Annika, Davis's lesbian stepdaughter, is down on her luck. When she returns home after a break-up with her girlfriend, she finds that her mother has run off. Only Davis remains in the home she grew up in. Kind soul that he is, Davis offers Annika a place to stay. But there will be choices, and there will be rules. How far will Annika go to avoid a life on the streets?
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Chapter One: Annika
When Davis answered the door, the last thing he expected to see was a dirty girl with badly cut, short black hair, wearing tattered clothes and smelling like she hadn’t bathed in a week. The girl’s thin lips were fixed in the kind of frown that seemed like you couldn’t have scrubbed it away with all the sunshine, chocolate, and puppies in the Eastern United States. I t was really more of a scowl, Davis decided, and it was a scowl that conveyed, at a glance, the sheer displeasure the girl felt at the sight of him. It was a displeasure that he reciprocated with a scowl of equal disgust and a simple question.
“What are you doing here, Annika?”
“I need to talk to my mom,” the unwashed girl replied.
Davis leaned against the doorframe and said, “Well, when you find her, let her know that I’ve got a few things to talk about, too. Like, why the fuck she took my dog.”
Annika took a moment to process this and then asked a question, which Davis had already answered. The question held a note of disappointment, tinged with anxiety.
“She lives here, doesn’t she?”
Davis shook his head.
“She up and left about six months ago. And she took my fucking dog. Did I mention that?”
“Where did she go?” Annika asked, ignoring the question.
“I feel like this is a one-sided conversation. If you find her, let her know I want the dog back. She can keep the money if she hasn’t already blown it.”
He moved to close the door.
“Wait!” Annika said, the anxiety turning to panic.
Davis waited.
“Could I, maybe, use your phone?”
Davis looked her up and down. She was thinner than he remembered, but it had been a few years since she’d left with her equally-skinny, punky, lanky-haired “girlfriend” to, presumably, get intoxicated and listen to bands of screaming lesbians decry the patriarchy. Now, she just looked beaten down and at the end of her rope.
“I’m not in the habit of letting homeless people into my house,” he said and put his hand on the door again.
“Davis, please!” she begged. “I… I don’t have anywhere to go. I just want to make a call and see if I can find my mom.”
Davis paused and took her in again. He let his imagination run. He peeled back the dirt, ignored the smell, and tried to imagine Annika as she’d been when she’d left at eighteen. She’d been well-fed. Davis had seen to that. She’d had nice clothes, which she’d torn holes in to give them that distressed style her shitty friends loved. Davis, also, had seen to providing her with those.
It was not that he felt unsympathetic. Not exactly. Annika had lived with him for seven years, while he had been shacked up with her mom. However, he was not sympathetic to the ungrateful attitude that she’d always shown toward him. Despite having provided her with a home, clothes, food, medical care, and an education, Annika had never been grateful. Yet, here she was, begging for those things he’d given her freely once before, and still ungrateful. But there was something, an idea, which started to form as he looked at her braless tits under the ruin of a shirt she wore. Davis opened the door.
“One phone call,” he said.
Annika stepped inside without thanking him.
“Take off those crusty shoes before you come in here,” he instructed. “You know I don’t like dirt on the floors.”
Annika obeyed.
“And wash your hands before you touch my phone,” he added. “I don’t know where you’ve been.”
Annika took off her shoes, showing equally dirty feet with no socks, and brushed past him to the hallway bathroom. He heard the water running, stop, and then she returned. No doubt, when he went in the restroom, he would find a grimy hand towel casually discarded on the basin or the floor. He handed her his phone, unlocked, with the dialer ready. Leaning against the wall, he folded his arms and waited. The front door was still open. On purpose.
Annika’s fingers hovered over the keys for a moment and then she punched in a number. She held the phone to her ear and waited. Davis could hear it click and someone on the other end respond.
“Chris?” Annika said.
Chris seemed to reply.
“Yeah,” Annika said. “She’s crazy. I just need somewhere to stay for a couple of nights. Please! Just until I can get a hold of my mom.”
Chris, Davis thought, sounded very unhappy about this proposal. Not at all amenable, in fact. Annika’s deepening look of disappointment and the haze of tears that clouded her hazel eyes cemented this fact. She hung up the phone while Chris was still shouting.
Annika clutched the device in her hand and gave Davis her most pitiable, pathetic look, which was basically just how she looked in general. He held out his hand for the phone.
“Just… just one more. Please?” she pleaded.
“This isn’t a homeless shelter, Annika.”
Her shoulders slumped, and she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, hanging her head. She started for the door. Davis let her walk out, closed it, and waited. He knew what the next step would be. Annika was predictable in that way. The only difference was, this time, her anguish and desperation were real.
This wasn’t going to be like when she’d pouted and cried about not getting to use his car. It wouldn’t be the eleven-year-old that played on his emotions by being teary-eyed and cute, coming to him when mommy didn’t give her what she wanted. She’d been a kid then and, as bratty as she’d been, he’d had a soft spot for getting one over on her mother. Something about being the good cop to Mommy’s bad was satisfying.
Then, the wretched, heaving sob came from the other side of the door, where Annika sat on the porch. These tears, though, were not those of a kid being denied her latest want. These were the tears of a young woman who had just realized that life was hard and nothing came free. Whatever joyride she’d been on had come to a crashing, devastating end, and at this moment, she had no one to go to. No one, except for Davis.
He listened to those desperate, choking sobs for almost a full minute before he opened the door. The idea was already coming together. His dick was hard. He opened the door.
“One night,” he said, and Annika’s head shot up.
She looked at him, for the first time that he could remember, with genuine gratitude. It was a look that he was going to see far more often. Of that, he would make sure. Annika stood and walked back through the open door, rubbing her torn shirt on her face to dry the tears, and showing him her trim, flat belly. This time, Annika took off her shoes without being asked. Davis shut the door. And locked it.
Like the sound of this story? Grab the finished book in the shop. Altering Annika is the story of a girl's choices, made in desperation, and the changes those choices bring to her life and her sexuality. 26,000 words and 7 chapters.
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