Hailey: Living With Dad Reboot
Prologue.
September 2022
7:55 am. The alarm sounds for the third time and Hailey Riley groans as she reaches for her phone to silence it. Accepting she had exhausted every possible minute available to her, she rolls out of bed, stretching her arms over her head and yawning. Looking at herself in the floor-length mirror as she stretches, the old thin t-shirt rises to reveal her bare mons and stomach, she turns sideways to inspect her profile, rubbing her tummy, I need to lay off the beers at night, she thinks. She further turns and admires her ass, pleased with the progress her effort to swim every day has produced; her thighs are a little tighter, her booty sits a little higher. She checks her phone, 7:57, shit. She looks back to see if her t-shirt covers her ass. It does not. Hailey smiles, walking out of her bedroom with a shimmy.
"Hi, this is Hailey," she answers. "I'm good, Dan, how you doing," she asks sitting at the desk, gliding the mouse, pointing and clicking as she talks. "Haha, yeah, you know me, the usual, just a t-shirt and nothing underneath." Hailey laughs, wondering if her dad's superintendent ever believes her when she answers his question about what she's wearing. She laughs along before adding, "So, it looks like Josè pushed Anderson Avenue until tomorrow, Tuesday, the...11th, but the plumber is still scheduled for 34th Street before noon today. Yeah, I'm still trying to get an answer on the front door for Mango Drive. Yeah. Yeah. I know. They said they haven't gotten confirmation it's been received at the port yet. Okay... yep... will do... okay... Have a good one, talk to you later."
Hailey returns a missed phone call and starts going through emails for several minutes before getting up and wandering barefoot to the kitchen. She starts the coffee maker and pops into the nearest half bath to pee. She thinks she should go brush her teeth and wash her face in her bathroom but she kinda feels likes being a bum she decides with a yawn before heading back to the kitchen to grab her coffee. She sees a note on the island, "Fruit salad in the fridge, Love you, Dad." Hailey smiles opening the fridge to retrieve her breakfast, her father, Mitch, has always been an early riser, usually out the door before 7 am having already made himself breakfast and coffee. Even when her soon-to-be officially ex-stepmother was here, her Dad would tidy up the kitchen, leaving it spotless before heading out for the day.
Hailey shuffles back to her Dad's home office, hands full, settling into the large leather chair. She checks more emails and answers a few text messages while mindlessly sipping coffee and eating fruit salad. This continues until she's all caught up, she checks the time, 10:16 am. Hailey rolls her eyes, another long day of doing almost nothing. She can't help but smile though, this would have been torture at her former job, but sitting around her nice family home almost naked was something she had definitely gotten used to.
****
This has been Hailey's daily routine since moving back home two years ago. She had lost her only months old job in late summer 2020, a financial casualty of Covid, and after struggling for a bit, she finally had to admit defeat and accept her Dad's offer to move back home with him and her stepmother, Janel. Hailey had quickly adapted to the freedom and privacy of living alone and would miss the ability to have men over, lounge around naked, and masturbate whenever the urge struck, which was often. But, truth be told, she missed her dad and their house, especially the pool and private backyard. Also, her dad offered her a job working for him, which made moving back an offer she couldn't refuse.
Mitchell Riley very high-end new homes, in the oldest, most in-demand part of the city, the same area they live in. The kind of area where people pay millions for a house just to tear it down and build a bigger one with no yard. Hailey's dad had built a reputation for quality and attention to detail that led to his niche as a boutique homebuilder for people with serious intentions and serious financial means. He only works with people interested in creating beautiful homes they intend to live in, this means no investors, no McMansions, no spec properties, and Mitch only works on a few projects at a time, ensuring his personal attention to every detail. Mitch's only other actual employees besides Hailey are his superintendent, Dan, and 'Uncle' Tito, who first worked for Mitch's father, an Air Conditioning contractor, and has known Mitch since he was a child. Tito did a little bit of everything for Mitch and was a de facto family member.
Mitch had built up a stable of reliable subcontractors, suppliers, and vendors over the years. That was how he met Janel. She was an in-demand interior designer and they had worked closely on several projects eventually becoming a couple and then getting married when Hailey was 20. Hailey always liked Janel well enough, even if it was a little weird having a stepmother who was only twelve years older than her. Or having a mother at all. Hailey's mother had never been a part of her life, and her dad was always reluctant to talk about her except to tell Hailey how much he had loved her mother. When Hailey was young and asked about her mom, Mitch would always deflect. Hailey soon sensed it was because it was painful for her father and she stopped asking.
Hailey's mom, Helena, had been in and out of their lives after Hailey was born. Hailey's few memories of her real mom were mostly negative; yelling, shouting, crying, being gone for long periods, then suddenly appearing and promising everything would be different, then disappearing again as suddenly. Helena had eventually been diagnosed as rapid cycling manic-depressive. It was believed that postpartum depression had triggered an uncontrollable escalation of an existing, undiagnosed, mental illness.
Years of attempts at treatment and medication were of no effect and Helena had been gone from all their lives permanently since Hailey was five years old, except for one incident when Hailey was nine. Helena had shown up at Hailey's school, out of the blue, after years of no contact. Her behavior was wild and scary. Her appearance was heartbreaking; she had obviously been living very hard. Mitch managed to get her into a treatment center but Helena left the second week and was effectively missing until many years later when they were notified that she had been found dead in a motel in west Texas, shot twice. There was a person of interest but no one has ever been arrested or charged.
Mitch's sister McKayla had acted as Hailey's surrogate mother for several years when Hailey was young, and remained Hailey's second favorite person, next to her dad. McKayla Riley Andrews Bondurant McPherson Holden was beautiful and smart and funny and always involved in something interesting. She remembers her Aunt living with them when she was young, cooking and eating, watching movies and TV, making chocolate chip pancakes in the morning, until she suddenly announced she was getting married and moved away when Hailey was 11. McKayla has been married and divorced three more times since, but always kept in touch, never missing a special occasion, but Hailey still missed her and always wondered why she left so abruptly.
Hailey's relationship with her stepmother Janel was always awkward. With Janel being only 12 years older sometimes it was like they were sisters, which could be fun. They often went shopping together. Janel always encouraged Hailey to flaunt herself more, always suggesting something more formal or stylish and smaller or tighter when they went clothes shopping, always pressing the importance of image, but Hailey was a laid-back Florida college student and Janel was a take-no-prisoners, self-made businesswoman. And sexy. It was obvious why her father fell for her, but she was a fiery Cuban and her Dad was quiet and unassuming, and typically didn't like people who talked a lot, and Janel rarely was silent. They were a weird mix, but Hailey thought maybe that would work for them, and at least for a while it seemed to, but over the past year it was noticeable they were growing apart, their relationship resembling a business partnership more and more, rather than a romantic one.
