6. Grant
GRANT
Becca picks up on the second ring.
"Dad." Her voice is warm, slightly distracted—she's abroad, seven hours ahead, probably finishing lunch. "I was going to call you tonight. Maya's been radio silent, is she okay?"
"Maya is fine," I say. "I need to tell you something."
The distraction drops. "Okay."
I've run this conversation several ways in my head since Sunday morning. Not scripting—I don't script, it produces the wrong result. But sequencing. What she needs to know before she draws a conclusion. What she's entitled to feel.
"Maya's heat presented Friday evening," I say. "She was here for her check-in. She's safe. She's back at the apartment now."
Silence.
"Dad." Very careful. "Who helped her through her heat."
"I did."
More silence. Long enough that I check the call is still connected.
"You," Becca says. "You helped Maya through her heat."
"Yes."
"Because you're her—" She stops. "Tell me this isn't what I think it is."
"I'm not going to lie to you."
"Dad."
"I know." I let her have that. "The check-ins were not entirely impersonal for me. That's been true for some weeks. I managed it appropriately until Friday, when Maya's heat presented and she asked me to help and I said yes."
"She asked you."
"Yes."
"She chose this."
"She chose this. Clearly, without biological coercion—she was in pre-heat, not full heat, when we talked. She made the decision before the heat hit full onset." I pause. "That matters to me. That she chose."
Another long silence. I hear her moving—she's found somewhere private.
"Tell me what you want," she says. "From this. From her."
"I want to continue," I say. "I want her to be mine. I've wanted that since the first check-in and I've been patient about it for five weeks because it was the appropriate thing to be." I pause. "I'm done being appropriate."
Becca exhales. "She's my best friend."
"I know."
"She's twenty-two."
"Yes."
"You're forty-six."
"Yes."
"Dad." Her voice shifts—less controlled now, more Becca.
My daughter who approaches hard things the same way I do and who I am partly responsible for making that way.
"She has been—since I left she's been struggling.
I've been watching it over FaceTime and I couldn't help from here and I asked you to look after her because I trusted you and I?—"
"She's not struggling anymore," I say. "She's been eating, sleeping, following a routine, making real progress on her thesis. The check-ins worked." I pause. "The rest of it is separate."
"Is it?"
I'm quiet for a moment. "No," I say. "Not entirely."
"The rules." Her voice is flat. "Did you give her rules?"
"Yes."
"What rules?"
"Breakfast. Sleep. Water before coffee. Noon lunch. Texting when she got home." A pause. "Rules about behavior in other contexts, later."
"I don't want to know about the other contexts."
"Agreed."
"Dad." A long breath. "Did she follow them?"
"Every one. Without being reminded, in between check-ins, when there was no one to verify compliance.
She followed them because they helped." I hold the phone.
"That's what I am to her. Someone who builds structure that helps.
She's been carrying everything alone—running on willpower and no support—and what I gave her was—structure. Something to hold onto."
"You gave her rules," Becca says, "and she followed them because someone was finally paying attention."
"Yes."
A pause. Longer than the others. I hear her sit down somewhere.
"You didn't just look after her," Becca says. Very quiet. "You fell for her."
I don't answer.
"Dad." Her voice has a strange quality—not quite appalled, not quite something warmer. Working toward something. "You actually fell for her. That's—you haven't—" She stops. Starts again. "How long have you been carrying that?"
"Since the first check-in," I say. "I managed it. Until I couldn't."
"Of course you managed it." Another exhale. "Of course."
Silence.
"She matters to me," Becca says. "She's been my best friend for two years and she matters to me and if this—if you hurt her, Dad, I need you to understand that I will?—"
"I know," I say. "I'm not going to hurt her. I intend to take care of her for a very long time."
"A very long—" She stops. "How long are we talking?"
"I told her the rules aren't going anywhere. I meant it."
"You're going to give her a rulebook for life."
"I'm going to give her structure that works. Which is the same thing."
A pause. Then: "She's going to need her own space in it. Her thesis, her research, her work. She can't disappear into your orbit."
"She won't. She pushes back." I say it with something I don't usually let into my voice when talking to anyone, which is affection. "She always will."
Becca is quiet for a moment.
"Does she make you happy," she says. "Real question. No VC phrasing."
I look out at the city through the glass. The afternoon light on it. The penthouse quiet in a way it hasn't been for three days.
"More than I know how to measure," I say.
A long pause.
"Okay." Her voice is not fully warm yet. Still figuring. "Okay. I'm not saying I'm okay with this—I need time, I need to talk to her myself. But okay." A breath. "Don't let her think I'm angry at her. She's going to spiral about me."
"She already is."
"Tell her—" She stops. "No, I'll tell her myself. I'm calling her in a minute." A pause. "Dad. You know what the weird part is?"
"Tell me."
"She looked better over FaceTime these last three weeks than she's looked in months. I thought it was the check-ins working. And it was. It just wasn't only the check-ins."
"No," I say. "It wasn't only the check-ins."
"Right." A beat. "I love you."
"I love you."
"Call me Tuesday." The line shifts—she's moving again. "And tell Maya to answer her phone. I'm calling her now."
The line goes quiet.
I set my phone on the counter. I make coffee I don't need and stand at the kitchen window and think about Maya on the subway right now with her coat on and her thesis notebook in her bag and her phone about to buzz with Becca's name on it.
Twenty minutes later I text her: Becca is calling you. She loves you. Give her time.
Three minutes pass. Then: she just called. we're on the phone right now. are you psychic.
I prepared.
of course you did. Then: grant.
Mm.
she said you sounded happy when she asked. A pause. she said "more than I know how to measure."
I look at the text.
Yes, I type.
A longer pause.
okay, she sends. two days. i'm thinking.
Take your time. Then: Eat dinner, Maya. That's the rule.
The reply takes four minutes. I count them.
eating dinner. home safe. night.
Three words she's sent every night for three weeks, now carrying a weight they didn't have before.
I pour out the coffee and go to bed and lie in the dark and think about how many rules I need to add.
I have a long list.
The bed still smells like her. Three days of her in it, on the sheets, against the pillow my hand is currently under, and the fact that she hasn't been here for forty-eight hours hasn't done much to disperse it.
The penthouse smells like her. The bathroom.
The towel I used this morning. The shirt of mine she slept in for an hour on Sunday morning before she left and which is still hanging in my closet because I haven't decided to wash it.
I am not going to wash it.
I lie in the dark and think about what I know now—and it is not the kind of thing I would have let myself know five weeks ago.
The shape of her in my hands. The sound she makes when I'm fully seated.
The exact pressure her clit needs from my tongue to bring her to the edge a fourth time.
The way she clenches around my knot deliberately when she wants me to come again.
Five years of careful celibacy after Elaine and a quiet, well-managed life, and a twenty-two-year-old grad student in a secondhand coat presented at one of my Friday check-ins and the careful celibacy went the way of every other discipline I have ever maintained around her, which is to say it stopped being maintainable.
My cock is hard against my thigh. Has been since I started thinking. Will be until I sleep, which I am going to have to do at some point.
I roll onto my back and watch the ceiling and remind myself that she is in her apartment thinking. That she has rules. That she is following them. That the structure I gave her is holding her in place while she works it out. The structure is what the rules are for.
She'll come back. Not because I'm pulling her. Because she'll know.
I close my eyes.
I add another rule to the list, mentally. Tell her, when she comes back, exactly what I learned in three days and what I intend to do with it.
I sleep eventually. Not for very long.
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