Kyrie 420

Kyrie

A long sigh escapes me as I sit at the island counter trying to concentrate on my math homework. Just a few more problems and I can tuck my schoolwork away for the night. Easy, if I could focus. Tapping my pencil against the paper, I remind myself I still have more than four months before graduation, so I need to put in some effort to get through senior year. The later it gets, though, the more my focus slips.

The front door opens and closes quickly. I glance at the time above the stove—seven o’clock. Right on schedule. Owen, my seanathair, walks into the kitchen, breezing past me, the warm smell of oak and leather wafting off him. I started thinking of him by his name rather than his title when I was fifteen and moved in with him. When things changed so permanently for us.

“Hey, Princess.” The words are short and sharp, like every day. Dropping his keys on the counter, he reaches into the cabinet for a glass, fills it with water from the tap, then stares at me as he drinks it. His deep-green eyes hold me in place, consuming me on the spot. I want to look at all of him so I can admire the way his suit hugs his shoulders and how the open top buttons reveal his muscular chest lined with silver chest hair. I can’t, though, because that’s inappropriate. Instead, I leave my gaze locked with his, unable to move when he looks at me like that. Partly because he stares at me like he’ll punish me if I look away, a silent command to give him all my attention at this moment. The other part because this is the only time he looks at me, during our daily routine. Me and my schoolwork, Seanathair coming home at seven, the glass of water, the stare off. Every day we do this. It’s the only time he ever really looks at me, and I cherish it with every fiber of my being.

We used to be so close. Thicker than thieves. Seanathair, my paternal grandfather, traveled here with my mhamo from Ireland when I was a newborn. When I was two, Mhamo got very sick and passed away. Mom said Seanathair was lonely after that, so he spent a lot of time at our house during his grieving process. I was none the wiser to his pain because I enjoyed having him around all the time. He was my best friend, my confidant, my partner in crime. He spoiled me, loved me, played with me. Not that my own parents or anyone else wouldn’t do those things for me, Seanathair was just… more. He was my everything, and I was his princess. We didn’t even grow apart as I hit puberty like most girls might, our relationship just evolved with the times.

Then one day when I was fourteen, things changed. Seanathair barely looked at me, we didn’t do things together anymore, and eventually, he rarely came over. It hurt so much, more than I could put into words. I wondered if I’d done something wrong. Mom said it wasn’t my fault, that Seanathair was going through something, but she didn’t seem to know what it was. Didn’t matter, her reassurance did nothing for me when the man who meant more to me than my own father ignored my very existence.

Then when I was fifteen, the accident happened. The night of my parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, a drunk driver hit them head-on. When the police came to my home to tell me, it gave me a sick satisfaction under the crippling grief that their killer didn’t survive. I was too numb to take in anything that happened over those next few days. Everything, to this day, is a blur. I can’t even remember social services telling me that Seanathair was the only relative left to take me.

The first clear memory I have after the police gave me the news is the funeral. That day was the most affection Seanathair had shown me since our relationship changed, but then he went right back to the cold shoulder the day after. It got worse after I came to live with him. We were strangers living in the same house. Three years this hollow chasm between us has been keeping me in the dark. So I soak up every second of this daily ritual when his attention is solely on me. Like I can find the light again .

I swallow hard against my dry throat, wishing I knew what he’s thinking. In this daily moment, there is so much I can see he’s trying to say but refuses to speak aloud. He finishes his water, licking the moisture away from his lips as he lowers the glass into the sink, all the while never blinking as he stares at me. Then he walks past me again, heading upstairs.

I release a heavy breath and try to go back to my math homework, but the closer I get to graduation and moving out, the harder it is for me to focus on anything that isn’t Owen Walsh. Sure, I’ll be out of a house that feels empty, where I’m not wanted, but ultimately, I’ll miss him. Fuck, I already miss him. And if I let things keep going as they are until I leave, will I ever actually see him again?

The thought makes me sick. I don’t want to believe he’ll abandon me once I’m out of his hair, but his behavior gives me no hope.

A few minutes later, he comes back down, breezing past me again, and his smell envelopes me in the process. He looks so good, like every night. Jeans, a dark-green T-shirt to match his eyes, and a leather jacket. He doesn’t need to style his short gray hair, and his thick gray beard is tamed as always. It’s amazing how he can go from a formal businessman to a rough heathen who looks ready to rip your clothes away at any moment.

I press my thighs together as an embarrassed blush creeps into my cheeks. I’m not blind. Owen might be my fifty-nine-year-old guardian, but the man is hot. Like drool-on-the-floor, GILF hot. His nearly full gray beard is the only real indicator of his age. He keeps his body in shape, and he can keep up with the twenty-year-olds at the gym. All my friends confirm his fuckable status, but it’s one thing to know something as an observation versus knowing it because you feel it.

That’s my dirty secret, though. The fantasies I have entertained that Owen has starred in will go to the grave with me. I’ve always attributed my extreme reactions and thoughts about him to my desperate need to be acknowledged by him. Why else would I have borderline inappropriate thoughts about the man who essentially raised me?

Daddy issues, table for one!

I could blame it on my parents dying. Tell myself he was just too grief stricken to connect with me, and my reaction is feeding some weird shit into my brain to compensate. I know better, though, and he treated me like this beforehand .

He makes his way to the counter, his heavy boots thudding on the floor as he grabs his keys and turns back to the door. When I turned seventeen and he was positive I was okay by myself and no longer grieving, he started going out at night. At first, it was a few nights a week. Now, it’s damn near every night. I don’t know where he goes when he leaves, I just know he apparently would rather be away from me. I try not to let that cleave my heart in two.

“Don’t wait up for me, Princess,” he says as he exits the kitchen.

I mumble a “Bye, Seanathair” but put little effort into it; he won’t acknowledge it anyway. The words are barely all the way out before the front door closes.

Then he’s gone.