The Afternoon My Daughter Decided to Take Care of Me

When Mariana and I signed the divorce papers, the only thing that truly hurt was thinking about Aitana. My daughter and I had been partners in crime since she was old enough to walk: afternoons in the square, bad movies on Sundays, the secrets her mother never managed to suspect. When I told her that her mother and I were separating, she didn’t cry. She pressed her lips together, nodded, and told me she’d known for months this was going to happen.

She decided to stay with Mariana, and it seemed to me the most sensible thing. I moved into a small apartment downtown, with two rooms and a window that looked out onto a noisy avenue. I thought it would be weeks before Aitana came to see me; instead, she showed up the following Tuesday with a cardboard box full of things for my kitchen: a new set of knives, two mugs, a checked tablecloth she’d picked out herself.

—I’m not going to let you live like a castaway —she said, setting the box on the counter—. I’m going to come by often. Get used to it.

She had just turned eighteen. I watched her put everything in its place with a meticulous order that reminded me of her mother, and for the first time in my life I thought my daughter was no longer a child.

The months went by, and Aitana kept her promise. She came two or three times a week, sometimes just to have coffee, other times to stay for dinner and sleep on the couch. She finished high school, took an administration course, and got a job at a travel agency six blocks from my apartment. From then on, lunches became routine. She rang the bell at exactly one o’clock, purse over her shoulder and heels already worn down from so much walking.

I, meanwhile, tried to put myself back together. I dated a coworker, Camila, a divorced woman like me, two years younger, who understood very well what it meant to start over. One afternoon I introduced her to Aitana in a neutral café, thinking that was the right way to do things.

Aitana was polite. She smiled at exactly the right moments. Ordered tea, and didn’t finish half of it. When Camila got up to go to the bathroom, my daughter looked at me with that expression I’d known since she was eight, the one she wore when something bothered her but she still hadn’t decided how to fight it.

—She’s not for you —she said softly.

—Aitana…

—She isn’t.

That same week the arguments started. Aitana would arrive at the apartment and, instead of greeting me, ask whether I’d been with her. She’d find excuses to point out Camila’s flaws: the way she laughed too loud, the nails painted some color that “didn’t suit her,” a comment about a coworker that my daughter thought was “weird.”

—You’re not seeing what I see —she kept repeating—. Trust me. I know you better than you know yourself.

I held out for three weeks. Then, one night, I told Camila we couldn’t keep seeing each other. She didn’t ask why. I think she already suspected it.

***

The truth is, ending things with Camila didn’t destroy me. What I was looking for wasn’t a partner, not at that moment. What I needed was something else, something simpler and dirtier, someone I wouldn’t have to talk to afterward.

And that was the problem, because I couldn’t think straight when it came to women. Not since Aitana had started dressing the way she did now. Short skirts that rode up when she sat on my couch. Shirts that came undone one button too far when she leaned over to pour herself wine. That sweet, soft perfume she left on my pillow when she slept in my bed and I slept on the couch because one of us had had too much to drink.

I admit it. One afternoon, after she left, I locked myself in the bathroom and masturbated thinking about my daughter. I did it quickly, ashamed, and then washed my hands as if I could scrub the image off my body. But the image came back. It came back the following week, and the one after that. I started waiting for the moment she would leave so I could shut myself in the bathroom and let out that tension I didn’t know where else to put.

I needed a lover. A woman I could turn all that off with. A distraction.

I met Lucía at a colleague’s birthday party. Thirty-two years old, separated, an engineer. She had an open laugh and a way of looking at me that made me think maybe she could save me. We started seeing each other on Fridays, and for the first time in months I slept through the night without dreaming about things I shouldn’t dream about.

I didn’t tell Aitana anything. I thought this time I could handle it better.

I was wrong.

***

It was a Sunday in midafternoon. Lucía had come over for lunch. The two of us were standing by the window, finishing our coffee, and she rose onto her toes to give me a short kiss, almost a brush of the lips.

The door opened at that moment.

Aitana had a key to the apartment. She never rang the bell.

She came in with a grocery bag in one hand and stopped in the middle of the living room, looking at us. Lucía stepped back instinctively. I didn’t move.

—Good afternoon —my daughter said, with a strange voice, far too calm—. I didn’t know you had company.

—Aitana, this is Lucía.

—Nice to meet you —Lucía said, trying to smile.

—I’m the daughter. I came to drop off the groceries.

Aitana walked into the kitchen, set the bag on the counter with deliberate care, and came back to the living room. She stood between Lucía and me, looked at the other woman, and said in that same calm voice:

—My dad already has someone who takes care of him. There’s no need for you to come back.

Lucía looked at me. I didn’t know what to say.

Five minutes later, we were alone.

I took my daughter by the arm, not hard but firmly, and led her over to the sofa. I asked her to sit down. She sat with her legs crossed, and her skirt rode up to mid-thigh. She didn’t pull it down.

—You can’t keep doing this —I said—. You don’t have the right.

—Don’t I have the right to what?

—To decide who I date. To stick yourself into my life.

—I stick myself into your life because you don’t know how to take care of it on your own.

—Aitana, I’m an adult man. I have needs. You can’t expect me to live like a monk because you don’t like any woman I know.

I spoke without thinking. When I finished saying it, I regretted it, because the word “needs” had come out heavier than I wanted. Aitana heard it and said nothing for a long while. She looked down at her knees. Then she lifted her head and looked at me with an expression I had never seen on her before.

—Needs? —she repeated.

—Yes.

—What kind of needs?

—Don’t do this to me.

—Tell me.

I sighed. Ran a hand over my face.

—Sex, Aitana. I need to have sex with someone. I need a woman in my bed. Is that enough for you?

I didn’t expect her to smile. But she did. A brief smile, almost melancholy, as if she’d been waiting for that sentence for months.

—We can solve that too —she said.

It took me a while to understand what she’d said. When I did, the blood drained from my body.

—What?

She stood up from the sofa. Came over to me, leaned in, and kissed me on the cheek, very close to the corner of my lips. I felt her perfume, the same as always, and something else underneath, something warmer, closer.

—Come with me to the bathroom —she said.

***

I don’t know exactly when I decided to follow her. I know my legs moved before my head could stop them. The bathroom door closed behind us and I found myself standing against the cold tiles, my back against them and my hands shaking.

Aitana knelt in front of me. She didn’t say anything. She looked up at me, eyes wide open, waiting for me to say no.

I didn’t say it.

Her hands unbuckled my belt with a calm that didn’t seem like hers, not the girl who argued with me over anything, the one who got irritated if I poured my coffee wrong. She pulled my pants down to my ankles. Pulled down my boxer briefs. I was already hard, and that embarrassed me, and the embarrassment made me harder still.

—Dad —she murmured, looking up at me.

—Aitana, this isn’t…

—Shh.

Her hands were warm and soft, like I remembered from when we were something else, when she used to hold my hand crossing the street. She wrapped her hand around me. The sensation made me close my eyes. I rested my head against the tiles.

Then I felt her tongue.

She started at the tip, slowly, licking me from bottom to top, with a filthy precision that left me breathless. Aitana’s mouth opened wider and she took the head of my cock into her mouth with an eagerness that made me clench my jaw. Her tongue circled the glans, wet, insistent, and then slid down the shaft to the base, sucking just enough as if she wanted to pull my head off in mouthfuls. I could feel every inch of skin burning under that obscene attention, the skin taut, the pulse pounding at the tip, my balls heavy inside my fallen boxer briefs.

—Look how hard you get —she murmured, without pulling away—. Look how hard you are with me.

I opened my eyes. Her mouth was full of me, her tongue slipping between the sides of my cock, saliva shining on her chin. She pulled back just enough to stroke me along the shaft, gripping firmly, then went back to sucking me with a wet sound that filled the whole bathroom.

I tried to think of something else, anything, but there was nothing. Only the cold tiles against my back, the fogged-up mirror, and my daughter kneeling in front of me, moving her head at a slow rhythm at first, then faster, taking me to the back of her throat and letting me go only to plunge back down again. Every time she went down, I felt the hot pressure at the tip; every time she came up, the bare skin brushed by air and made me shudder.

Her hands grabbed my ass over my fallen pants, squeezing hard, as if she wanted to pin me in place. One of her nails scraped the inside of my thigh and the little sting muddied my head even more. I moaned again, and she looked up with a lit, hungry, almost feral expression.

—Tell me you like it —she said, her mouth wet, pulling back just enough to speak.

—Aitana…

—Tell me.

—Yes… I like it.

—What do you like?

She took me deeper, until the head of my cock touched the back of her throat. She made a muffled sound as she swallowed, her neck taut, eyes watering, and when she came back up she licked her lips with obscene calm.

—This —I said, voice breaking.

—Harder.

I don’t know where I found the courage to obey her, but I held her head with one hand, not pushing, just setting the rhythm. She accepted the control and opened wider, letting herself be guided by my hand while I watched her move on her knees between my legs. The friction of her lips was wet, hot friction that made my abdomen tighten. I felt my body ache with urgency. My breathing turned shallow. My head buzzed.

—Dad, you’re going to come —she whispered, staring up at me from below.

—Yes.

—Then come for me.

The phrase did me in. The orgasm hit me all at once, brutal, without warning, and took me over completely, from my balls to the back of my neck. I groaned with my mouth open and she kept sucking, swallowing the spasms one by one, not moving away for a single second. Her jaw trembled, but she held on. I felt my semen pulse out hot into her mouth, her tongue gathering what escaped, her throat moving as she swallowed. She held me through to the end, her hand firm on my hip, and only then did she pull away.

She stayed there looking up at me from the floor, her face shining, mouth parted, a thread of saliva at the corner of her lips. She ran her tongue over her lower lip and wiped the rest off with her thumb.

She stood up. Smoothed her hair in the mirror, as if nothing had happened. Looked at me through the reflection.

—I hope you’re calm now —she said—. And I hope you don’t see her again.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

My daughter walked out of the bathroom slowly. I heard her steps in the hallway, the apartment door opening and closing. The lock. The elevator in the distance.

I stayed there against the tiles, with my pants still around my ankles and my legs shaking in a way they never had before.

Outside, the avenue kept making the same noise as always.