“Amity,” I began carefully, “I know you’re eighteen now and you’re probably as wound up as a girl can get at her age-”
“Understatement, Dad,” she interjected.
“But if you keep this up, you’re going to be an orphan before you’re made a woman.” Translation: you’re going to kill me with a heart attack, young lady!
Amity arched an eyebrow at me. “Too much?” The false façade of seduction was gone from her face and she was genuinely curious. She pulled out the chair across from me at the table and sat down in it.
“Much too much,” I replied. “Look, Amity, I get it. I do. And I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But this…” I gestured at her near nakedness, “is too much, too fast. It’s like…” And I paused to grope for the words, trying my best to give her fatherly advice on, of all things, the subject of how to seduce men. Well, how to seduce me, really. Which was weird and counterintuitive. “It’s like walking into a restaurant and having the chef rushing you to eat his world-class meal. You don’t get enough time to savor it or… learn from it. The experience of the meal gets completely side-stepped. It tastes great, but it doesn’t last.”
Amity looked down at the table in contemplation for a moment, her eyes roaming over the freshly-cooked meal she’d prepared as she thought about the analogy. Then she looked up. “So you’re saying I should dial it back a bit?”
“A lot.” I paused a beat and went on. “It doesn’t matter who your first is, you should always cherish it and make it the best possible experience.”
My daughter narrowed her eyes at me. “That’s not what happened with Mom,” she said.
I took a deep breath through my nose, recalling the first time I’d had sex with our mother and nodded. “No, you’re right. It isn’t. That case was unique. EVERY case is unique. With Mother there was… it had always been just us. Father died when I was a boy, so really she was the only woman in my life.”
“Just like you’re the only man in mine,” Amity put in.
“Stipulated. But Mother and I had a lifetime of experiences that were limited ONLY to us. With you and me, the story is a bit different. Our mother was here for most of your life, thank God. It’s a different dynamic. And you so resemble her that, sometimes, it’s almost like she’s still here. But she isn’t. And I know that. And as much as I love you, I loved her, too. She was my mother first and foremost. So we had a relationship that was exclusive to us. When we first made lo- had sex, the passion and love that we had for each other, one that grew with time, hit us full-force and we didn’t have the time to think about it. We just… reacted, in a way. But my relationship with you is… different.”
“You don’t see me in the same way that she saw you?”
“I…” and I gave some real thought to that question. “I don’t know.”
Amity was quiet for a moment before she hit me with the next question that would hold my heart hostage for the rest of my life. “Are you not in love with me the way she was with you, when you first… fucked?”
“Of course I love you,” was my immediate reply.
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