Preview: The Dad Next Door, Chapter 1 (text)

LOKITU'S NOTE: Hi, Titans! As I've done with my other stories, here is an early preview of 'The Dad Next Door'. This is the first chapter, in which we meet Jay and the object of his desires, The Dad. This is text-only right now, as I'm hard at work creating the illustrations ready to be published later in the year. I hope you enjoy this first read!

STORY:

The Dad Next Door, part 1

‘You know your Great Uncle Omar?’

‘No.’

‘Yes, you do. He was always around when you were a boy. You always wanted to see him. “Where’s Uncle Omar?” you would say. And… such things.’

‘I have literally no recollection of this man, Mom.’

‘Yes, you do! You do! He would bring you those little candies you liked, or… maybe it was something else. You just… you don’t know it or you forgot or something. Anyway, he’s dead.’

‘Jesus, give a guy some warning! I’m... sorry to hear it, though.’

‘I don’t know. He was your dad’s side of the family. We hardly saw him. We can’t be sad about someone we barely knew.’

‘But you just said…?’

‘Anyhow, this is perfect timing.’

‘… that he died.’

‘Yes, because what with you being fired from your job-‘

‘I wasn’t fired, Mom. I told you, I’m taking time off-’

‘Yes, this is good timing with your job and your time off, because, Jay, you’re inheriting your Great Uncle Omar’s house.’

Jay stood with the phone to his ear, deeply confused. His mom’s voice continued to prattle through the speaker for a while. He really did have no recollection of this great uncle. Now suddenly he’d inherited the guy’s house?

‘What… Why?’ was all he could think to ask.

‘Well, the family talked about it and you know your father and his brothers, oh my God, there was so much talking, on and on - and everyone decided that you should have the house. It’s yours.’

This tidbit turned any feelings of gratitude Jay might’ve had into more of a dread kind of deal.

The rest of the family didn’t want Omar’s house.

‘So it’s a shithole, then,’ he said out loud.

His mom did her best to affect affront. ‘You can’t say that! You shouldn’t say that! This is… you’ve been… this is a gift. This is a wonderful gift.’

(This is a shithole.)

Jay pulled up in front of the dilapidated suburban detached house. Style: Not quite Steven King, Not quite Addams Family. But getting there. Boards missing. Gutters overflowing. A tree looked like it was trying to peer into the basement.

‘Well, shit.’

Jay, lanky with a sponge tummy that had done little to impress lovers past, hauled himself out of his car and ran a hand across his shaved head. He’d driven half a day just to get here.

A short tour of the overgrown perimeter did not inspire confidence; this place was gonna need a new… everything.

He had wanted to use his current break from work to chill, recenter his mind, de-stress. Fixing up a broken down crap-box in the middle of suburbia hadn’t figured into the equation, shockingly.

With a sigh, he let himself in. Great Uncle Omar had been allergic to opening windows, if the smell was anything to go by. Peeling wallpaper everywhere.

‘Hooo boy, this is gonna be a whole thing, isn’t it?’ Jay muttered, absently stroking his beard as he moved between dusty rooms. Looked like the family had already stripped the place of any important or valuable items and, being the saints they were, left Jay with all but the rotten carcass. How generous.

‘Where am I even gonna start?’

With a mind geared towards organization, he felt it best to begin making a list of every task that would need doing; planning and list-making always helped to ease his thoughts. And this place was basically the House of Unease right now.

Jay spent the next hour and a half, starting in the basement, notarizing each of Great Uncle Omar’s sins.

‘Crapped-out furnace, rusted pipes, a drawer that won’t open, damp and mildew on the walls… Seriously, did this guy just never clean?’

It was well into the afternoon before he stopped for a break in the kitchen, parking his ample rump into an old creaking chair and lowering his glasses to better massage the space between his eyes.

‘Goddamn it…’

Something outside caught his attention:

The house across the street had its garage shutter wide open, and inside was a man sawing a chunk of wood, clearly using the space as some kind of DIY workshop.

The sight of him caused pause in Jay.

(Holy macaroni…)

The man in the garage wore classic flannel unbuttoned just enough to liberate a sprig of chest hair, his build that of a former sportsman who’d taken a taste for the beer. He had one of those pot-bellied starter guts that seemed to pop up on men in their mid to late forties and had always driven Jay to distraction. From under his baseball cap poked warm hazel hair turned grey at the sides. His face was framed perfectly with silvering stubble and a dark moustache, somehow accentuating the sparkle in his eyes. His was a kindly, rounding face; strong brows and a jawline losing the battle to fat (and all the better for it).

Jay felt quite confident that, had he typed into an AI image generator “Hot Suburban Dad”, it would have conjured a near-exact likeness of this guy; he fit the archetype to a tee, looking like he belonged in some family sitcom of yesteryear.

So handsome was he, that Jay actually didn’t know what to do with himself, or where to put his hands. He could only watch, unable to tear his gaze away.

The guy had probably nicknamed his kids Sport or Slugger when they were young, coached the Little League, taken his family camping, assuming he actually was a dad.

(I’m stood here drooling like a pervert, imagining a whole life for this dude. Is this healthy behavior? No.

Am I going to stop?

… Also no.)

Amid a break from sawing, the man across the street paced momentarily away from his workbench to swig from a can of beer (one of many, it was noted), giving Jay a heavenly view of his ass barely contained within a pair of tight denim jeans that probably fit like 40 pounds ago. He chugged like it was going out of fashion, tilting his head all the way back and then swiping the excess with a hairy backhand.

Suddenly a smartly dressed woman of a similar age entered the garage from the inner door and conversed briefly with Hot Suburban Dad, before hugging him and pecking his cheek. Had to be the wife. She departed in her car shortly after, leaving Jay with the kind of irrational, unearned jealousy usually reserved for late night doomscrolling on social media in his city apartment. Alone.

He couldn’t just stand here all day (though boy did he want to); there was work to be done. So much work. Reopening his list of chores, Jay glanced briefly back to the stupendously hot man in the garage, thinking that perhaps - just perhaps - things around here weren’t all bad.

As the following week stretched out, Jay made return trips to Uncle Omar’s house (now his house - still had to get used to that), armed with a paltry set of tools and a frugal aversion to hiring tradespeople. He would do what he could by himself, at least for the time being. Besides, this came with two added benefits: Taking his mind off of his job in the city, and more importantly, getting in some solid views of the handsome guy across the street, whom Jay had decided to dub simply The Dad.

Oftentimes The Dad would be found in his garage workshop with the shutter open, happily sawing or hammering something, always with a trusty beer or three by his side. Jay got to know the rotation of his flannel shirts, each of which warped around The Dad’s pot belly just so; evidently the man preferred to keep the sleeves rolled up, displaying strong, hairy forearms. One afternoon he was on a phone conversation with someone, and while Jay couldn’t make out any individual words, the tone of The Dad’s voice seemed to imply a daughter was on the other end of the line. Another time he had fellow middle-aged buddies over for beers around the grill; Jay could just make them out in the yard behind The Dad’s garage, all spirit jerseys and polos tucked into khaki shorts, a boisterous Boxer dog threading their legs on a quest for scraps; at one point one of the men poked The Dad’s protruding gut with a laugh shared by the hot man himself, followed by more slugs of beer.

All of this Jay observed while stripping wallpaper, pulling up weeds, cleaning out drains. He couldn’t be certain, but as the days passed, it almost seemed as though The Dad’s shirts were growing tighter. He could have sworn little slits in the flannel were forming between buttons, hairy dad-belly peeking out, but maybe this was just what Jay wanted to see. Admittedly it was difficult to tell from across the street.

Still, he would take that image to bed with him some nights.

Most nights.

Okay, every night.

It was during a snack-run at the local store that it happened. Jay was spending longer and longer days working on Great Uncle Omar’s house, his limited renovation efforts fueled largely by the power of takeout meals and soda. Supply runs had become necessary.

One balmy evening at the nearby MarketLand, Jay was filling a basket with bags of chips and cornering on the beer isle when -

‘Oop!’

His padded midriff collided with a warm, round dome.

Clad in flannel.

‘Sorry about that, ha ha!’

Jay looked up into the curved, disarming face of The Dad, whose belly he had literally just bumped. The guy stood back, several multipacks of beer under one arm, and patted down his plumped-out girth.

‘This thing’s startin’ to enter the isle before the rest of me! Ha ha!’

Good Lord, he had a voice to match his natural masculinity; deep, jovial, and when he laughed it came out all gravelly in a timbre that sent goosebumps shooting up and down Jay’s flesh. Up close The Dad was gorgeous. Just utterly gorgeous. Those twinkling eyes of his were the deepest oceanic blue; Jay felt a pull to plunge right in, head first…

‘Uhhh, sorry… I just… I was just…’ Jay’s tongue didn’t work properly. He’d turned stupid.

The man before him possessed cheeks and double chin each coated in beautiful greying stubble, dark mustache framing a sincere grin and dimpling that plump face.

‘Ah, my fault for takin’ up so much space, ha ha!’

That laugh was gonna cause Jay’s knees to buckle if he wasn’t careful.

(Is this what swooning feels like? Do people actually swoon? Am I swooning?)

He couldn’t come up with a single word to say, but his lips kept on moving like a floundering fish. He must have looked like a prized dork.

‘B-Beer!’ Jay suddenly spat out, his brain gripping onto something, anything. ‘I was - Beer - Getting… I was getting beer!’

The Dad still smiled. So much warmth. All the kindness in the world.

‘Say, aren’t you, uh, the guy fixing up the old Kaplan place? I’ve seen you across the street, I think.’

‘Beer…’ Jay nodded. ‘Uhhh, I mean yeah, that’s… I am fixing up the old… Yes… That is I.’

("That is I?" What am I, King Arthur now?)

‘It’s my uncle’s - my great uncle’s place. Or rather it was his place, but he’s, like… dead… now… so…’

(Oh, good job, Jay. Top tier conversation, really.)

‘Ah. I’m sorry to hear that,’ The Dad responded, his beaming smile slipped some.

He was a little taller than Jay. Probably 6’2” ish. Jay clocked the guy at about 250-260 pounds, give or take. This past week, though, things had been more like give and give. At this proximity it was clear to see that The Dad’s belly was indeed starting to break free of his shirt, fat and fur making public appearances between each button, especially toward the navel where things really rounded out. Looked like the flannel was gonna blow any day now.

‘Oh, no no, it’s fine,’ said Jay, waving a hand and making a ‘Pshhht!’ face. ‘I didn’t know him, so… No, it’s fine. I just gotta…’

If The Dad could only know the Herculean effort Jay was making not to stare at that sublime beer belly…

‘I gotta…,’ he continued. ‘I’m just trying to fix the place up, you know… It needs a lotta work…’

When The Dad replied with, ‘Uh huh. Well, hey, you know, maybe I could help you out with that,’ Jay was pretty sure the butterflies in his stomach started doing the conga. ‘I’m not too shabby at the ol’ fixin-uppin myself, hehe!’

Jay snatched this moment like it was going to blow away in the wind at any second.

‘Yes! Sure! I mean, yes. Yeah. Yes, please,’ he blurted. ‘That would be… sublime…’

(Sublime? Really? Of all the words, I swear to God…)

‘I mean, that would be great. Like, really, really helpful. You’d do that?’

This super hot dad helping Jay to fix up the old house? Working right beside him? Sweating? Toiling? His man-musk up close, his barely-buttoned dad-gut threatening to pop his shirt wide open every time he bent over…

(Must not get hard. Must not get hard. He’s standing right there. In the damned grocery store, in the beverage isle for God’s sake!)

‘Sure! You’ve probably seen me in my ‘shop, tinkering around,’ The Dad went on. ‘Used to run a plumbing business. Sold it last year. I’m pretty good with my hands!’

Jay forced out a laugh that blew straight past Casual and landed somewhere near Deranged.

‘So if you need any help, just give me a holler! You know where I’m at, ha ha!’ The Dad added.

He stuck out a hand that, when shook, felt hot and ever-so-slightly sweaty, its back all sprinkled in hair that ran down the fingers.

‘David, by the way.’

‘I’m Jay,’ Jay said, remembering his own name not with the greatest of ease, it had to be said. ‘Thanks, David. I’d, uh, really appreciate that… Thanks a bunch…’

‘Ah, it’s my pleasure,’ David The Dad countered breezily. Handsomely. He redoubled the grip on his beers and gave a smile and a nod to signify he was about to take off.

Still in something of a shell-shocked state, it was a few seconds before Jay’s brain caught up with events.

‘I don’t, uh,’ he began, turning to the departing stud, ‘I just don’t have, like, the funds for a professional or anything, is the thing… Sorry, I should have said that.’

David turned back, warping the lines on his flannel even more, and causing a bulging crease to form along his lovehandle. ‘Ah, that’s okay,’ he said, ‘I’m pretty much retired these days. You’d be giving me something to do. And anyway, you can pay me back in these! Ha ha!’ And he nudged his multipacks forth a smidge, causing little dunks and clugs.

Jay smiled back and nodded probably like a maniac.

‘Sounds good.’

(Sounds fantastic, more like), he thought. (David working up a sweat beside me all day long.

And in return, I get to balloon his belly full of beer.)