Page 52 of Rough

“I don’t stink.”

“You smell different.”

“Well, it ain’t a stink. I showered this morning. More than I can probably say for you.”

“Are you wearing perfume?”

“God damn it, Pop. Get off me.”

“You smell like a turd that’s been rolled in tulips.”

Tegan came out of the bathroom with a towel, and stepped between us. “Excuse me. This will just take a few minutes. They’re getting long.”

He shifted his eyes from me to her.

She placed the towel in his lap, then pulled a pair of fingernail clippers from her pocket. As she carefully steadied each of his fingers in one hand, she methodically clipped the nails with her other. I watched as she performed the task, making note of how gentle she was during the process.

I recalled my mother clipping my fingernails as a child, and how much I hated it.

In a few moments, she had finished. As she gathered up the towel, she met my gaze and grinned.

I smiled in return, then looked ahead.

As she walked away, I stared at her ass out of the corner of my eye.

My father raised his right hand, looked at his nails, and nodded a few times. “She does good work.”

Tegan walked past. Preoccupied with watching her walk to the kitchen, I didn’t comment. The sound of water running in the kitchen let me know it’d be a minute before she returned. I shifted my eyes to my father.

He cleared his throat. “Your mother will be home soon, so I’ll say this now. Save you a little embarrassment.”

“What now?”

He glanced over his left shoulder, and upon satisfying himself that we were alone, looked at me. “You do one thing, and I mean only one, to hurt that girl emotionally, physically, or spiritually, I’ll get up out of this chair and kick your ass up between your shoulder blades. You’ll have to take off your shirt to take a god damned shit. Is that understood?”

“God damn, Pop. I was just--”

His lips went thin, and he inhaled a long breath through his nose. With his eyes still locked on mine, he exhaled without opening his mouth.

“Is that understood?” he growled.

The tone of his voice was one that I was familiar with, and although I hadn’t heard it since college, I knew all too well what it meant. Anything contrary to his wishes would lead to him being seriously disappointed in me.

I couldn’t believe I was 32 years old, and he could still put the fear of God in me without touching me.

“Say it.” He glared at me and waited.

I looked away. “I won’t.”

“Don’t talk to me in the same tone you take with your little biker buddies, Son. I don’t like it, and you know it. Now, look at me when you answer me, and tell me you won’t do those things before she comes back in here. I’ll embarrass the absolute shit out of you, and don’t think for one fucking instant that I won’t.”

I took a deep breath and looked at him. “I won’t hurt her.”

“Ever,” he said. “I see the way you’re looking at her. And I see the way she’s looking at you. I don’t know what’s going on, but when you come in here smelling like a French whore on a Thursday afternoon, and then you’re staring at her ass, it leaves me to wonder.”

“I just stopped by--”

“To say hi.” He coughed out a laugh and shook his head. “You can tell your mother that shit when she gets here. She’s gullible enough to believe it.”