OK: Note of explanation here. This became a much longer and larger story than I'd first envisioned. So I went back to do re-writes of parts and add more development of the two central people, as well as the supporting cast. It's not done yet, and it may take awhile to finish it. Also, it builds to the sex EVENTUALLY! It's called sexual tension, and I don't go straight into the bedroom! There's also far more to it than the sex. It started out as a quick n' dirty idea that became far more, and is now, for lack of a better description, a coming of age story. I might just sell it to HBO....also, as always, formatting issues make my life a living hell, please be nice! Don't forget, the next few chapters get much steamier!
My mother and father had been divorced since I was thirteen. They got along OK, so it wasn't too traumatic growing up. When my father started dating someone a year later, I was happy for him, why should he be lonely? After they'd been seeing each other for two months, Dad wanted me to meet her, and I was thrilled to meet her.
Her name was Allison, and she was 40 to my Dad's 45, so I was cool with that. She was a pretty, dark haired woman who kept in good shape, and didn't look 40 at all. She was about 5 foot five, 120 pounds, with a ready smile. I took to her instantly, and we became friends as my sophomore year in high school cam to an end. She wasn't my mother, nor did she want to be, she was happy being more a big sister to me or an aunt that was really cool.
When summer vacation came along, Mom and I had had enough fighting, we weren't getting along, and I asked if I could live with Dad and Allison, and she thought that would be a better solution than fighting all the time. I moved in and was pretty happy at first, Allie was cool to be with, and she was a better cook than my Mom or myself. She and Dad seemed super happy together, and I "accidentally" left a copy of Modern Bride where she could easily find it. I thought being in a wedding would be great.
I just had no idea of the twists and turns my own life was going to take.
A month and a half into summer vacation, the phone rang and I picked it up, and a man asked if he could speak to Allie. I tossed the phone to Allie and headed upstairs to goof around on the internet.
After an hour or so, I went downstairs to grab a snack, and I noticed Allie and my Dad having what looked to be a serious conversation. I mean real serious. I prayed there was nothing wrong between them, but Allie noticed me and asked if they could speak with me.
She assured me that she loved me as if I were her own daughter, and that she and my Dad were really happy, but something had happened that she hadn't expected. It turned out she, too had a daughter who was in fact sixteen like me. She had been with her father since they'd broken up 14 years before. She and the girl didn't see much of each other, and she'd expected that she'd only rarely see her as she and her ex-husband didn't get along well at all. Dad had known about it, and hadn't said anything to me because he didn't want me to doubt that I would ever be far from their minds, and then he looked at me and smiled and said "The only time we expected you'd ever meet her would be at our wedding"
At which point I hadn't even noticed the wedding part, Dad started to speak again when I jumped up with joy to hug he and Allie. They were getting married!!! However, due to her ex-husband being shipped off to his company's operations in northern Canada, her daughter would be coming to live with us.
What could be the problem? We were the same age, I had a cool father, she had a cool mother, we'd get along great, right? Not exactly.
I met her two days later, as Dad and I were at a restaurant waiting for her and her mother. Her name was Kristi, and Dad assured me I'd like her.
They came in, and she'd gotten much of her looks from her mother. She had long, jet back hair, with pale skin, and a nice body that made me feel self-conscious about my less than stellar body, but she wasn't smiling. She looked pissed.
"Therese, I want to you to meet Kristi, Kristi, this is Therese, Jack's daughter."
She barely looked at me, barely shook my hand and muttered "Swell" under her breath, and when introduced to my father, she grumbled out "Charmed" and promptly sat down and looked away from us all, to stare out at the rest of the restaurant.
What the hell was her problem? If she had a problem with me, fine, but don't you be rude to my father! I thought she treated her mother pretty rudely, too!
Allie jumped in to make conversation as my Dad and I tried to help as well. Kristi muttered single word answers to everything, and refused to be drawn into conversation. Maybe she was just really shy? The conversation came around to my mother and I not agreeing on many things and my coming to live with Dad and Allie and she finally uttered a complete sentence.
"Your mom didn't give a crap about you either?"
"Kristi!!" said Allie, "That isn't true and you know it! Your father made three times more money than I did, and with your grandparents there to help, I knew you'd have a better life with your father. I did and still love you very much."
"My mom loves me, we just aren't getting along real good right now." I said. "It seemed better to avoid the fighting."
She looked at me with a look of pure venom.
"Like I care? Trust me, I don't."
That hurt so much. What was her problem? I'd never done anything to her, I thought her mother was wonderful, and was thrilled at the prospect of having a girl my age in the house with me. Shopping trips, make up, and introducing her to my friends and showing her around the city was something I'd been looking forward to.
It was not to be.
She moved in and got the middle room upstairs. Dad designed the house himself, and there was the master suite, and two huge bedrooms, both with their own bath. I had the one on the end, and now Kristi was between mine and Dad & Allie's. I never really wanted to be too close to their bedroom anyways. There are some sounds I really don't want to hear.
I tried to talk to her, only to get ignored, or if I was particularly unlucky that day, she'd tell me to fuck off. I'd never met anyone so hostile towards me, and that includes some of the girls I play volleyball against.
She was equally hostile to her mother and to Dad. Lots of silence, followed by "who the fuck cares?" or "go fuck yourself" was not exactly conducive towards a happy home life. Luckily she stayed in her room a lot, but it frustrated me, I'm a nice person, and I think I'm easy to get along with, but nothing seemed to make a difference with her.
The part that really bugged me was that she could be cool if she wanted to be. She had some amazing clothes that were unique, and she was into vintage stuff, and looked a little bit mysterious.
She also was into classical music like I was, and I'd hear things playing in her room that I'd never heard and wanted to find out about, but she rebuffed me at every turn.
If we were going out to dinner she'd just sulk the entire time and when we'd all gone to a movie she walked out saying it was stupid and she was going to wait in the lobby.
In two and a half weeks, the only nice thing I'd gotten out of her was a thumbs up while I was listening to Mussoursky's Pictures at an Exhibition. I'd tried to talk to her but she just ignored me and shut her door in my face.
"Allie? Do you have a few minutes?"
"Sure sweetie, what's up?"
Allie was a very friendly, open person, unlike her daughter.
"I'm not trying to be mean, but....Kristi...isn't the easiest person to get along with. Do you have any ideas on how I make things easier between us? I'm out of ideas."
"I wish I did, Therese. Leonard and I met when he got stuck in the motel I was working at because of a storm. He thought I was cute, and we fell for each other. At nineteen love can fix everything, at least that's what you tell yourself. We married despite his parent's objections, and settled into a nice house. Kristi was born almost ten months later.
However, we were already starting to have problems. His parents made no secret of the fact that they hated me because I was a poor girl who'd barely made it out of high school, while their boy was a Stanford graduate of excellent breeding. He'd be better off at a company function if he had a lady of class on his arm, not a former motel worker. If he had a wife that knew how to network, he'd go farther at work, if his wife had any connections of her own, she could help him, and so on. They made it as clear as they could that he'd be better off without me."
"But you're a good person, and who cares where you went to school?"
"They did, but then it all fell apart. I'd made the mistake of having a male friend while I was trying to take night classes. Nothing ever happened, but Leonard's mother had hired a detective and he made the pictures look really bad. Leonard went ballistic.
Two days later I was served with divorce papers and his mother hired the best of the best to ensure I was crushed. Of course Leonard made much more money than I could, his loving parents would help with the child, and she was better off than she would be with a lying cheating whore.
Not only did I lose custody of Kristi, I had no visitation rights. At all. Leonard made me an offer though, he'd give me five thousand dollars to go away. I wasn't going to be able to see my little girl, but he swore she would be well cared for. He'd make sure she had the best of everything, schools, clothing, you name it, she'd travel to Europe and the rest of the world, and would have all the opportunities I never had.
I've often wished I could go back to that moment so I could do it differently, but we can't go back, can we? Otherwise I would have fought tooth and nail for her."
"Why would they be so cruel?? Didn't they think of what might be best for Kristi?"
"They did. Money was the answer to everything with them. I got to see her three years later, my smiley faced baby girl was now a serious faced young lady of six. It broke my heart.
I'd taken her father's payoff and gone back to school, and I was in chriporactic college already. I was building something for myself. I saw her again three years later, and I swear she didn't smile once the whole time I was there.
I saw her three more times before she moved in with us, and at the last Leonard apologized, he realized that his parents had caused much of our troubles, but it was too late for us.
It was too late for Kristi and I as well. She didn't want anything to do with me. I could see she was having some emotional troubles, and it was clear her father was more or less ignoring her, but she didn't want me there.
Then her father needed to focus on his career, and Kristi would only foul things up, so I was given another chance to be a mother. She didn't want it, and despite her protestations, I think she realizes I care, and that her father wasn't the best parent, but it's going to take her a long time to adjust. I just hope I can do right by her this time."
Allie was almost in tears, but I hugged her and told her she'd do fine.
"Well, it was different with you, you were much easier to deal with."
"I consider myself a real handful."
"Not at all, you moved in and I was prepared for some resentment and the obligatory 'you're not my mother' stuff, but I already liked you, and you adjusted pretty quickly. Your mother had one set of rules, we had another. You just went by whatever the rules of the house you were in were. I'd pretty much believed my maternal instincts were gone, but you woke them up all right. Almost to the point of your father and I considering....a little brother or sister for you."
"No way."
"Way. We'd been talking about it and thought that we might go for next year."
"Have you given up?"
"Yes, Kristi's here, and I'm never going to quit on her again, ever."
"I won't either. I promise."
"No matter how long it takes?"
"No matter how long it takes."
I had to try something, and new clothes for school were on my agenda. Dad made good money, but I was never spoiled. I'd gotten a car a few months after my 16th birthday, but it was three years old, and far from the fanciest model out there.
Dad had gotten a cash card for my school shopping and had only put four hundred dollars on it, once it was gone, it was back to my allowance of 35 dollars a week. He had thoughtfully gotten one for Kristi with the same amount, and was going to give her the same amount of allowance. No credit cards for me. Damn.
I had to do some chores around the house, but nothing too strenuous. Mom and Dad had been good about keeping me up to date as far as a cell phone and a top of the line iPod, plus I had a pretty sweet laptop that my aunt had gotten for me last year. If I went shopping with Mom or Allie, things like makeup, food or CD's and DVD's were picked up by them so the money was just to goof around with.
Kristi didn't seem impressed.
"My father used to give me two hundred dollars a week. Thirty five is nothing."
Oh, joy. She was going to be such fun to live with. At least I'd been able to talk her into going shopping with me. She was pretty reluctant, and I'd bailed on my friends to go with her, but I was pretty sure they'd understood.
"Do you want to hit Nordstroms first? Or we can head to Saks?"
"Fuck both of them. Have you got any place that's cool?"
"Hey, I love Nordy's, they have the best stuff, but what do you consider cool?" She did have her own style, wearing only dark colors and lots of black, but she wasn't a Goth. More like Stevie Nicks. With her coloring I'd wear a lot more dark stuff, but no such luck, pale skin, reddish blonde hair, and just a dash of freckles for me, my Celtic blood showed through pretty obviously.
"Here, I have no idea, do you have any place that sells vintage stuff?"
"Yeah, we do, it's on the other side of town, but they do have some unusual things." I made a lane change and a u-turn and off we went.
The Queen of the Past was the store, and for the first time, she smiled. She obviously knew vintage stuff pretty well as she headed straight to a rack of dresses that were all long. She picked out a dark maroon one with black trim and held it up to herself to look in the mirror. She let out a happy sigh.
'That looks great on you!"
"Do you....really think so?" she seemed so unsure of herself.
"Yeah, it looks killer, makes you look a few years older, perhaps with a slightly wicked past that no one knows about."
She actually laughed at that. She then looked at the price tag, it was 495.00. Yikes! Vintage was not cheap.
I looked over and there was another rack of similarly styled dresses, but the sign said 79.99 to 139.99.
"Uh, those ones over there seem to be a bit cheaper."
She smiled and said, "That's because those are reproductions. Made in the last six months, with inferior stitching, poor materials, and they'll be junk in less than a year. This one's from 1906, and it's gorgeous."
Wow. She did know her stuff. She held it up so I could see closer and put her finger along one of the seams.
"Look at that, triple stitched, by hand, that's quality. It's not just a dress, it's a work of art."
She asked to try it on. The saleslady handed her a numbered key and pointed her towards the dressing rooms.
I poked around but the only thing I saw that I liked was a very 50's looking outfit that would look great when we had a sock hop in the fall. it was also only 59.00, if it fit and looked right, it was going to be mine, I got a key as well, and headed towards the dressing room.
Kristi was just coming out of the dressing room, and it looked flawless on her. It fit like a second skin, too. I could never get away with it. My b-cups weren't growing all that fast.
"Wow. You look....incredibly beautiful in that."...
My mother and father had been divorced since I was thirteen. They got along OK, so it wasn't too traumatic growing up. When my father started dating someone a year later, I was happy for him, why should he be lonely? After they'd been seeing each other for two months, Dad wanted me to meet her, and I was thrilled to meet her.
Her name was Allison, and she was 40 to my Dad's 45, so I was cool with that. She was a pretty, dark haired woman who kept in good shape, and didn't look 40 at all. She was about 5 foot five, 120 pounds, with a ready smile. I took to her instantly, and we became friends as my sophomore year in high school cam to an end. She wasn't my mother, nor did she want to be, she was happy being more a big sister to me or an aunt that was really cool.
When summer vacation came along, Mom and I had had enough fighting, we weren't getting along, and I asked if I could live with Dad and Allison, and she thought that would be a better solution than fighting all the time. I moved in and was pretty happy at first, Allie was cool to be with, and she was a better cook than my Mom or myself. She and Dad seemed super happy together, and I "accidentally" left a copy of Modern Bride where she could easily find it. I thought being in a wedding would be great.
I just had no idea of the twists and turns my own life was going to take.
A month and a half into summer vacation, the phone rang and I picked it up, and a man asked if he could speak to Allie. I tossed the phone to Allie and headed upstairs to goof around on the internet.
After an hour or so, I went downstairs to grab a snack, and I noticed Allie and my Dad having what looked to be a serious conversation. I mean real serious. I prayed there was nothing wrong between them, but Allie noticed me and asked if they could speak with me.
She assured me that she loved me as if I were her own daughter, and that she and my Dad were really happy, but something had happened that she hadn't expected. It turned out she, too had a daughter who was in fact sixteen like me. She had been with her father since they'd broken up 14 years before. She and the girl didn't see much of each other, and she'd expected that she'd only rarely see her as she and her ex-husband didn't get along well at all. Dad had known about it, and hadn't said anything to me because he didn't want me to doubt that I would ever be far from their minds, and then he looked at me and smiled and said "The only time we expected you'd ever meet her would be at our wedding"
At which point I hadn't even noticed the wedding part, Dad started to speak again when I jumped up with joy to hug he and Allie. They were getting married!!! However, due to her ex-husband being shipped off to his company's operations in northern Canada, her daughter would be coming to live with us.
What could be the problem? We were the same age, I had a cool father, she had a cool mother, we'd get along great, right? Not exactly.
I met her two days later, as Dad and I were at a restaurant waiting for her and her mother. Her name was Kristi, and Dad assured me I'd like her.
They came in, and she'd gotten much of her looks from her mother. She had long, jet back hair, with pale skin, and a nice body that made me feel self-conscious about my less than stellar body, but she wasn't smiling. She looked pissed.
"Therese, I want to you to meet Kristi, Kristi, this is Therese, Jack's daughter."
She barely looked at me, barely shook my hand and muttered "Swell" under her breath, and when introduced to my father, she grumbled out "Charmed" and promptly sat down and looked away from us all, to stare out at the rest of the restaurant.
What the hell was her problem? If she had a problem with me, fine, but don't you be rude to my father! I thought she treated her mother pretty rudely, too!
Allie jumped in to make conversation as my Dad and I tried to help as well. Kristi muttered single word answers to everything, and refused to be drawn into conversation. Maybe she was just really shy? The conversation came around to my mother and I not agreeing on many things and my coming to live with Dad and Allie and she finally uttered a complete sentence.
"Your mom didn't give a crap about you either?"
"Kristi!!" said Allie, "That isn't true and you know it! Your father made three times more money than I did, and with your grandparents there to help, I knew you'd have a better life with your father. I did and still love you very much."
"My mom loves me, we just aren't getting along real good right now." I said. "It seemed better to avoid the fighting."
She looked at me with a look of pure venom.
"Like I care? Trust me, I don't."
That hurt so much. What was her problem? I'd never done anything to her, I thought her mother was wonderful, and was thrilled at the prospect of having a girl my age in the house with me. Shopping trips, make up, and introducing her to my friends and showing her around the city was something I'd been looking forward to.
It was not to be.
She moved in and got the middle room upstairs. Dad designed the house himself, and there was the master suite, and two huge bedrooms, both with their own bath. I had the one on the end, and now Kristi was between mine and Dad & Allie's. I never really wanted to be too close to their bedroom anyways. There are some sounds I really don't want to hear.
I tried to talk to her, only to get ignored, or if I was particularly unlucky that day, she'd tell me to fuck off. I'd never met anyone so hostile towards me, and that includes some of the girls I play volleyball against.
She was equally hostile to her mother and to Dad. Lots of silence, followed by "who the fuck cares?" or "go fuck yourself" was not exactly conducive towards a happy home life. Luckily she stayed in her room a lot, but it frustrated me, I'm a nice person, and I think I'm easy to get along with, but nothing seemed to make a difference with her.
The part that really bugged me was that she could be cool if she wanted to be. She had some amazing clothes that were unique, and she was into vintage stuff, and looked a little bit mysterious.
She also was into classical music like I was, and I'd hear things playing in her room that I'd never heard and wanted to find out about, but she rebuffed me at every turn.
If we were going out to dinner she'd just sulk the entire time and when we'd all gone to a movie she walked out saying it was stupid and she was going to wait in the lobby.
In two and a half weeks, the only nice thing I'd gotten out of her was a thumbs up while I was listening to Mussoursky's Pictures at an Exhibition. I'd tried to talk to her but she just ignored me and shut her door in my face.
"Allie? Do you have a few minutes?"
"Sure sweetie, what's up?"
Allie was a very friendly, open person, unlike her daughter.
"I'm not trying to be mean, but....Kristi...isn't the easiest person to get along with. Do you have any ideas on how I make things easier between us? I'm out of ideas."
"I wish I did, Therese. Leonard and I met when he got stuck in the motel I was working at because of a storm. He thought I was cute, and we fell for each other. At nineteen love can fix everything, at least that's what you tell yourself. We married despite his parent's objections, and settled into a nice house. Kristi was born almost ten months later.
However, we were already starting to have problems. His parents made no secret of the fact that they hated me because I was a poor girl who'd barely made it out of high school, while their boy was a Stanford graduate of excellent breeding. He'd be better off at a company function if he had a lady of class on his arm, not a former motel worker. If he had a wife that knew how to network, he'd go farther at work, if his wife had any connections of her own, she could help him, and so on. They made it as clear as they could that he'd be better off without me."
"But you're a good person, and who cares where you went to school?"
"They did, but then it all fell apart. I'd made the mistake of having a male friend while I was trying to take night classes. Nothing ever happened, but Leonard's mother had hired a detective and he made the pictures look really bad. Leonard went ballistic.
Two days later I was served with divorce papers and his mother hired the best of the best to ensure I was crushed. Of course Leonard made much more money than I could, his loving parents would help with the child, and she was better off than she would be with a lying cheating whore.
Not only did I lose custody of Kristi, I had no visitation rights. At all. Leonard made me an offer though, he'd give me five thousand dollars to go away. I wasn't going to be able to see my little girl, but he swore she would be well cared for. He'd make sure she had the best of everything, schools, clothing, you name it, she'd travel to Europe and the rest of the world, and would have all the opportunities I never had.
I've often wished I could go back to that moment so I could do it differently, but we can't go back, can we? Otherwise I would have fought tooth and nail for her."
"Why would they be so cruel?? Didn't they think of what might be best for Kristi?"
"They did. Money was the answer to everything with them. I got to see her three years later, my smiley faced baby girl was now a serious faced young lady of six. It broke my heart.
I'd taken her father's payoff and gone back to school, and I was in chriporactic college already. I was building something for myself. I saw her again three years later, and I swear she didn't smile once the whole time I was there.
I saw her three more times before she moved in with us, and at the last Leonard apologized, he realized that his parents had caused much of our troubles, but it was too late for us.
It was too late for Kristi and I as well. She didn't want anything to do with me. I could see she was having some emotional troubles, and it was clear her father was more or less ignoring her, but she didn't want me there.
Then her father needed to focus on his career, and Kristi would only foul things up, so I was given another chance to be a mother. She didn't want it, and despite her protestations, I think she realizes I care, and that her father wasn't the best parent, but it's going to take her a long time to adjust. I just hope I can do right by her this time."
Allie was almost in tears, but I hugged her and told her she'd do fine.
"Well, it was different with you, you were much easier to deal with."
"I consider myself a real handful."
"Not at all, you moved in and I was prepared for some resentment and the obligatory 'you're not my mother' stuff, but I already liked you, and you adjusted pretty quickly. Your mother had one set of rules, we had another. You just went by whatever the rules of the house you were in were. I'd pretty much believed my maternal instincts were gone, but you woke them up all right. Almost to the point of your father and I considering....a little brother or sister for you."
"No way."
"Way. We'd been talking about it and thought that we might go for next year."
"Have you given up?"
"Yes, Kristi's here, and I'm never going to quit on her again, ever."
"I won't either. I promise."
"No matter how long it takes?"
"No matter how long it takes."
I had to try something, and new clothes for school were on my agenda. Dad made good money, but I was never spoiled. I'd gotten a car a few months after my 16th birthday, but it was three years old, and far from the fanciest model out there.
Dad had gotten a cash card for my school shopping and had only put four hundred dollars on it, once it was gone, it was back to my allowance of 35 dollars a week. He had thoughtfully gotten one for Kristi with the same amount, and was going to give her the same amount of allowance. No credit cards for me. Damn.
I had to do some chores around the house, but nothing too strenuous. Mom and Dad had been good about keeping me up to date as far as a cell phone and a top of the line iPod, plus I had a pretty sweet laptop that my aunt had gotten for me last year. If I went shopping with Mom or Allie, things like makeup, food or CD's and DVD's were picked up by them so the money was just to goof around with.
Kristi didn't seem impressed.
"My father used to give me two hundred dollars a week. Thirty five is nothing."
Oh, joy. She was going to be such fun to live with. At least I'd been able to talk her into going shopping with me. She was pretty reluctant, and I'd bailed on my friends to go with her, but I was pretty sure they'd understood.
"Do you want to hit Nordstroms first? Or we can head to Saks?"
"Fuck both of them. Have you got any place that's cool?"
"Hey, I love Nordy's, they have the best stuff, but what do you consider cool?" She did have her own style, wearing only dark colors and lots of black, but she wasn't a Goth. More like Stevie Nicks. With her coloring I'd wear a lot more dark stuff, but no such luck, pale skin, reddish blonde hair, and just a dash of freckles for me, my Celtic blood showed through pretty obviously.
"Here, I have no idea, do you have any place that sells vintage stuff?"
"Yeah, we do, it's on the other side of town, but they do have some unusual things." I made a lane change and a u-turn and off we went.
The Queen of the Past was the store, and for the first time, she smiled. She obviously knew vintage stuff pretty well as she headed straight to a rack of dresses that were all long. She picked out a dark maroon one with black trim and held it up to herself to look in the mirror. She let out a happy sigh.
'That looks great on you!"
"Do you....really think so?" she seemed so unsure of herself.
"Yeah, it looks killer, makes you look a few years older, perhaps with a slightly wicked past that no one knows about."
She actually laughed at that. She then looked at the price tag, it was 495.00. Yikes! Vintage was not cheap.
I looked over and there was another rack of similarly styled dresses, but the sign said 79.99 to 139.99.
"Uh, those ones over there seem to be a bit cheaper."
She smiled and said, "That's because those are reproductions. Made in the last six months, with inferior stitching, poor materials, and they'll be junk in less than a year. This one's from 1906, and it's gorgeous."
Wow. She did know her stuff. She held it up so I could see closer and put her finger along one of the seams.
"Look at that, triple stitched, by hand, that's quality. It's not just a dress, it's a work of art."
She asked to try it on. The saleslady handed her a numbered key and pointed her towards the dressing rooms.
I poked around but the only thing I saw that I liked was a very 50's looking outfit that would look great when we had a sock hop in the fall. it was also only 59.00, if it fit and looked right, it was going to be mine, I got a key as well, and headed towards the dressing room.
Kristi was just coming out of the dressing room, and it looked flawless on her. It fit like a second skin, too. I could never get away with it. My b-cups weren't growing all that fast.
"Wow. You look....incredibly beautiful in that."...
