs, but just a chill dad, taking the dramas as they came and rolling with the hormones. I remembered the heavy boom lowered on me by my own parents and had no desire to do the same, but I kept an eye on the boys and girls who felt they had something to prove. That included Mabel and a good number of her friends, but not Sophie, who kept her head down, went to church with her parents, earned her grades. She was the kid in the background of the pizza parties pretty much until senior year.

That was when I saw her in a slim, low-cut white dress that made me realize she'd arrived at the doorstep of adulthood in a way that made me feel uncomfortable and vaguely predatory. I kept it to myself, of course, sent prom crew off to a night of glory while wondering why I'd never reallyseenthis one particular person before, with her waterfall of dark, glossy hair and her olive skin, an inscrutable expression as she watched the queen bees jockey for position. In the best photo I took that night, she's the only one looking through the camera lens at me.

Had we talked? Here and there. I remember Sophie drying the dishes as I washed one evening, her letting slip that home life was a shitshow of toxic parents and dreams of college and escape. I knew her mother was Arab and her dad was evangelical, and I can't imagine how that mix must have gone. I mentioned my own adolescent troubles and the way I'd finally found myself once I left home and got to college, and she seemed to unbend a bit when she heard that.

Otherwise, nothing, a pretty-plain face in the crowd. They all graduated, and Mabel went off to college herself, a challenge she faltered with and then met. On the weekends she came home, she would connect with high school friends for parties or for pizzas, and Sophie was often part of the crowd, keeping her dramas to herself as always. I'd like to say I still wasn't noticing her, but her quietness - the certainty of her composure - drew me to her. And, yes, she was unobtrusively and increasingly lovely, a fact I kept pushing aside.

A few years passed; Mabel was a junior. She would come home, drop into her mother's situation, and then stay with me for a week during break. I'd barely see her, since she was out with friends, bar hopping and catching up with the gossip while I worked from my home office and stayed in at nights. I was between women friends just then, hitting the gym regularly to stay marketable, I guess, but mostly to blow off excess steam. (What do I look like, you're wondering? Probably what you want me to look like.) Mabel's high school pals would rotate in and out, collegiate now and inching their ways toward adulthood: The emo buddy with the early tattoos, the cheerleader who liked to tease the dads, the firebrand progressives ready to drop footnoted arguments and scare the bros. And Sophie, who was like an elegant background hum.

No, that's unfair; she was pre-law already, a litigator in the making with a sharp awareness of how ill-served women had been in a male-dominated workforce. One night over spaghetti at our house, barely raising her voice, she laid out her thoughts and dreams and plans for her career, and I don't know who was more impressed, Mabel or myself. And there was something else there, too: A fresh confidence of bearing and body. As though Sophie had realized sometime in the past year that shehada body, and that she was comfortable in it. It crossed my mind that she'd probably started having sex by then and in a weird way I felt glad for her.

That was fall break. Christmas came next, and it was something of a debauch. All of Mabel's friends were barreling toward senior year and intent on proving they were grown-ups, so the parties were intense, a mixture of braggadocio and booze. Mabel and a gaggle of friends headed out the night before Christmas Eve for a jaunt, and I laid down the usual rules: Them's who drink do not drive and watch out for boys whose hands hover over your Solo cup. And then I relaxed, stayed sober, got into my pajamas and watched an old movie until she came home.

It was a film noir from the '50s, all hard angles and shady dames, and I dozed off before the end, awakening to bumps in the entryway around one in the morning. It was Mabel, happily but solidly in the bag, and she was propped up by Sophie, who was upright in most if not all senses of the word. Mabel's car keys dangled from Sophie's hand as she guided her friend up the half flight of steps next to the family room and then hung a hard left toward the stairs, aiming Mabel up and toward her bedroom. But Mabel rebelled, spun on her heel and pulled her friend toward the couch where I lay sprawled. The force of the momentum landed Sophie on the end cushion just as I yanked my feet back, and Mabel flumpfed down on the floor with her back to the couch. "Whatcha watching, Daddy-o?" she asked with a lubricated giggle. Sophie shook her head and glanced at me with a roll of her eyes.

"Fun was had tonight?" I asked, not expecting much in the way of details. "Mm-hmm," said Mabel. "But don't worry. Soph got us all home in one piece, safe and un-mo-lested. Didn't you, Soph?" Which sounded pretty unfair, so I said, "I hopeyougot to have a little fun, Sophie." "I did," she said brightly but with just enough of a slur that I knew she'd had a few. I gave her a quizzical look, and she colored and said, "I pulled DD for the night, but I had two drinks and then stopped. Is that okay?" "Why are you asking me?" I asked in all honesty, and she stammered and looked down before changing the subject. "What's on TV?"

I had no idea; the old-movie channel had moved on from the shady 1950s dames to a 1940s movie in Technicolor, something about a mild-mannered wife who turned out to be a possessive psycho who drowned her husband's little brother because she wanted all the attention. It was actually pretty creepy, and even Mabel sat up and started paying attention. "Daddy likes the weird old stuff," she said, and Sophie laughed in solidarity, but I could tell they both were hooked. I got up, went to the kitchen, and came back with a bag of chocolate covered popcorn. Both girls groaned in happiness and dug in, and Mabel sprawled out on the floor, facing the TV. Sophie settled into the sofa, and I sat a respectable friend's-fatherly distance away from her. The bowl of popcorn was between us, and every now and then our hands collided and retreated, each of us play-acting embarrassment for the sake of propriety. Mabel ended up grabbing the bowl and hogging it on the floor, leaving a void between me and Sophie.

After a while, Sophie shivered and hugged herself, and I could see the goosebumps on her arms. The girls were still wearing their party outfits, short skirts and light tops that they'd covered with down jackets for winter gadding about. "Are you cold, Sophie?" I asked, and she nodded, so I got up and dug out the velvety TV blankets, one to drape over Mabel on the floor and one to float down on Sophie like a cape on a queen. She snuggled in, and we continued to watch the movie. It got weirder and creepier: The mild-mannered wife was now completely around the bend and contemplating throwing herself down the stairs to abort her own baby - I told you, she didn't want to share her husband withanybody- and Sophie muttered, "Jesus, this is fuckedup" and skootched closer to me. Our legs touched. I shivered too and pulled the blanket over so it was covering both of us. I heard Sophie give out a little sigh. "You okay?" I asked. A pause, and then, "Uh huh."

A few minutes later, during a particularly suspenseful scene, she gasped, and I suddenly felt a hand grip my thigh. The film moved on; her hand didn't. I looked over at her and she was staring straight ahead, the trace of an unexpected smile playing about her lips. I put my hand on hers to move it away, but somehow my gears stalled, and my hand stayed atop hers, our fingers slowly entwining. It was like it was happening to two other people - except the hardness growing between my legs definitely belonged to me. This was not good. I shifted uncomfortably, but that only brought Sophie's hand grazing against my cock, and we both froze. And then I felt a small, warm hand start tentatively stroking me through my pajamas.

I almost had to laugh. Shy little Sophie! I gently moved her hand back to her lap and said in a conspiratorial whisper, "Howmuch did you have to drink tonight?" She paused and looked sideways at me, and that's when I finally realized that this really was a different Sophie than the one I thought I'd known - an older, more assured Sophie, with experiences under her belt and maybe the confidence to be reckless when it suited her. "Enough to do something I've wanted to do," she murmured, and then she leaned back and settled in against my chest, eyes closed, letting her fingers drift back along the outline of my cock. Her neck, long and brown and giving off a quiet sort of heat, was inches from my lips. I thought long and hard about this like the responsible adult I am, and then I locked that adult in the back closet of my brain, and I ran my lips gently along her neck.

She gave a tiny whimper and with her other hand reached back and caressed my jawline. I slid my arms around her waist and cradled her, and she turned her face toward me with an inscrutable look, and we kissed. Just exploratory kissing at first. Then something more serious. Her hand was still resting on my cock; she sighed as she felt it stiffen. And then, to my shock and delight, she held a finger to her lips, ducked under the velvet blanket, reached into my pajama tops, and fished me out. There was a pause and what I could swear was a pleased chuckle, and I could sense her daring herself before I felt a butterfly's wet kiss on the top of my cockhead. Then a light swirling tongue bath. Then a girlish inhalation. And then a long, womanly suck. It felt sinful and sweet, a satyr being devoured by a nymph, and I rode the sensation with ecstasy, my fingers running through her dark, silken hair. Oh, Sophie. Oh, my dear, sweet Sophie.

The spell was broken by a loud snore from the floor, and Sophie quickly resurfaced from under the blanket, wiping her mouth, innocent as a nun. Mabel was fully passed out on the carpet with a little bit of sleep drool leaking out of her mouth. "Mabel!" I ordered, discreetly tucking my cock back into my pajama pants. "Wake up and go to sleep!" She roused herself with a snort, sat up, and looked around. "I'm goin' to bed," she announced. "You coming?" Sophie shook her head, her ears a bright crimson, and said "I'm going to finish the movie, okay?" "Mm-kay," Mabel said before wobbling to her feet and announcing to the world in general, "See you in the morning." And then she was gone, with a stumble and a fumble and a collapse onto her bed upstairs, the door closing behind her. After what seemed like an eternity, Sophie and I both exhaled. And then we looked at each other.

"Sophie, what are we doing here?" I asked, my hand caressing her cheek. She gave a low laugh with the first look of calculation I'd ever seen on her face and said, "You don't know?" I didn't respond, and, carefully choosing her words, mustering her nerve, she said, "Okay. Okay. You - you have been a fantasy of mine for as long as I can remember. Not sexual, not at first." I must have made some kind of face. "I just felt safe in this house. Safe with Mabel but mostly safe with you. I didn't have to pretend to be anyone else. I could relax. And there weren't many places I could relax." She paused, and I let her gather her thoughts. "At a certain point I realized you were a hot dad - I wasn't the only one to notice, trust me - and the fantasy got... interesting. And I think that maybe at a certain point you started to have some fantasies about me. Please tell me if I'm wrong."

I looked steadily into her eyes, intoxicated by the new light I saw there and hoarsely muttered, "Prom." She nodded. "I wore that dress for you."

It was as if a dam broke inside me. I pulled her to me and kissed her with what felt like a thermonuclear explosion; Sophie moaned and grabbed the back of my head, years of pent-up fantasy lust finding release. Halfway through the kiss, we broke apart and laughed in surprise and then dove back into each other, devouring each other's lips and neck. My hands coursed up her waist and along the swell of her breasts, and she pressed into me with a groan. I fiddled with buttons; she sighed impatiently and pulled her shirt over her head, then her bra, and I felt the pear-shaped heat of her naked breasts fill my hands, my fingers stuttering over her nipples as if they'd just discovered gold. She gave a throaty cry of rapture and then I took her into my mouth, first one nipple and then, after an eternity, the other.

Oh, this was bad. This was glorious.

Sophie had found my cock again, jacking it through the thin cotton of my pajamas and leaving streaks of pre-cum, so I lifted my 43-year-old ass and slid them down, then peeled my T-shirt off, giving myself to this 20-year-old sybarite fully in the nude. Sophie pulled back, looked me in the eye with carnal surprise, then whisked the blanket off me, the chill air somehow making me stiffer. She took in my nakedness, my hardness, with the expression of a woman coming into the full potential of her sensuality, and she seized the opportunity about as literally as can be imagined, both hands pulling me to her smiling, waiting mouth. She slid off the couch so she was at the level of my waist, leaned in and flicked her tongue along my frenulum, then took me all the way in before sucking me out with a pop. That dark, happy chuckle again, and she began to give me head in earnest. As God is my witness, it was the best head I'd ever had.

"Holy hell, girl, what did youlearnin that college?" I stuttered in rapture. Sophie pulled away from what she was doing to my cock and said, simply, "I learned that I like to fuck." She returned to the business at hand, pausing every once in a while to add color commentary. "That I like to fuck alot... Well, not a lot of guys... A lot of fucking with a few guys... and, uh, one girl... I lost my virginity with my freshman boyfriend... and him with me... and it was okay, but we didn't know what we were doing..." She worked on me until she had me close to coming and then backed off, the evil minx. "And then I met a grad student, who was just a fuck boy, really, but a nice one..." She started in on me again, getting as close to an approximation of a deep throat as she could manage before coming up for air. "And he taught me a lot... I'd like to think... I taught him some things too..."

She lifted her head, gazed levelly at me and whispered, "But I can't tell you how many times I made myself come thinking it was you inside me." I was close already, but then she did something with her tongue I still can't describe, and I groaned, held her head and emptied myself into her hot little mouth, jets and jets of jism spilling into her until it dripped down the sides of her chin. She looked up at me like a despoiled angel and suddenly I wanted to make her come just as hard as I had.

I pulled her up so her face was level with mine and kissed her hard, tasting myself on her lips - I could see in her eyes thatthatwas a little kinky - and then laid her down on the blanket on the floor, swaddling her in the warmth of its velvet folds and working my lips and hands down Sophie's neck, spending some quality time with her lovely, high breasts, playing in the skate park of her belly and finally nosing down to a trimmed but mossy patch of hair and the swollen lips below. A long drag of my tongue up her pussy and a quick suck on her clit brought a muffled shriek from Sophie, loud enough that I raised my head with a warning "Sshh!" before she giggled and pushed me back down. And then it was my turn to go to Richard Scarry's Busytown.

A note of observation: I have told you that Sophie had been a quiet girl. Well, she was a woman now, and she was... vocal. Maybe it was the grad student that had uncorked her, but she wanted to tell me everything I was doing to herasI was doing it, in ecstatic 3-D detail. "Oh, fuck, right there, right on my button... Oh, God, my pussy, what are you doing to my pussy." After a while, I added my fingers to the mix, first one, then two, then three, sliding in and out and up along the ridges of her G-spot, and the yelling began in earnest. "Jesus, Sophie, can you keep it down a bit" I cringed, and she lifted her head, looked at me and said "No" with a dazed grin. "We couldn't wake Mabel if we were doing this right next to her," she said, and I replied, "The hell with Mabel, I'm worried about the neighbors down the street." She cackled and then covered her mouth with a sofa pillow as I sawed in and up with my fingers until she blew her top, arching those hips into my mouth with a guttural cry and flooding my senses with her juices. She went rigid and I held her tight, my hands gripping that long, tapered waist as she rode the orgasm out and collapsed back onto the floor. I wrapped her in the blanket like she was a birthday present and padded to the kitchen to get some water, my cock half hard again and leading the way.

In that 3 a.m. half-light of the open refrigerator, I poured out two glasses of ice water and tried to figure out exactly who that was in the next room and what had just happened. It felt hot but dirty when it had started, an old man feeling up his daughter's best friend like the 587th PornHub video in the category, but somewhere in the past half hour it had moved deep into unmapped territory. I thought I had felt predatory, but now I realized I was the prey. Okay, fine. Time to toss shame and propriety and dignity to the four winds and meet the carnivore on her own turf. I was hungry for meat too. I think I had been for a long time.