'That was a long slog' Dave thought to himself as he let out a sigh of relief. Dave made his final remarks, saved the document, attached it to an email and pressed 'send'. Looking up at the clock above his desk, he saw that it read 18:48. He didn't normally work this late, but he knew that he was close to the end, so he just pushed on. Time to think about dinner.
Before Dave could even start to review the contents of his pantry in his head, he was startled by an unexpected thumping on his front door.
Before pandemics had necessitated 'working from home', it had been his normal mode of operation for as long as he could remember. At first, printed manuscripts were couriered to his house. Later on, experiments were conducted with 9600bps modems and couriering floppy disks. The modem won out provided that the chapters were saved as individual files so he could just download them from the mainframe as a batch overnight.
These days, the Internet and high-speed broadband meant that the download was as easy as opening an email in the morning. Dave could even give face-to-face feedback via teleconferencing if required.
"Quick Dave. I need your help!" Lilly said in a panic as she grabbed his hand pulling him out of his house.
Lillian, or 'Lilly' (with two Ls) to her friends, was Dave's neighbour, he'd known her since she was a bulge in her mother's abdomen. Dave and Lilly's mother Christine used to be part of the same circle of friends. Group membership was a bit loose, people came and went from time to time. At the core was Christine, Rachel and Dave. Rachel and Christine met in high school and were inseparable. There was also Pete and Rob and sometimes Dave's bother Jim would join them.
Through pure coincidence, Jim and Christine ended up working for the same company after university. Tranh was a regular too. She was Vietnamese but had not taken an anglicised name, she tried to teach them how to pronounce her Vietnamese name, but somehow they just settled on 'Tranh'. Lastly there was 'Blondie'. Her name was actual Rachel too, she was not blond, but she had very light coloured pubic hair so everyone just called her 'Blondie' to avoid confusion.
Way back when, Dave and Christine used to share cab rides home if they both struck out that night. More than once, in fact, Christine and Dave had decided not to let the night end in a total loss and to satisfy each others' needs instead. You can imagine Dave's dread when Christine first told him that she was expecting. Presumably, seeing the blood draining rapidly from his face was enough to prompt Christine into reassuring him that he was not the father. She'd whittled the candidate list down to two chaps and luckily, Dave was not on that list.
"Lilly! What's going on?" Dave protested as she kept insisting that she needed his help.
"Not, now! We've got less that ten minutes." was all she said as she pulled him across their immaculately groomed shared front lawn and into her house.
Lilly had lived alone in the house since the age of sixteen. Unfortunately, Christine died unexpectedly leaving Lilly orphaned. At first, Lilly's grandparents wanted her to go and live with them. However, after unloading some impeccable logic and a bit of shrewd negotiation, Lilly had arranged with her grandparents to stay in the house provided that Dave looked in on her regularly.
Dave was fine with this arrangement because Christine often left Lilly with him if she needed to pop out and do something. They often came over to swim in his pool or just hang out, and for the longest time, he was 'Uncle Dave.'
"Come on, quick!" Lilly insisted as she virtually dragged him along the hallway towards her back room.
Lilly was not sixteen any more, no, she was now a fully grown woman. She'd managed to make it through to the end of high school and graduate with honours. Christine would certainly have been proud of what her daughter had accomplished. Dave would cook Lilly meals on school nights and do some laundry for her once a week, but she was a determined young lady and was able to excel academically with very little need for external encouragement or discipline.
Lilly and Dave would have chats about her mother in the good old days and she'd sleep in his spare room from time to time if she felt tired after one of their movie nights. As she progressed through university, their conversations turned more philosophical and sleepovers less frequent, but they always stayed in touch. She graduated with a double major in commerce and information technology and had set up what appeared to Dave to be fairly successful e-commerce business at home.
Like her mother Christine, Lilly embraced her sexuality and was not shy when it came to experiencing the smorgasbord that dating life had on offer. Lilly was also aware that her mother and Dave had numerous casual sexual encounters and she often asked him about the things that he and her mother liked to do. Christine was fairly open about these sorts of things, so Dave was not surprised that Lilly knew about the two of them.
"Quickly!" she said flinging the back room door open.
As he entered the room Dave saw inside it for the first time in several years. The double bed was still there as he expected, however, all of the light stands, the monitors, the boom microphones, the camera and the tripod came as somewhat of a surprise to him.
Lilly flicked one switch with her foot and all of the lights came to life before saying, "Get undressed, quickly!" as she started to remove her blouse.
"Dave please hurry!" Lilly begged as she undid her jeans and wiggled as they fell to the floor.
Lilly and Dave had seen each other naked plenty of times before. They skinny dipped in his pool all of the time, with or without her mother. It was not a big deal and certainly nothing sexual. Christine, whilst not technically a nudist, tended to be not as hung up on clothing as the rest of the people she knew. That was something else that Dave and Christine had in common.
"Lilly, what's going on?" Dave asked without removing a single piece of clothing.
"What does it look like Dave? Porn Dave! I do online porn!" Lilly replied.
"Online porn?" Dave asked still trying to take it all in adding, "I thought that you did e-commerce consulting."
"I do!" Lilly responded.
"And online porn?" Dave added.
"Yes. Listen, the male talent that I've booked for this session bailed on me at the last minute. Something about forgetting his Viagra." Lilly said adjusting her bra cups and straightening her matching panties.
"Why would he need Viagra?" Dave asked naively.
"To get an erection!" Lilly said looking at Dave like he had grown another head or something.
"So young guys take Viagra too?" Dave asked.
"No, no, no. Just get undressed will you? I'm supposed to be going live in six minutes. Pleeeease just just get undressed." Lilly begged.
"Sorry Lilly, I'm still a little confused. Why do these young guys need to take Viagra?" Dave asked.
"Dave, they're not young, they're old, really old. I run a daddy/daughter fetish web site. Now for fuck sake, get undressed!" Lilly screamed in exacerbation.
"A what what fetish what?" Dave asked.
"I pretend that these older guys are my daddy and I fuck them on camera for money." Lilly explained.
"Um, OK. Far be it from me to kink shame anyone, but it's a little odd." Dave replied.
"Dave, I really need your help. I really need you to get naked and lay down on the bed now!" Lilly said almost screaming at him.
