My Daughter's Friends: Brooke

"Not until Brooke admits it."

"I don't want to argue." Brooke's gentle voice cut in between them.

"We're not arguing," Sophia said. "I just want to know if you like him."

"Sophia!"

"What's not to like though, right Brooke?" Sophia said, almost as if she was angry. "Tousled hair, chiseled jaw, clean shaven. Come on, he's the definition of tall, dark and handsome!"

"That's enough!" Aubrey yelled.

I shivered. But it wasn't from the cold. Shamefully, I was enjoying their talk so much that when my pants fell to the carpet, they nearly caught on my shaft.

"And you should see him in his swim trunks!" the Blonde added.

"Sophia, stop!"

"So muscular!"

"That's it!" Aubrey pounded her fists on the counter. "If you're not going to listen to me, then we're not having the party here. And that's final!"

Part 5: Party?

Dressed in just boxers and socks with my belt in my hand and my pants at my ankles, I stood there, fighting back a chill, waiting for one of the girls to say something.

What party? I thought.

Over the last couple years Aubrey had hosted many little sleep overs and what not, but never had she used them for leverage. What made this one special?

"But..." Sophia broke the silence. "Really? Like, totally off? But we've been planning it for weeks."

"So?" Aubrey said back. "You can't keep your mouth shut. Besides, after what happened, I doubt Brooke wants it here anymore anyway."

It was Brooke's party? I furled my brow. That was a new one.

With a shiver, I then flicked my work pants over to the laundry basket and walked to the head of my bed where I sat down, sinking into the Tempurpedic mattress with the vent at my feet. It might've been chilly to let the air blow up my legs, but this was the best spot to hear them and I figured I needed the cold.

"Actually," Brooke spoke up a moment later. "I still want it here. At my house, my parents only let me have like two friends stay the night. You said we could get more over here."

"Way more," Sophia said. "Our record's like ten."

I chuckled. I remembered that night; it was two years ago during the Fourth of July weekend. What a circus.

"Sophia," Aubrey interrupted. "What makes you think if we did hold the party here, you'd still be invited?"

"What?" she stuttered. "But, I'm your best friend."

"So? How do I know you don't just like me for my dad?"

I cringed.

"I don't," Sophia said. "I was just kidding."

"Really?" Aubrey asked, her tone so sarcastic she reminded me of her mother.

"Yeah... I was just teasing."

"Were you really?"

"I swear."

In the next moment, the room got quiet. Probably because Aubrey narrowed her eyes. That usually shut everyone up.

"You promise you didn't mean it?"

"Yes, I promise. I was just kidding, Aubrey. Please."

Once more, the room got quiet. It seemed my daughter really wanted to make her friend suffer. Part of me cared too. I wanted to know about this party.

"Fine," Aubrey finally said. "You're still invited. But I don't want to hear any more about my dad, okay?"

"Okay," Sophia repeated.

"Good... Now, I'll ask tonight and I'll let you know tomorrow morning how many I can have over. Sound good?"

"Thanks Aubrey."

"Hold on." Brooke chimed in. "You haven't asked your dad yet? Isn't that a little short notice?"

"It'll be fine," Aubrey said. "I'll ask him after he goes to bed."

"Wait." Brooke paused. "Why then?"

"Cuz that's when her dad's a zombie," Sophia blurted out with a laugh.

Surprisingly, Aubrey laughed as well. That made me more confused than the comment. Weren't they just fighting? I supposed that was how teenage girls were though. Livid with each other one minute, giggle buddies the next.

"A zombie?" Brooke asked. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Aubrey said after she finished snickering. "Whenever I want something from my dad, I wake him up and ask him right after he goes to bed. That way, he's so tired he just kind of grumbles 'yes.' Like a zombie. Then I make him promise. If he doesn't remember in the morning, I just use my best puppy-dog eyes and say, 'but you promised.'"

That little sneak! I sat up and folded my arms.

"Last weekend," Sophia added. "I even tried it for myself. Well I was going to but I couldn't go through with it."

"Why not?" Brooke asked, her accent barely heard through the air conditioner's hum.

"Well," she started. "When I got to his room and cracked the door open, you know, just to peek inside, he was like, on his back and, um... Pitching this huge tent."

"Sophia!" Aubrey shouted. "That's what happened?"

My face flushed red. Yet the blood rushed to more than just my cheeks.

"I didn't see anything." Sophia snickered. "Other than the size."

"I can't believe you!"

"How big was it?" Brooke asked.

"Brooke!" Aubrey nearly screamed. "Not you too!"

"Holy shit," I said, now in tingles.

"Both of you stop," Aubrey demanded. "I mean it."

The girls kept laughing.

"I'm serious!" she yelled above them. "No more about my dad! Just because I suggested having the party here doesn't mean I won't cancel it. I don't care whose birthday it is."

I jarred forward. Birthday?

"I'm serious..."

Although my daughter continued to lecture her friends, once I heard birthday, I solely focused on trying to recall the rest of her friends' names. Sophia, Alexis, Katee and? Who were the others? Whose birthday could it have been? With Brooke, their entourage made six, or was it seven? Was I forgetting three girls?

While I tried to rack my brain, not long later, the answer I really cared about came to me. But it still took me a minute to comprehend. It was Brooke's party. It was Brooke's birthday. But that meant she wasn't even eighteen.

Everything kind of blurred after that. I felt sick. Yet despite the upset stomach and the ringing in my ears, I couldn't help but picture that Asian Goddess in her skimpy tank top, posed with her breasts pushed together.

I was a weak man.

Part 6: Zombie Dad

That night, I lied awake in bed, half to do this zombie dad thing lucid and the other half because I couldn't fathom how a seventeen year old could have such sexual magnitude. As I waited, I stared up at the shadowy ceiling and listened to the waterfall noise pour from my sleep machine.

Well, I listened to it until about 10:23. At that time, Aubrey came tiptoeing up the hallway.

"Hey dad?" she whispered, knocking twice then pushing open my door and casting a thin streak of the hallway's incandescence across the room.

"Yeah, Sweetie," I said. Then I flinched. Zombie dad probably didn't tack on endearments.

"Um..." She stopped in the doorframe, silhouetted in her night gown with her head down and her face hidden behind her long hair. "Do you remember Brooke?"

"Yes."

"Well, I know you really didn't get the chance to meet her but I was wondering... Since she transferred here in the middle of the school year, she didn't really make any friends and since we're all pretty much going to the U anyway, I was wondering, because her birthday's on Saturday, could we maybe have her party here on Friday and kind of celebrate graduation too? That way, I can introduce her to everyone before we go to college."

With a groan, I rolled away from her. I imagined Zombie dad would've acted like that. "How many girls?"

"Um... Seven."

I flinched again. But luckily, my back was to her.

"Is that too many?" she asked in the silence. "I could maybe make it six."

"No. Don't do that." I fidgeted. "Seven's fine."

"Really," she said blandly, almost as if she expected more. Which wasn't at all what I expected.

"Yeah. Seven's fine," I repeated.

"What about two more?"

My eyes popped open. I didn't know she had nine friends who were close enough to spend the night. Just a couple hours ago I had trouble coming up with more than five.

"Nine?" I asked seconds later.

"Is that too many?"

In reality, it wasn't. Like Sophia said, they had had more over in the past. But hell, I wasn't about to let her have what she wanted without some sort of hardship. "So, nine girls?"

"Yes."

"And what about boys?" I said, strangely a little sad that I had just rolled away from her. The blackout curtains were boring compared to how I waged she was fiddling her fingers. "Zero boys?"

She chuckled. "Yes, nine girls, zero boys. Does that mean I can have the party?"

Inhaling deep, I drew in the scent of the linens to let her sweat it out another couple moments. Obviously, I was going to let her have the party. After all, her intentions were good. "If you can promise me that, then yes. You can have your party."

"Really?" she said. This time excited. "I can have nine?"

"Yes... You can have nine."

"Thanks, daddy!" She squealed. "You're the best!"

I smiled. "I love you."

"I love you too!" she told me. Although before she got to the word 'too,' my door clicked shut.

Part 7: Mistakes with Ms. Chang

The next morning flew by. Like Aubrey had laid out her scheme to her friends, she reminded me about the party at breakfast and I played dumb. I enjoyed reliving our talk from the night before. She played her part well too. Those puppy-dog eyes were killer. Also, she seemed equally ecstatic the second time she got me to say yes.

Unlike my morning, work crawled. At lunch, because of what the girls said about me, I had the energy to hit the LA Fitness like a gym rat but once I returned, the owner of the firm called me and told me I had to fire the accountants I had just hired weeks earlier. That drained me. Since tax season ended last month, the company couldn't handle the extra employees and if we didn't find a whale to manage soon, more would have to be fired. Nevertheless, I did what I could and got out of there at 6:56. First one in, last one out and always the bad guy. Sometimes I hated being the boss.

When I pulled into my driveway that evening though, I had put it all behind me and found I couldn't keep my hands from tapping the steering wheel to some hip hop/pop mix on the radio. It was strange. Yesterday, I cringed at the sights, sounds and smells of spring. But today, I embraced them. However, all this excitement faded once I noticed Aubrey's Corolla parked in the driveway. Alone.

Sadly, as empty as the outside of the house was, the inside was emptier. I waged my daughter was down in her room but I couldn't hear anything. That wasn't a big surprise, the house had thick walls and she wasn't usually loud. No matter. With nothing else to do, I slipped off my shoes, climbed the steps to my room and changed into a T-shirt and sweats. Appropriate attire for an empty house. Or what I thought was an empty house.

That was my first mistake. It wasn't empty.

A half hour later, my stomach growled and I went back downstairs. There, I found the kitchen island cluttered with homework and the fridge door wide open with a slender hand on the handle but the rest of the girl hidden behind it.

"There you are," I said as I came off the last step. "How was your day today, Sweetie?"

That was my second mistake. It wasn't Aubrey behind the door.

With a yelp, Brooke shot back from the fridge, her thick, dark hair draped around her bare shoulders like a blanket. "Mr. Erickson?"

I froze, poised half way between the staircase and the kitchen.

"I was just getting a drink," she said.

From her toyish, bare feet, through her ballerina figure --now dressed in a more modest halter top and shorts-- to her breathtaking Asian features, she looked angelic, shocked, but angelic.

"It's fine," I whispered, trying not to stare at how her body drank in the setting sunlight. Luckily the fridge door split her height-wise and hid her front. Unluckily, I still had an eyeful of the snake-like curves from her lower back to her ass. "Please," I told her. "Make yourself at home, Ms.?"

"Chang," she answered.

"Right." I smiled. "Make yourself at home Ms. Chang."

Although there was still an uneasiness through the room, she smiled politely at what was the closest thing we had to an introduction thus far. Of course, an instant later, she darted back behind the fridge door.

To give her space thereafter, I decided to hang back and just kind of stand there on my phone while she fiddled through her choices. Because I liked to keep a stocked assortment of juices and sodas, I figured she could be a while.

It wasn't bad. Some seconds later, she emerged with a blue Powerade then circled back around the island and sat down at her work. As expected, the awkward silence followed. But still, I moseyed up to the fridge and poked my head in.

"So where are the rest of you?" I broke the quiet. Then I winced. There likely wasn't an awkward silence. I probably was the only one who was awkward. Why would she have been? She was busy doing homework. That was my third mistake.

"Sorry," I blurted. "I didn't mean to bother you."

"No, it's fine," she said. "Everyone's downstairs."

"Everyone?" I asked as I grabbed a Pink Lady from the fruit drawn.

"Sophia, Alexis and Katee."

"Wow," I said, stepping back from the fridge, shutting the door behind me and facing her. Stupidly, I then crunched into the apple and said the next thing with my mouth full. Fourth mistake. "Where're all your cars?"

"Excuse me?" She laughed a bit, her focus still on her book.

"Sorry." I swallowed the bite. "Where are all your cars?"

"We piled in Aubrey's."

"Really?" I shifted my weight to one foot. "Very conservationist of you."

"I guess." She laughed again.

That was my fifth mistake. A dumb joke. I might've even said it wrong.

Too red-faced to follow up something like that --besides, she didn't really leave it open--, I twisted around and began to sieve through the cupboards for something of more sustenance.

"So," I said a minute later, which nearly made me grimace again. Apparently, I couldn't resist filling the silence with chatter. Or maybe I couldn't resist talking to this Goddess. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

Before I continued, I spotted a lemon PowerBar on the top shelf, grabbed it and turned around. "Do you play any sports?"

"Excuse me?" she asked, her head still down.

I cleared my throat then leaned against the countertop. "I was just curious if you're in anything. Like basketball?"

Basketball? That might've been a stupid guess but basketball was the only sport I could think of that none of Aubrey's friends were good at. I couldn't see her playing but she was tall enough to maybe be point guard.

"No," she answered with a chuckle. "I don't really like basketball."

"I see." I peeled the wrapper off the bar then took a bite, chewed and swallowed. "I ask because I don't know if you've noticed this, but this little entourage you're a part of with my daughter is pretty exclusive."

"Oh yeah?" she asked, still with her eyes on her work.

"Yeah... I don't mean for that to sound like you should feel honored or anything. Because, trust me, I'm sure they're honored to have you." Damn, the more I spoke the more I hated how I sounded. "But, it just seems like every one of Aubrey's friends is really good at something. I mean, look at the girls who are over now. Sophia's amazing at Volleyball. Alexis is a phenomenal swimmer. And Katee's our soccer star."

"Oh." She finally looked up at me, batting her mascara-swept lashes. "I guess I never thought about it. But if that is the case, in the fall I cheerlead and in the spring I'm on the dance team."

"Really?" I took another bite of my bar. "I bet you're really good at both."

"I don't know about that. My true passion was gymnastics though."

"Was?" I cocked my head. "Did the school not have it? Or, did you get hurt?"

"No," she said. "I just kind of grew too old for it." She looked back down at her notebook and hid in her hair again.

"Too old?" I laughed a bit. Like an idiot. Somehow being around this girl turned me into a complete tool. "How old are you?"

"Old enough I guess."

Then it hit me. And my stomach curdled. Old didn't mean old. Old meant womanly! How it even took me that long to read between the lines was beyond me. One look at her and I should've known she was too curvy for gymnastics. That was my sixth mistake.

"Sorry," I mumbled.

"It's fine." She shrugged it off. "But hey, do you know related rates? I've been stuck for a while and it's the only thing I don't get from this semester. Aubrey said I could go to you if I had any questions."

Really, I almost said aloud, surprised my daughter would say anything like that. She usually didn't like giving me any more work, even if it was just helping her or her friends. Not that I minded. "Yeah, I'd love to help," I said. "What do you need?"

Before she could answer, I popped off the counter and started around the island. Not so much as a blink later, I was posted up on her left so close my shirt nuzzled her shoulder. For a moment, I thought to retreat. And I really should have. But then my senses sort of awakened to her. At this distance, Brooke was heavenly. It was as if her shallow breath was a song, her body's warmth a comforter and her aroma, a mixture of kiwi conditioner and lily perfume, a shot of scotch.

"So, it's problem 15 here," she said, flipping her hair to her other side and gifting me a bird's eye view of her cheekbones. "A right-triangular tank is being filled at a rate of..."

While she read the problem, I couldn't help but indulge myself with another breath of her intoxicating fragrance. Unbelievably, even her accent was sexy.

"So yeah," she said when she finished the paragraph. "I think I can do it. But I just don't know where to start."

"I see," I mumbled as I rubbed my eyes and leaned in further. "Well first off, don't feel bad. These are usually really tough for people. Second off, let's just start at the beginning. Write down what you know, then write down what they asked for."

The next part passed ungracefully to say the least. I flubbed a few parts here and there but I blamed that on her. She kept looking up at me. Those damn brown eyes. In spite of all of this though, including what happened yesterday, over the ten minutes it took me to explain the process, I felt I did a decent job. It seemed like she got it by the end.

"Can I try the next one?" she asked when I finished the lesson. "And you check it when I'm done?"

"Sure." I smiled. That smile was more for me of course because now I got to hover over her for longer. "Remember, start with what you know then write down what they asked for."

Nodding, she leaned forward and began on number seventeen.

During the next minute or so, I watched her too. Well, I managed to keep my attention plastered to her elegant handwriting for the first half of the problem at least. But after she breezed through that, my eyes started to wander.

It was harmless at first. However, once my focus scanned her halter-top and her ever-so-ladylike crossed legs, it ventured to the small of her back where, because of how she was leaned forward, her top had crept up a couple vertebra, revealing the hem of her jean shorts. As mild as that should've been, those jean shorts were frilled out just enough to expose the strap of her pink G-string.

I shuddered.

"Did I get it?" she interrupted.

Immediately, I jerked my eyes back to her notebook. "Let me check," I stuttered. At that point, I gave myself two moments. The first was for me: inhale, exhale, rub my eyes, repeat; the second was for her: check the set up, check the derivatives, check the algebra, repeat. It took me thirty seconds. "Great job."

"Really? I got it?"

"Yes you did, nicely done."

"Thanks, Mr. Erickson." As if to give me a hug, she then swiveled out from the counter, letting her hand slip off the island and starting what I could only consider as a chain reaction. One of which led to pandemonium.