26
...I'll be your daddy, I will be the one who loves you 'til the end of time... Father Figure  (George Michael)

	Rose must have turned the lamp off after I fell asleep.  It was still dark when I woke.  Rubbing my eyes to try to loosen up my contact lenses, I was able to make out the clock on Marjorie's nightstand; blurry, but I could see the time was 2:17 AM.  As I floated further up toward the waking world, I became aware of Rose beside me; she was awake, covered up to her chest with the blanket, arms behind her head as she lay gazing up at the ceiling.
	"What's wrong, love?" I asked.  She turned to look at me in the darkness, and I felt the back of her hand gently stroking my cheek, then turning over to cup my face in her palm.
	"Jack, I know you love me, I know you do.  But sometimes I wonder if you ever feel guilty about it.  About us, I mean, about us making love.  I mean, you said you knew you loved me for a long time before we first made love.  I think I understand your reasons for not telling me, for not starting something earlier.  It's 'cause you were scared, right?  I mean, scared of the age difference, and scared that somebody might find out and then you'd have to go to jail, right?"
	"That's part of it," I admitted, not really wanting to have this conversation, but recognizing that it was important, that it was bothering her, and that I needed to let her explore the subject.  "But another part of it is because I was confused about how I felt.  Not only because the world at large keeps telling me how wrong it is to want to have sex with someone so young, but also because you were so much more than my friend.  I was confused because I felt so protective of you, protective and maybe a little possessive.  I guess I felt toward you the way I might feel toward my daughter, if I had one.  I felt like a father, or how I suppose a father is supposed to feel.  I just wanted to shelter you, to keep you safe.  A father is supposed to protect his daughter from all the bad things in the world, even those bad things that are in the father's heart.  I knew I never wanted to hurt you, and I just couldn't shake the feeling that making love to you would be a bad thing, because it meant I would be taking advantage of you, it meant that I would be using you for my own pleasure before you were old enough to understand exactly what that meant."
	"But you don't feel that way now, do you, Jack?" her anxious voice floated out of the darkness.  "You know I'm old enough now to make that choice for myself, don't you?"
	"Rose, my beloved, yes, I do trust you.  You're smart enough to know what's best for you, and you're smart enough to know what's best for me, too.  When it comes to us, I trust your instincts completely.  It's the world around us that I don't trust.  I don't think any amount of argument or reason would sway the police or the courts."  Rose's hand slipped from my face down to my chest.  She began to stroke and play with my nipples, and I was mildly surprised to discover how delicious this felt, how arousing and relaxing it was.  "And as worried as I am about them, about the police, I mean, I'm even more afraid of Marjorie finding out.  She trusts me completely, trusts me to take care of you, to treat you right."
	"But you DO take care of me, Jack, you take such wonderful care of me!"
	I couldn't help but give a mournful laugh at that.  "She might agree with you, love, as far as that goes, but I don't think her definition would stretch to include a romantic, physical, sexual relationship.  And even if it did, even if the law would allow us to be together, and Marjorie would somehow understand, I'd still be afraid of the implications.  Well, not afraid, really, more like weirded out."
	"Weirded out?  What do you mean?"
	"Well, think about it, sweetheart.  Do you love me enough to marry me?"
	"Of course I do, Jack, you know I do.  I've spent whole days just dreaming about being married to you."
	"Well, I have too.  I've thought a lot about it.  So, say we did get married.  That would make Marjorie my mother-in-law.  She's 38, isn't she?"  I laid my hand on the side of Rose's face, and felt her nodding slowly.  "My mother-in-law would be younger than me.  I'm still sruggling to wrap my head around that one, babe."  I let my hand wander down to her neck and shoulders, lazily rubbing and stroking, and together, we turned on our sides to face each other so we could stroke and play a little easier.  "The alternative to marrying you is someplace that I don't think I could go.  I mean, I've thought about marrying your mom so I could always be close to you, but what kind of a lie would that be?  Plus then, I'd be your father for real, and that means that every time I touched you in a romantic way, it might feel like incest."
	Rose was quiet for a long time after this, just slowly rubbing my chest and neck, absently stroking my face.  Then, "You've thought about marrying me?  For real?"
	"Yes, I have.  I've looked as far into the future as I can, and I just can't see myself being without you.  It's selfish of me to feel that way, selfishness on a level I never dreamed I would be capable of, but there it is."
	"Selfish?  What do you mean?  If we make each other happy, then how..."
	"Think about our ages, love.  When you're 18, I'll be 45.  When you're 23, I'll be 50.  And worst of all, when you're 33, when you won't have even started middle age yet, I'll be 60.  There's so much in life for you to discover, for you to know about, and I'm just scared I'll be an anchor, a weight that you won't be able to shake."
	"Jack, stop, don't talk like that.  You've given me so much, it makes my heart blow up like a balloon, like I can't contain all the wonderful things I get from you.  You've taught me so much, Jack, SO much, about music and movies and philosophy, about my body and yours, about love, yes Jack, especially love.  You taught me what it means to love so completely.  And don't even get me started on orgasms.  Remember when you told me that orgasms are one sure way we know how much God loves us?  And you were there for me, to make sure my orgasm is everything it's supposed to be.  When life gets hard, you're always there for me.  Always.  You saved me, you pulled me out of the lonely Hell I was in and showed me a whole world I never knew existed.  I'm in over my head, Jack, and that's a wonderful thing, because I have you there to keep me from drowning."
	Now it was my turn to be quiet for a long time.  Eventually, I told her, "You've taught me as much as I've taught you.  Maybe more.  You freed my frozen heart.  You're the woman who looked at me and saw me as I really am and said, yes, this will do."  I reached over and kissed her, a long slow joining of the lips that let us share each other's breath, and I marvelled anew at the miracle of how this wonderful young beauty was mine, and of how much she wanted me.
	At length, we pulled apart.  Rose draped her arm over me, pulled me close, and whispered, "I have two things to tell you.  First is, I love you forever and ever.  And second is, Jack, it's kinda starting to smell bad in here."  This total non sequitir took me so completely by surprise that I started giggling, rapidly running up through complete hilarity, to be joined by Rose, who hugged me tight to her so we could feel each other's laughter.
	"You know what we should do?" I asked after I had recovered enough of my breath to speak, "we should strip the sheets off the bed and wash them, and while we're waiting for that, we should go for a naked swim."  Rose's sudden intake of breath told me how much she liked that idea.
	"Really?  You don't think we'd get caught?" she queried.  "Cause that sounds like a great idea."
	"Totally," I told her, "it's the dead of the night, absolutely nobody will be around."
	We got up and dressed, and I pulled the sheets off while Rose appropriated the pillowcases.  Carrying our bundles, we slipped out into the cool evening and quietly made our way to the clubhouse.  Rose followed me into the laundry room, and we stuffed everything into the biggest washer and started it.  I took her by the hand and led her into the men's locker room, into the shower area, and in utter darkness and hot spray, we soaped each other's bodies and got ourselves all cleaned up.  Then we made our way out to the chlorine-smelling pool area, where I had left the underwater floods turned off.  The only light came from the moon and stars above; it was dark enough that we could barely make out each other's silhouettes as we dropped our clothes on the floor, then slipped into the warm water.  We splashed around, slowly moving here and there in the shallow end, but we came together every few minutes for some tender stroking, and every other time we did so, I slipped my hardness into her, taking care not to stroke or thrust, to ensure that I didn't accidentally let loose a load inside her.
	By the time we finished and pulled our clothes on, it was almost 4 AM.  I put the bedding in one of the driers, and we settled down in the common room, in front of the TV, to watch a Mexican vampire movie that turned out to be a great sleeping aid.
	It was after 8 AM when I woke to find morning sunshine lighting up the room and Rose curled up with my arm around her, snoring softly and chuckling gently in her sleep every now and then.  She woke when I got up to use the bathroom, and after she went also, we retrieved the bedding and took it back to her apartment.  While I made the bed, Rose scrambled some eggs and tossed some precooked bacon in the microwave.  It was a simple breakfast, but one of the best meals I'd had in a long time.
	After breakfast, Rose announced she wanted to stay in bed all day, making love while listening to music.  When she showed me the mix tapes she had created for this purpose, I realized she had been thinking about it for some time.  Another first from her, another thing I had never done before.  Iris and I had made love while the radio played, but that was just random music, nothing chosen especially for lovemaking; and when I did it with Lilly, it never occurred to me that we should play music.  Rose, on the other hand, had put quite a bit of thought into it.  She had dug through my collection of CDs and tapes, pointing out with vast amusement that more than half of her selections came from tapes I had labeled as "guilty pleasures".  There was Donna Summer, Earth Wind and Fire, Herb Alpert, Gary Wright, Nat King Cole, whole albums by Sade, and I don't remember how many more.  She had done a masterful job, and if the day before had been beautiful, then that day (that I will forever think of as Sunday In Bed) was nothing short of exquisite.  We used up all the condoms, and by the time I had my fifth orgasm (and Rose, probably her twentieth), evening shadows were filling the room, and we were both starving.
	"Oh my God," I muttered when I looked at the clock, "it's after 7 PM.  Rose, do you realize we've been at this for the entire day?"  She smiled dreamily and nodded.
	"I know," she said, "wasn't it perfect?"  I had to agree.
	The rest of the evening slipped by before we knew it.  We ordered a pizza with double pepperoni and double cheese, and before it was delivered, Marjorie had checked in with us from the hotel, to make sure we hadn't forgotten the next day was a school day and to remind us that Rose shouldn't stay up too late.  Grateful for the reminder, Rose and I got her books and schoolwork gathered together, bundled up, and ready to go on the kitchen table.  We snuggled together on the couch, eating pizza and watching the Errol Flynn "Adventures of Robin Hood" on TV.  Dessert was a bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce that we shared, feeding each other, smearing each other's faces with the sticky stuff and laughing at own idiocy.  By the time we were done, it was almost 10 PM.  While Rose set the alarm for 6:30 AM, I stripped the sex-soaked sheets from the mattress and made the bed fresh with a spare set from the linen closet.  Naked, we crawled in and doused the light, and with our arms around each other and our hearts pressed together, we were soon dead to the world.