More Than Molecules (CH20 pt1)

 ***MORE  THAN  MOLECULES***(pt1)

💥  Neil was left staring at the door and quickly raised a hand to cover his mouth, dragging it down  till it rested on his throat. He turned and leaned back, needing the door for support. Her words spent a heavy few moments resonating in his head. Now he understood the reason for her capricious manner, and he worried even more that she would pull an all-nighter and leave early; slipping away without his knowledge. Right now, though, his silence had raised the hope that he was gone, so despondency spiked by the tap on the door.

   'Saskia.'

    No reply.

    'C'mon. Open the door. I'm not leaving till you do.'
    Still nothing.
    'I mean it.'

 Slowly the door slid open and she met him with a flush in her cheeks. Looking solidly at him, she asked,  'Are you sure you even want to hear this?'

    'I want to know what's going on. Tell me. As best you can.'  Whatever emerges from this conversation, he wasn't going to belittle her emotions, and cleared space for him to enter.

   Stepping in, he shut the door quietly as she walked ahead. Christmas sparkles on her shoulders still winked away under the kitchenette spotlights as she poured them drinks. What a turnabout to such a successful night. Less than an hour ago they had been dancing affectionately - now he was stunned, uneasy, tense.

   Taking his drink from her, he slowly sat down on the small sofa while she huddled up on the chair across from him; knees drawn up, chin sitting on her kneecaps. Those perky little green-painted toenails peeked brightly from the hem of her night slip, and Neil focused on them, awaiting her words. But each brave breath she drew in was being sighed to the ceiling. It was not so much as finding the right words to say, but the guts to say them at all.

Neil bowed his head, clasping his fingers ever tighter. The disclosure of such a revelation - as he grasped what it meant - was probably yet not fully registering. Complications were things he never tolerated for long, but he didn't know how to title this one since it wasn't just everyday stuff. She would have to be the one to speak first.

    'Well... say something,' he implored.

    Keeping her focus downward too, Saskia took a huge swig of alcohol despite knowing it wouldn't help; it hadn't all night. Now she would have to find boot intrepidity, boot into gear, and give it to him straight and wholeheartedly; even if the words she was about to drop made the ceiling cave in.

    'It's hard, but I'll try...fuck, this will sound crazy.' A few measured breaths, then she began, 'I've adored you from the outset. After our very first meeting in the park, I went home the happiest girl in the world. We clicked and I knew we'd get on and you probably gathered that fairly quickly, too.  Gradually though, things changed for me the more of you I saw. I tried to reason with myself that it was just the excitement of discovering you and nothing else. But I knew exactly what had built, despite struggling like mad to not let it happen but ' she shook her head, with hopelessness,  'it has... beyond a shadow of a doubt. My feelings just went haywire. ' 

   'What sort of feelings have gone haywire? I need a bit of help, here...' 

   'Bit of help?' she said, with a wavering smile. 'That's what I tell myself I must need every day, too.' 

   'Why?'

    'Because it's hard to think of you in a sensual light as well as in a father capacity.'

   As she lifted her head to look at him, his gaze wandered from her for a few moments then settled back again, but he didn't know quite how to ask her, but let her talk on. 'I know I never did or said anything directly about it before now, and I hate myself for allowing it to happen.'

   'Let what happen?'

   She averted his eyes by laying her head sideways her knees and huddled herself even tighter. 'You must know, Dad... '

   Neil's breathing shallowed as he thought she was about to bite the God-forsaken bullet and say it. So far he hadn't had the exact conformation to what feelings she was referring to, and as hard and unnerving it will be to hear out loud, he needed that precise clarity. Clearing his throat, he then asked in a slow measured pace,  'So, you're saying you're in love with me, then, Saskia?'

    She lifted her chin and looked him dead in the eye. 'Yes.' That one simple word made his stomach lurch.  'Yes, I am - and with bigger fecking bells on than a church on a Sunday at that!'  

   Even now, under the enormity of such a confession, her choice of words made him smile; his wee girl with the comical nature. Her comment, made out of nervousness, was also given to accentuate how deeply she meant it.  'This is far more intense.' She closed her eyes, 'Like nothing else I've come up 

against before...'

    Of course something must be more intense. How many daughters declare this kind of wanton stuff to their father?

 'But, how do you know it's the kind of love you say it is?' he probed, with a strained smile; he didn't want to unintentionally vilify her, despite his growing discomfort.  'Maybe the mix of the evening and the celebrations have been a bit overwhelming for you?'  At first he considered this might all be down to Julia having been aversive to her earlier on, but all Julia had done was helping to bring something more damning to the fore.

   Saskia gave a frustrated sigh. She knew this wouldn't be easy, so he would have to listen up.

   'Okay, then. So where d'you want you me to start? With the simple stuff, the how's' and why's;  like how happy I get when I know I'm seeing you later and how excited and safe I feel when I do. And for daft things like having in my favourite ice cream but always joking that you forgot to buy it in. Remembering bands I like but you hate, and always taking that interest in me. Making sacrifices and continuously arranging some new place to see, to visit, to get drunk in. And the pride I feel when we link arms outside makes me wish I was only ever in your company. We always have a laugh, even though I dread the one you have when I mess up and embarrass myself. Even the smile that fans out laughter lines around your eyes never fail to set off that weird wriggly worm under my ribcage.'

   She took a little pause. This did sound like a form of worship that she perhaps was taking out of context.

     'I imagine most daughters idolise their fathers, Saskia, there's that—' 

     'Or do you want to hear the deeper stuff that gets me?' she interrupted loudly, clamming him right up.       'Like adoring the way your eyes never leave mine as you listen to me intently?  How giddy I get when you instigate cuddles that make my heart pound, wishing you'd crush me just that bit tighter.  Or that tingle I feel when you brush past me, kiss my cheek, stroke my face? Or the weird and wonderful sensation I get all down my back when you tease out hair stuck down my collar and you brush it neater with your fingers. When you stand behind me I imagine the hands that rest on my shoulders creeping lower and lower, making their way to my thighs.  How I'd love to run a hand down the hairs on your calves when you're fresh from the shower and sit next to me. I picture my hand slipping under the fold in your dressing gown with every good morning hug to see how your heartbeat would react to it being there... Mostly I yearn to get into that fucker of a giant bed. You're the security blanket I long to get under, and it tears me to pieces when we say goodnight and head for separate rooms.  I'm left with my insides contracting, Dad. I feel safe and warm with you, as though nothing bad can happen yet I'm sitting here telling you this.  I feel you were brought into my life, made just for me. I know every daughter should be close to their father. Difference is, I need mine in his entirety.'

   Her tenacious words came out like bullets; straight-aimed and firing right into his soul. Words he should never have heard but she had suppressed for far too long. 

   Neil drew his look from her face to his shoes. Dumbstruck, conflicted, and incapable of formulating a response right now. If only this had been something that would wear off with the alcohol.

   'Jesus, Saskia...'

   'I've been in love before, and it's back with a vengeance and other heady stuff that won't sod off. Oh, I've blamed other things for sending all that adrenaline or doped-up hormones or whatever to whoosh around me, but it's you. I love you in a most agonising way.'

   He felt his own sudden or whatever rush flow through his veins and had to use laboured breathing to help calm it. A tear ran down her cheek and she swiped it away before he noticed,  'Finding you was the best and worst thing to happen to me and there's no point in trying to reason with it, reminding myself you're my dad makes no difference. I've grown up feelings that headed in the wrong direction and I can't divert them.' 

   He said something intangible in a muffled whisper, through shock, yet as beyond comprehension as it seemed, and as hard as this was to hear, he felt compelled to know more. 'So what brought it all out, what was so different about tonight?'

 'Tonight?' Shaking her head lightly, a faint smile playing across her lips. 'As I said, I was jealous. I've spent most of my evening wondering if every pretty - and not so pretty - woman had bedded you and I couldn't handle it. I still can't.'  The old green-eyed monster got the better of her, turning bitter after all those weeks of pining. 'I'm sorry. I just wish that bloody taxi had come earlier. I'd be home right now and you'd be spared this. I'm surprised you haven't taken off already. Cut off all ties. I wouldn't blame you if you did.'

    She was right. The best thing to do would be for him to go. Leave. The hotel, the city, the country, the universe. But he wasn't prepared for such abandonment. 'I'm not gonna do that, Saskia.'

    'Why not? It was what I was gonna do.'
    'Whatever's going on, you still need me right now.'

    'Really? How can you even think like that? I'm amazed you're still sitting here in front of me.' She blinked her eyes wide for a second, wriggling her toes and hugging herself tighter. 'Pity I didn't just come with a demand for back pocket-money after all these years, eh?' 

   As hurt as he felt at not having had the chance to have known her since birth, she was unequivocally the most important person to him. He only had to look at her face to know that she had opened a part of his heart that he never knew existed. Someone real to smile worry over, to love and lay down his life for; his much needed kick up the arse, and it hurt knowing he was the cause of her pain right now. Uneasiness radiated off him as he shuffled tensely in his seat; at a lost for what to say or do.

     'I was never trying to complicate things, sweetheart...' As much as he wanted to hug her, he was emotionally diffident about doing so right then. In layman's terms she was saying she wanted to fuck her father.

    'I know. I wasn't either.' Saskia sprung quickly from her chair, startling Neil by grabbing his glass for refills. 'Now look where it's got me...' 

   Silence took over as she topped up their drinks; three miniatures per glass. Saskia was starting  to feel the alcohol kick in now; as if it had waited all night to apply its courage when it really mattered. But she prayed he was giving precedence to each and every word she had strived to get out, for there was a matter of resolve to face, and she'd need to keep that courage undiluted while he was still there.

   Handing him his glass from over his shoulder, she told him that she wished it had gotten him somewhere too. She slowly sat back down in her chair, keeping eye contact solid as she did so, awaiting his reply. The statement had thrown him; in essence this was a test on what could be done about it.

   'What do you mean you wish it had got me somewhere too?' He asked with pulsating building up in his ear.

    Another huge glug from the glass, and she said, 'Help me here, Dad. Tell me I've not been imagining it.'

   'Imagining what?' He gave a slacked-jaw gesture, as if he was totally in the dark.

   Taking a moment to consider all those heady, irresistible flirtations that had a habit - mostly on her part - of growing out of hand, she smiled. 'You must have picked up on something, somewhere along the line?' 

  'Saskia,' he said, leaning forward to put his drink on the table, 'I think we should stop drinking,' 

  'Is that it? A last ditch attempt at blaming the booze. Down the sink now and things will be fine by morning... . she sung the last line ridiculously snobbish.

    He hung his head; he knew normality would never return again.

   'C'mon Dad...you know we've had moments. Awkward, silly ones sometimes, but we've been there.'         Although these 'moments' felt like they had sparked little on his return, she couldn't accept that he wasn't cognizant or intuitive to anything. While she felt desire so strong, he didn't feel a single tug back? Really?

 His silence for a few extended seconds may not have been a confession, all she sought was a sign, however small, it was there, but I would say we were pretty close was all he reasoned with.

    Saskia licked her lips, rolled her eyes and started to twirl the ends of her hair. 'Pretty close?' she mimicked, feeling narkier the more he repudiated. 'That the full shebang is it?' 

    'I don't know what else, I can say...or should say?'

    'Oh, for fuck's sake!' she near shouted, get narkier with each repudiation. 'I'll try it this way, shall I, you might get it now...You can't keep denial in a golf ball, smack it down a hole and leave it there. You always need it back, and it's down to you where it next goes... ' 

   Not another of her weird analogies, but he kind of knew what she was trying to say. 

   With brows knitted tightly, voice near pleading she continued. 'Just think of all that touchy-feely stuff; snuggling close, my legs over your thighs on the sofa when watching telly; me walking round half-naked wearing next to nothing but a smile? I've tried passing the boundary levels with you and you've been so bloody accepting, so refined. All I wanted was you to just react to it!'

    'React, how?' His voice started to raise, too; glad she hadn't poured the drinks down the sink after all.  'I couldn't tell as a dad if I should have a relaxed attitude about those kind of things - you seem to have! Christ, Saskia, I thought I was doing the father thing okay, I hardly had time to adjust. I've really only just found you, give me some leeway here, will you!' 

    'I know, I'm sorry... ' she said softly, starting to mollify; this would have been the last thing he would have expected tonight,  '... but I was never your little girl. You never had a baby girl, you got a grown one with restless feelings and prurience - one who never got the chance to know you until now. We met as adults, Dad, and that wasn't my fault.'  With glistening eyes forming and a tingle in her chest, she was striving hard not to cry.

     He knew, of course, they weren't a unique case. All over the world, people were meeting up with relatives they never knew about or thought were lost; all emerging from obscurity. That first time he saw her coming down those few stairs at the coffee bar was quite a feeling - an overwhelming jumble of strange emotions all fighting for first place. Who'd have thought a mere eight months later she'd be knocking him into a psychological whirlwind by her falling in love with him. She broke her short pause by stating an undeniable fait accompli;

   'We've got to remember our circumstances were thrown upon us, weren't they?' 
    'Aye,' this he had to agree with, 'they were.'

     Neil felt he was teetering on the edge of insanity, knowing where this proscribed 'reasoning' was heading, and he couldn't quite shift this God-awful awareness of nervous excitement stirring and she was about to hit him further to his fundamental core. 

   'I know there's a part of you that feels how I feel, Dad, because you tried to run away too.'

   'When?'

   'That very first time when I chased after you with the photo album, and you've shaped yourself into normal-dad-mode since. Just be honest with yourself.' 

    His moist brow furrowed and for a few moments he held her gaze, and it was hard to tell exactly what was going on in his mind. He shifted his look from her and back. 'Saskia, that's a bit unfair, I didn't— ' His proposed denial irked her immensely; she wasn't going to allow any belying from him on this one, and showed it by upping her tone;

    'Awe, you know you did!  You ran from Blazes the second you clapped eyes on me, you couldn't handle it. I reminded you of those young girls you slept with. That's why you shot out of that place, you didn't want to take me on!'

 Neil stood briefly to remove his jacket, throwing it over the sofa behind him. 'I was three hours into finding out that I was a father. It threw me, okay?' His Scottish accent always thickened at times of stress. 
    'Yup, that was what I thought too, till I worked out the real reason tonight.'

    Neil put his elbows on his knees, and cupped his head in his hands. A pang of compassion for him fluttered through  her as he processed events; she could almost feel her words thrashing around in his

 His world had tilted on its axis; how in the hell would he able to level it again? What an end to the night. 

   'Trust that bad-mouthed bitch, I wish she had kept her trap shut!'

   'I don't.' she admitted. 'If nothing else, it's been said now. I'm just sorry I chose tonight to do it.'

From his hunched shoulders and worn-down expression, Saskia went over to him. As soon as her hand reached out for his face, barely brushing the skin, he rose with velocity and headed for the kitchenette - not sure if contact would be a comforting touch or an agonising weapon. Blood rushed to his head and heart; molecules criss-crossing over his solar pleaxis. With his back to her he gripped the edge of the sink for balance. Saskia forlornly followed him, deflated and hurt.

   'Oh, that's it... demand to be let in, make me spill my heart out, then shoot off and turn your back on me! Why bother coming in at all if you can't hack it, you knew full well what was coming!'

    'Please, Saskia... just let me get my head around this...'

    All he had heard still permeated through his mind, dissolving through his psyche. Never before had he faced such mental upheaval.

   Those unshed tears she'd been trying so hard to keep at bay started to spill. With his head still bowed above the mug-ridden basin, she was left feeling lost, emotionally battered and humiliated. Out of breath and energy, and with huge sobs, she backed up and slumped down the wooden balustrade to the floor.

Neil glanced over his shoulder at the pain-fueled sight and instantly felt bad. Seeing her crumpled there reminded him of the imbroglios his father beset on his mother time and time and again, picturing his begging mother in that same pathetic state; something he carried with him to this day. Going over to her 

he grasped her wrists, freeing her hands from her face, but she resisted as he pulled to make her stand. 

  'Up!' he demanded. 'Up... d'you hear me?' His hands still grasped firmly on her. 'Please, Saskia. C'mon... it's okay, it's okay.'

    'No, it's not. It'll never be okay again, you don't understand... I've got her at home to deal with and I've just sickened you to the core... how will it ever be okay?'

    With a rough yank to get her on her feet, he gave a huge pitying sigh and crushed her to him, his hand clasping her head against his chest, soothing her in a rocking motion. Coming out in whispers, she kept apologising for such disgusting ruminations.

  He pushed her by the shoulders at arms length and encouraged her to look at him. There was no lip gloss now, no blushed cheeks, just mascara shorelines from crying down her pale face, and he couldn't help but love it; she was still so beautifully wrapped in this dishevelled torment. 

    'Hey, hey... listen,' he said softly, pulling strands of hair free from wet patches on her nose and mouth, 'whatever you think of yourself or are struggling with right now, you don't disgust me.'

    'You're scaring me...' he interposed loudly, with a brief nervous grin, 'but you don't disgust me.' Then said in serious sotto voce, and to leave her in no doubt, 'You could never do that.'

    Looking up into his eyes, a shade confused, she asked, 'What? Even now?'

    'Even now.' he answered back, and felt an impulse to finger-straighten the tangles from the hair that he'd brushed so many times before.  

   He felt sober, lost. For her, for himself. It was awful seeing those sculpturesque-features etched with such hurt, so he laid a comforting kiss on her forehead then lifted her chin up to secure she looked at him, wholeheartedly saying, 'I mean that.'

   But sudden intuition - the thing she swore was in him somewhere - swept him from his quest to ease her turmoil, and forced his eyes to rest on her lips; pink padded and always soft to the touch. The thought of what they might feel like if they lingered seconds longer than the usual quick pecks they exchanged, took hold. The image in his head readily took over and picked on him, pressurised him, then paralysed him until his heart and hormones ambushed all reasoning; any fear was eaten up and morphed into a compelling force of needing to know.

 In one bold gesture of a slight lean forward, he made gentle contact with his daughter's lips, letting them remain on hers that bit longer.

  The motion caught her unawares, and she tenderly and slowly laid a palm on his chest. The corners of her mouth lifted up just a touch and upon tip toes she stretched up to kiss him back. He accepted. The feel, the taste, the knowing they shouldn't be there, all incitement never felt before. Nerve endings of his lips radiated to every last molecule in his body, stirring, inciting until Neil grasped her tighter to him with the intensity that she'd craved, and the reality that this was actually happening stirred her all the more, creating short, wanton groans; their very own precursor to immoral incongruity.

   As grinding lips deepened, Saskia raised a knee and slid it between his thighs, jerking them apart to rub hers with his. But in reaction to this he suddenly broke off the embrace - making her gasp - and he reached back to grip the edge of the worktop behind him. Fearing what his manoeuvre might mean, he closed his eyes for a few seconds then looked back at her intently, biting firmly on the inside skin of his bottom lip to, perhaps, palliate the nod he gave towards the bedroom door. 

  She smiled meekly in response as she raised her hand gently to his face, and with a fingertip rolled his lip free from its bite. In a segue, sang-froid manner she turned and walked from him, blithely taking on the invite that laws prohibit, and society repudiates; boundaries remitted.

       end of *** More  Than  Molecules***