Lexi, aka Alexa

Lexi was ten years old when I married her mother Marilyn. I'd been coaching Lexi's girls' soccer team for two years. Frank Drake, one of the partners at the engineering firm where I worked, maneuvered me into coaching. Frank took me out to lunch one day and told me his daughter had just joined a team in the local girls' league.

"The only thing is," Frank said as we ate, "it's a new team, and they could really use a coach, especially someone with competitive experience."

I went through college on a soccer scholarship at the University of North Carolina; my competitive career ended when I tore an ACL during my senior season. After skillfully luring me into the trap, Frank closed it mercilessly.

"You've done a lot of good work since you've been with us, David," he said with a big smile. "We don't just decide partnerships based on your work product, though. There's the amount of business you're able to cultivate, of course, and we want men and women who are truly committed to the community, people we know are with us for the long haul. You understand what I mean, don't you, David?"

I didn't need to have an anvil dropped on my head to get his point.

Lexi was a standout from day one. She was a head taller than the rest of the girls on the team and she flew around the field, her fiery red pigtails streaming behind her. Beyond her natural ability, she never had to have any instruction explained more than once. I even noticed her demonstrating the moves I'd just shown to the other girls playing her position. Some days, she convinced me to stay after practice and show her moves I hadn't shown the other girls. She was an excellent learner, soaking up everything I taught her like a sponge.

Each time we worked together after practice, I'd see Lexi's mother, Marilyn Miller, waiting patiently by her silver station wagon, usually talking on or poring over her cell phone. One day, after we finished working out, I walked Lexi over to the car and introduced myself. Marilyn was a very attractive woman, in her mid-thirties with shoulder-length auburn hair and beautiful green eyes. Marilyn and I began having friendly conversations after every practice. As our first season was drawing to a close, I walked Lexi over to her mother's car after practice one evening.

"My mom wants to have dinner with you," she said, out of nowhere.

"Pardon me?" I said.

"We talk about you, sometimes," Lexi continued as if I hadn't spoken. "She likes you. She thinks you're cute. I do too. Don't you think my mom's cute?"

"She's very cute, I mean attractive," I said, disconcerted by the eight year old's directness.

"Are you dating anybody?" she asked.

"Well, no," I said. Truthfully, I'd focused so much on work since I started with my firm I hadn't looked very much at women. I'd hang out in bars with co-workers after work once in a while, but I never enjoyed the idea of picking someone up in a bar. I refused to consider dating a co-worker; my parents divorced when I was twelve after my father had affairs with two of his co-workers. Outside the office, I spent much of my time surrounded by eight to ten year old girls. I had been the subject of some mild flirtations from some of the team moms, both the single and married ones, but I never felt like pursuing the opportunities that presented themselves.

Interestingly, Marilyn was never one of the flirtatious ones. Our relationship to that point was friendly, but she never hinted that she might be interested in anything more than a casual friendship. I'd heard from one of the other mothers that Marilyn was an up-and-coming real estate agent in town, so I figured that she, like I, spent a lot of her time working. After my conversation with Lexi, I approached Marilyn while Lexi stowed her gear in the back of the station wagon.

"I think your daughter is trying to set us up," I said with a smile. Her cheeks actually flushed red.

"She worships you a little," she said with the hint of a smile. "You walk on water, as far as she's concerned. I think she's been feeling the lack of a father figure more and more recently."

"I'd noticed that I haven't seen her father out here, but I didn't feel like it was my place to ask you about it."

"Jim passed away five years ago, when Lexi was three. He was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect when he was in high school. His heart failed while he was out running one morning. She only has the vaguest memories of him, along with the home videos we made as she grew up."

"It's good she has those," I said, "even if they aren't a substitute for having her father there. What about you, Marilyn? Are you still feeling the loss of your husband?"

"Of course," she said, looking past me toward the empty field. "I had to go build a career after Jim passed away. Between work and raising Lexi, I haven't had a lot of time to date. It would be nice having someone around to share things with."

"Would you like to have dinner with me after the last game of the season?" I asked, smiling at her.

"I'd like that very much," she said, smiling back.

I glanced at the front passenger seat of the station wagon and saw Lexi giving me a big "thumbs up" and a wide grin.

Marilyn and I dated for a year before I moved in with her and Lexi. Marilyn and I meshed so easily it felt as though we'd been friends for years. Though we dated a couple of months before we started having sex, we found ourselves very evenly matched there as well. Marilyn worked out three times a week, resulting in a lean, tight body with lots of endurance. I enjoyed Marilyn's aggressiveness in bed, while I knew enough about oral sex to make Marilyn a very happy woman.

I'd never given much thought to being a father, certainly not to becoming an instant father to a preteen girl. With Lexi, though, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. We were instantly best pals. I could do no wrong in her eyes and she had me wrapped around her little finger. I tried being firm with her, but she pretty much knew that if there was something she really wanted, I would eventually give in to her.

Marilyn and I expected a few heads to turn when we debuted as a couple, but we were surprised at how readily we were accepted. Marilyn practically cackled when she talked about how the other mothers in the league congratulated her on landing "the big one," and we both laughed when a few of the ladies wanted to know exactly how big a catch I was. My boss Frank came into my office a few weeks after I moved in with Marilyn and Lexi. He thanked me, telling me his daughter had a wonderful experience on the team; then he told me how happy he was that I'd so successfully "integrated" myself into the community and how favorably my being a "family man" would be looked upon when my partnership review happened, which he suspected wouldn't take very long.

At the wedding, Marilyn and I danced our first dance to Etta James' "At Last," and the guests roared their approval as I dipped Marilyn and kissed her at the end of the song. Then Lexi stepped up and the guests collectively "oohed" and "aahed" as we danced to "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera. Lexi wore a beautiful pale blue gown and was very excited to have her hair professionally styled for the first time. Lexi insisted on rehearsing the dance with me over and over, though I knew her natural grace would make it easy. Her brow furrowed in concentration through the first half of the song. Finally, she relaxed and looked up at me.

"Coach David," she said, addressing me the same way she had since the first day at practice, even after I moved in with her and her mother.

"What is it, Lexi?" I asked.

"Would it be OK with you if I called you Dad or Daddy from now on?"

"I think that would be great," I said. "Would it be all right with you if I called you sweetheart, just once in a while?"

Her mouth broke out in a smile that seemed to swallow her whole face and she hugged me tightly as the song drew to an end.

Just like that, we were a family. I decided not to adopt Lexi; I wanted her to continue to carry a piece of her birth father. Legally, it had little meaning as Marilyn changed her will to name me as Lexi's guardian and I wrote a will leaving my estate to Marilyn and Lexi. The next eight years rolled by. I earned the partnership at my firm two years after the wedding. All my co-workers were delighted whenever Lexi showed up at the office. She showed a genuine interest in my work and asked practically everyone astute, curious questions about their jobs. She enchanted the partners by expressing an interest in a career in engineering; she even worked in the office every summer during high school. She talked excitedly with me about becoming an engineer and, though I considered it to be a passing phase, I couldn't help but be proud and excited whenever she asked me about a project of mine and pressed me for details about each job.

Of course, just because we were happy didn't mean things were perfect. As her adolescence bloomed, Lexi's relationship with her mother seemed to slowly deteriorate. Marilyn's real estate business took off after our marriage. She became a local celebrity, appearing on local TV programs and on HGTV a few times. I couldn't drive around town without seeing her face plastered across bus benches all over. Her success unfortunately meant she was away from home a lot and Lexi didn't handle that very well. She complained a lot to me when I was driving her to and from school, games and practices and when Marilyn was at home, many of their conversations ended in shouting matches, punctuated by slamming doors.

I did my best to remain neutral in these battles, but more often than not, I interceded with Marilyn on Lexi's behalf. For the most part, Marilyn shrugged off the tension between herself and Lexi, saying that her relationship with her own mother had followed a similar path and things would even out when Lexi reached adulthood.

In the meanwhile, Lexi and I grew closer. I coached Lexi's soccer team until she entered high school, then I took on the role of her Number 1 fan. I traveled to most of the soccer team's away games, leading the cheers for Lexi and the other girls. I continued coaching my girls' team and Lexi became an unofficial assistant coach, sometimes helping to organize practices and teaching the girls many of the moves I'd taught her years before. The girls worshipped her, both for the success she'd achieved on the field and for the easygoing manner in which she worked with them.

Marilyn's work schedule also meant that I became the parent Lexi came to with many of the typical problems suffered by adolescent girls. I talked her through her first period and she sometimes sought my opinion when it came to her fashion choices. Boys were obviously the area of my greatest expertise and my biggest concern, since I was intimately familiar with what most teenage boys were thinking when they were around girls. My heart lurched when Lexi turned eighteen and asked me about birth control. She assured me that she wasn't sexually active, but she wanted to feel safe if she chose to become active. Uncomfortable as I was with the idea of Lexi having sex, I was proud of her for being proactive and responsible and happy that she trusted me enough to come to me and talk about it. For her part, Marilyn seemed happy to delegate responsibility in all these areas to me.

Of course, as Lexi grew up, there were noticeable changes in her physique. I watched as the lean, coltish young girl I met and grew to love matured into an extremely attractive young woman. Pictures of Marilyn at Lexi's age prepared me a little for the changes to come, but I was still taken aback by how beautiful she was growing up to be. By the time she turned eighteen, Lexi had grown to five feet eight inches, just four inches below me. The lanky body of her childhood developed womanly curves, with perky breasts a little larger than cantaloupes. Playing three sports a year meant her arms and legs remained wiry and strong and her butt was firm and tight.

The fiery red hair of Lexi's youth softened to copper, a few shades brighter than her mother's. On her seventeenth birthday, Lexi asked me to take her to a local stylist, who lopped off most of the hair, leaving Lexi with an adorable pixie cut, spiky on top with soft wisps of hair around her ears. Lexi squealed with delight and gave me a bear hug when I gave her a thumbs-up.

Lexi made it hard for me to ignore the changes happening to her body. After she turned eighteen, she began traipsing around the house in tight shorts that accentuated her firm butt, cropped t-shirts that showed off her flat belly and hugged her perky breasts or tank tops, which she often wore without a bra, giving me a generous look at what I came to learn the internet called "side boob." She thought nothing of sometimes coming into my home office wearing nothing but a bra and panties, at which point I drew the line, telling her to cover up. After the wedding we moved into a larger house, with extra bedrooms that Marilyn and I converted to home offices and an in-ground pool. The pool made Lexi a popular girl; we hosted several well attended parties each year, and her best friends Jennifer and Ava were regulars at the house. Jennifer and Ava were both on Lexi's soccer team when I stated coaching; Ava, in fact, was my partner Frank's daughter, the reason I started coaching in the first place, while Jennifer's father Bob Carpenter was my doctor and frequent golfing partner. When the pool was open they'd spend much of their time relaxing and baking their skin in bikinis that usually left little to the imagination. Sometimes, Lexi would catch me staring at her or one of her friends and stick her tongue out at me.

"Don't be such a big perv, Daddy," she said one day, after her friends left.

"I thought I was paying you a compliment by admiring you," I said innocently.

"Well, if you put it that way," she said with a laugh, then hugged me tightly and kissed my cheek.

We'd always been affectionate with each other, hugging and kissing each other on the cheek all the time. She regularly cuddled with me on the couch on movie nights that Marilyn wasn't available to make. After she turned eighteen, Lexi began slightly stepping up those physical displays of affection, usually when her mother wasn't around. When we hugged, she'd hold on a little longer and I could feel her pressing her body into me. When I was cooking, she'd come into the kitchen and brush against me while reaching for a glass or going to the refrigerator. On movie nights, she'd cuddle very close to me, sometimes ending the movie with her head on my shoulder or, once or twice, laying on my lap. When I dropped her off at school or at practice on the weekends, we'd always parted with a kiss on the cheek. After her junior year of high school started, Lexi would surprise me once in a while with a quick peck on the lips before hopping out of the car.

I wasn't being naïve or oblivious. I understood that Lexi was maturing and that she might have started fixing on me as something other than a father figure. What surprised me was my reaction. I enjoyed the interest she was showing in me, rather than feeling embarrassed. Lexi was clearly beautiful and I was flattered that she found me attractive. I still felt like I knew where the boundaries were between us, so I didn't feel uncomfortable with the new level of affection between us.

Marilyn and I settled into a comfortable rhythm after we got married. We both enjoyed sex and each other's bodies, and we enjoyed a healthy sex life, for a while. As time passed and our careers took off, our sex life dwindled, as sometimes happens with married couples, until we were having sex once or twice a month, or skipping months entirely. Though I was still coaching the girls' league and receiving more than a little flirtatious attention from some of the team moms, I never felt tempted to stray. I felt as though I wouldn't just be betraying Marilyn, but I'd be betraying Lexi, and that was something I would never do.

Lexi squealed and did a happy dance when we gave her the keys to a fire engine red convertible on her eighteenth birthday. She insisted on giving me the first ride, to thank me for tutoring her for the written and driving tests. I smiled with loving admiration as we cruised around town, exceedingly proud of the young woman at my side.

About six months later, in August, I awoke one Friday morning to an empty bed. On the dresser, I found a note from Marilyn saying that she would be working late and reminding me to take something out of the freezer to defrost for dinner. I had a big project at the office that was coming due and I had to run out of the house. I left a note in the kitchen for Lexi, asking her to pull something out of the freezer.

When I came home that night I didn't find anything defrosting in the refrigerator. I found Lexi lying on her belly on a lounge chair by the pool, sunning her already well-tanned skin. She was wearing a baby blue thong bikini and the firm, round globes of her ass were oiled and glistening in the fading sunlight. She was listening to music, with ear buds in, not hearing my approach. She started violently when I tapped her shoulder.

"God, Daddy, you scared me," she said as she sat up. The bra was strapless and her perky breasts hung attractively as she swung her legs in front of her and sat up on the chair.

"Sorry, sweetheart," I said as I lowered myself into a chair across from her, "but I was wondering why there isn't anything ready to make for dinner."

"Was I supposed to pick something up?" she said with an uncomprehending look.

"Didn't you see my note this morning?" I responded, mildly annoyed. "I left it on the breakfast table. Your mother isn't going to be home tonight. I asked you to take something out of the freezer to make for dinner, because I had to get to work early."

"I'm so sorry, Daddy," she said, "but I ran out this morning without eating. There was a big sale at the mall today so I wanted to get together early with Jennifer and Ava so we could get an early start."

"That's all right, Lexi," I said, "though I don't approve of you skipping breakfast. I guess we can order something in. Are you feeling for Chinese or pizza?"

"Why don't we go out, Daddy?" Lexi said brightly as she rose out of her chair. "It feels like forever since we went out!"

We liked to go out to dinner as a family once or twice a month, but Marilyn and my work schedules sometimes defeated our best intentions. We hadn't been out to dinner as a family since Lexi's birthday in February.

"Why not?" I said. "Where would you like to go?"

"What about the new Italian place, Gianelli's? Jenny and her family went there last month; she says the pasta there is outrageous."

"You know what a sucker I am for Italian, baby," I said, smiling and getting up, walking back into the house behind Lexi. She took my hand as we entered the kitchen and we walked toward the back stairs. Lexi climbed up on the first step and turned toward me. This made her essentially the same height as me.

"Daddy, I know we enjoy being all casual when we go out," she said. "Could we do something different and dress up tonight?"

"Why do you want to dress up, Lexi?"

"I'm eighteen now, Daddy, I want to feel more like a grown up. Plus, you look so handsome when you get dressed up in one of your suits."

"You sure you wouldn't feel embarrassed being led around by some old man?" I joked.

"What are you, thirty-seven?" she laughed, tossing her head back. "You are so not old. Besides, I like these little bits of gray," she said, ruffling her fingers through the silver strands that were mingled with my dark hair. "I think they look sexy."

"Sexy?" I looked at her with raised eyebrows. "I'm not so sure I can pull off sexy anymore."