There's much to say about being a being a dirty old man. I mean that I'm not exactly good looking, hard-bodied, super-smart, or filthy rich. Yet, I've found that with Kelly none of this matter. I've watched her grow up from a child to a young woman and should feeling feel ashamed of myself for being such a pervert. But when we are making love, I could care less. So, let me start from the beginning.
My name is Lee, and about fifteen years ago, I inherited an old country estate which was perfect because I'm a free-lance graphic artist who loves working from my home studio. However, for my city-girl lawyer wife, Vivian, it was a horrible inconvenience. Not only was she stuck in the country and far from the city and her firm, the sheer size of the mansion was overwhelming. Vivian, was never the domestic type, and the thought of having to take care of the house and basic chores was enough to drive her into a genuine hissy-fit.
The solution was a simple arrangement. It seemed that a Japanese-American divorcee with her young daughter had just moved into town. While she had gotten a job working at the local diner at nights, she was looking for a place to stay. After being referred by the diner's owner and a short meeting, we agreed that in exchange for being allowed to stay rent-free in the small cottage next to the main premise, she'd do some general cleaning and laundry during the days.
Kelly, her daughter, was an unspoken part of the deal. Whereas her mom was a woman of few words and preferred to blend into the shadows, Kelly was a precocious and curious Asian eight-year old. I couldn't figure out if her maturity that was beyond her years, was a strange blend of natural aptitude, or of having to fend for herself when her father had deserted his family, or because of me.
To say that we clicked from the start would have been an understatement. After an initial introduction and critical eyeing of me, Kelly announced, "I like you, Lee," and then to the chagrin of the adults (myself include), "I'm going to marry you someday." While I chuckled at Kelly's pronouncement, little did I know just how Kelly would over the years become a vibrant and inextricable part of my life.
To look at Kelly diminutive figure, with a mouthful of braces, and round rimless glasses, you'd think she was shy and demure. However, quite to the contrary Kelly was a virtual chatterbox from the get-go; disarmingly frank and inquisitive; full of questions, suggestions, and opinions. Believe it or not, she actual had a good eye for art, and a unique perspective on the world and how it should look and work. After listening to Kelly's incessant chatter, my work became youthfully edgy and began to sell. In return, I helped Kelly with her homework and school projects, and often attended her after-school and evening events in lieu of her mom.
While many in our small community raised their eyebrows at our rather unique relationship and bond, most came to accept it when they saw how she would follow me around, peppering me with endless question. Many thought I was her step-father especially when her mother told the school that I could act in her behalf as an alternate care giver. Kelly became known as my "little shadow," but I always thought she was rather like a ray of sunlight. After a while we seemed inseparable, and when the town folks saw me, the first thing they asked was, "Hey, Lee, where's Kelly?"
One summer, Kelly severely broke her leg and couldn't move about without assistance. Her mom was upset because couldn't take care of her at night and was about to quit her diner job. Much to my surprise, my wife then offered a spare bedroom across the hallway from my studio. She even volunteered me to babysit Kelly, saying that I could I sleep on my workroom sofa's rollout bed. With Kelly's insistence and her mother's silent pleas, I agreed to this odd arrangement.
Over the next few weeks, I helped my young ward to do the daily life functions like getting to the bathroom between our rooms; sponge-bathing her back (although I left the rest of her to Kelly); washing her black hair; feeding her; and spending time with her day and night. By the time Kelly could walk on her own, we had grown extremely familiar with each other, and the room that Kelly had used became more or less hers. Simply put, Kelly never moved out.
When Kelly was in the sixth grade, my wife became pregnant and eventually gave birth to our twin girls, Amy and Amber. If my spouse wasn't the domestic type, she definitely wasn't the maternal type. Within a month of delivering our babies, she was back at work, leaving me to tend to and raise the girls. Fortunately for the twins and me, Kelly was there.
Kelly and the girls connected from the moment they lay eyes on each other. When Kelly walked into the room, my two little rascal girls would gurgle and coo in utter delight. With a gentle whisper, a little snuggle, and a light kiss from Kelly, my girls to stop their fussing, eat their food, take a bath, and go to sleep. It was a no-brainer that Kelly was now known as the "babysitter," doing a part-time job and picking up spending money willingly paid by my wife. All the while, Kelly became even more tightly interwoven in the fabric of our lives.
So, the years passed, and Vivian's career really took off. However, the hassle of commuting became so unbearable that she finally told me that she had rented a flat in the city where she planned to stay during the work week, returning home on weekends. To help me, she arranged with Kelly's mom for Kelly to be a "live-in" babysitter and upped her babysitting stipend to four-hundred dollars a month.
For Kelly who was just a sophomore in high school, it was a no-brainer considering she loved the twins; was already living in my house more than her mom's cottage; and would have done it for free. Her mother agreed because she felt her daughter should become more responsible and earn her spending money. While I should have been upset with my wife, I couldn't figure out why at the time that I wasn't.
When the twins attended a preschool which was near to Kelly's high school, I started dropping them and Kelly off in the morning and pick them up in the afternoons. We often go into town after school, we made an odd family which again raised a lot of eyebrows. This was exasperated when the girls started referred to Kelly as their "short mommy." However, while I blushed livid shades of red, Kelly would just smile and laughed. With her carrying on so nonchalantly as she went about doing a myriad of shopping and domestic chores, people pretty much came to accept and conceded that Kelly was an extremely mature babysitter for her young age.
The years rolled on and just when the gossip about our living arrangements began to fade, my wife decided to file for divorce. I should have seen it coming since her weekend visits became sporadic. It seems that Vivian had been carrying on an affair with one of the senior partners of at law firm, a man some twenty some odd years older. She had decided that her career and current affair was more important than our home, our kids, and me.
Our divorce was surprisingly amicable, and Vivian even went so far as to offer to Kelly a doubling of her monthly stipend to act like a nanny to the twins. Kelly would have done it for free, but the twins pleads and her mom's and my tacit approval, Kelly she accepted to ease the financial burden on her mom. Somehow it all seemed to fit. For me there was the house, my work, my two lovely girls, and as always, Kelly.
I had never stopped to think about my relationship with Kelly. Maybe it was because I was fifteen years older and still thought of her as that diminutive Japanese girl that I had met so many years ago. Or maybe it could have been how Kelly just seemed to ease into my life and then those of my kids. Or maybe it was that just that she was so damn mature for her age that I only now realize just how much I saw her as a peer.
Kelly never treated me like an older adult; rather in retrospect, she related to me as "hers" like her childhood pronouncement. In retrospect, Kelly never referred to me as "Mister" or as "uncle," insisting on calling me by my first name only. The turning point in our relationship came in early April of her senior year when Kelly celebrated her eighteenth birthday.
Kelly's mom had been out of town on an extended out of town visit to her ailing mother. So, Kelly just moved in with the kids and me on a more or less permanent basis. With the twins, I managed with some help from me to bake a lopsided cake and we threw Kelly a surprised eighteen-year-old birthday party.
The party was one of those Kodak moments, and I was clicking away my digital camera, taking pictures of the kids and Kelly. There was one picture in which Kelly bent over to blow out the candles and with her face bathed in the soft candle light, she looked right into the camera with an unadorned look of such loveliness and love that I was dumbstruck with the serendipity of the moment.
"When did Kelly become such a lovely young woman? While still hyper and bubbly, this Asian teenager in my camera lens was now five feet of soft lines and curves. Contact lens have been replaced her glasses and gone are the braces in her irresistible smile. With her shoulder length hair piled high in a lofty ponytail, the nape of her neck was demurely but enticingly exposed. A few strands of dark brown hair escaped her hairdo, framing her high cheekbones, large sensual almond-shaped eyes, and cute button nose. Where have the years gone?"
Later that night when I downloaded the picture to my computer in the privacy of my workroom, I couldn't believe my eyes. Kelly had leaned forward in one of the pictures just enough to expose the ivory-toned cleavage between her breasts cupped in a lacy bra. The other pictures amply accentuated her petite youthful figure with her flat stomach, nicely rounded hips, short but shapely legs, and one hell of a really cute butt. But more importantly as well as disturbingly was my heart beating so fast and the undeniable stirring in my loins?
"Come on, Lee," I chided to myself. "Are you getting to be a sick dirty old man about Kelly? She's just a kid. Man, you've gone too many months of having gone without a woman. Damn it! Why haven't I noticed the fullness of Kelly's nubile tits, the sway of her hips she walked down the hall in those short cut-offs, and the roundness of her buns when she bent over to pick up the kids' toys. God, what's happening? I'm getting really obscene thoughts about my kids' babysitter, a teenager who's fifteen years my junior!"
"Whatcha doin'?" When I looked up there was Kelly standing in the doorway and clad in a simple white cotton nightgown. As she sauntered to easy chair, I couldn't help but notice the slight jiggle of her apple-sized breasts that were accentuated by the v-neckline and spaghetti straps of her cotton night gown. Her knee-length gown slid alluring up her soft thighs as she slid herself onto an arm of my chair as she casually leaned against me, her arm resting on my shoulder. Kelly's freshly-bathed scent washed over me, and the wall I had erected to retain my paternal perspective towards her, began to quickly crumble.
