Saturday afternoon and I was in the office. Even if I was at home, I would be working, but it is generally easier for me to concentrate on my work when I am in the office for one simple reason: fewer distractions.
Still, it was mid-afternoon. The sun was shining brightly outside, people were walking through the small park adjacent to the office building, a bikini-clad teenager was tanning in the front yard of a nearby home. After the heavy rain the previous evening, it was truly a day to be outside enjoying the better weather before the next storm system was scheduled to roll over the city the following morning.
I came to a stopping point in my work, leaned back, and once again looked out the fifteenth-floor windows. With a soft sigh, I lamented being inside.
I heard the door to our office suite open, which truly shocked me. The mail had already been delivered, the security guard knew that I was in the office today, and I knew that no one else from my company would be coming to the office over the weekend as they all had family or travel commitments. Quickly, I slipped my feet back into the sandals and moved around the desk to go investigate.
My daughter Vivian stood at the receptionist's desk, flashing me a smile.
I had not expected that she would come to visit again before the end of the semester, since it was a six-hour drive from her university back to the family home. Besides, I remembered quite vividly the end of my eight semesters as an undergrad: the final weeks were always packed with projects, papers, and procrastination.
"When you weren't home, I knew you'd be here," she said. We hugged warmly. It felt really good to have my daughter in my arms again, since she had not been able to come home for Spring Break due to the symphony band's West Coast tour.
"Yeah, well..."
"Getting away from the memories?"
Clearly, that was why she had come home on that particular weekend. It was the two-year anniversary of the divorce being finalized, and while I knew the date all too well, its significance seemed to become even greater just because my daughter had mentioned it.
"It's okay," Vivian whispered soothingly, hugging me again. "I wanted to come and brighten your day, if not your whole weekend, so it hopefully won't hurt so much to remember."
Seeing her was like seeing my ex-wife some twenty years younger. The cliché "Like mother, like daughter" very much applied to them. Other than the age gap, they looked almost identical: very similar hazel eyes, identical long light brown hair, same tall height with attractive curves...
"At least for today," she offered, "let me take care of you. I know you've been working quite hard for a long, long time to take care of us and now me, even though I'm almost always away at school, but let me take care of you for once. Okay, Daddy?"
I smiled as I fondly kissed her cheek. "Okay," I agreed, "but I definitely need to finish this project first. It shouldn't take more than about ninety minutes or so. Why don't you go on home and I'll catch up with you there, okay?"
"Okay, but I'm fixing dinner tonight and making sure that you get some time to truly relax and unwind."
"Okay."
That was the fastest ninety minutes of my entire working life.
*****
When I returned home, I was a bit hungry despite the larger-than-usual breakfast late that morning. With work no longer lurking at the back of my mind, I also noticed what I had not noticed while in the office.
Vivian was wearing the same clothes: dark gray short-sleeve fitted shirt, black jeans with golden glitter in a wavy line down the outside of each leg, dark brown sandals, and her favorite bear claw - from a trip to New Mexico years earlier - strung on a thin leather cord. Yet I noticed things that I should not have noticed: the outline of her bra straps as they rose over her shoulders, the outline of the cups of her bra pressing against the front of the fitted shirt, the prominence of her breasts due both to the snug fit of the shirt and the bear claw positioned directly between her breasts, the way the jeans seemed to be molded to her to enhance her clearly-firm backside...
Even as we maintained a normal conversation about how things had been doing for her back on campus, my eyes were taking note. At one point, I even smiled to myself when I remembered the "Female Body Inspector" t-shirt I had seen someone wearing recently, because at that moment, I was definitely inspecting a female body, yet it was the body of a female who I should not have been inspecting.
I truly hope that Vivian did not notice how my eyes were wandering her body, appraising her. If she did notice, she did not say anything nor did she act any differently. I was aware that she was smiling a bit more often, however, but attributed that to being home for the first time since the holiday break.
She also seemed "touchier," for lack of a better word. She had hugged me more than once in the office, and even once I returned home, she hugged me three times before dinner and otherwise would brush my arm or my shoulder whenever she was near me. I definitely did not mind - living alone, a touch was rare for me beyond a handshake when meeting someone in the office or at a client site - but it did raise my curiosity, yet I could not ask her about it because I could not find the right words to make my question known without sounding accusatory. Eventually, I figured that perhaps Vivian was just at the point in her menstrual cycle when her hormones were much more active and she was more susceptible to flirting on a subconscious level; if she had to flirt, it was probably best to flirt with me, with someone safe who would definitely not do any harm to her in any way.
Vivian refused to allow me to assist with dinner, and was adamant that I leave the kitchen while she was putting away the leftovers and washing the dishes. Compared to my ex-wife, it was a refreshing change, but I also felt guilty because, after all, why should my daughter make a six-hour drive just to cook for me and then clean the kitchen afterward?
When she finally emerged from the kitchen, I was relaxing in my favorite recliner, my eyes closed as I thought about the events since Vivian's arrival at the office. I heard her approaching me, but did not open my eyes. To my surprise, she sat in my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck - that definitely did cause my eyes to open, especially since she had rarely done that since she was about seven years old, and whenever she had sat in my lap like that, it was because she wanted something, typically something expensive or difficult to find.
Instinctively, my arms encircled her, and Vivian and I hugged yet again. I was losing count of the number of times we had hugged just that day alone.
"You must be tired from the long drive," I commented.
"A little," she admitted. "I had to get up quite early, and I think my roommate thought I was crazy to be getting up so early. Then again, she's the one who was out drinking until 3AM."
"I see. You didn't go with her?"
"I did for the first drink, but then I left the party because Chantal and I had tickets for a movie on campus at 10."
"Chantal... You haven't mentioned her in a while, not even in your e-mails."
"Yeah, well, she and I haven't spent much time together really. She spends almost every waking hour either in class, in lab, or with Jacob."
"New boyfriend?"
"Um..." Vivian noticeably hesitated a moment. "Yes, but..."
"But what?"
