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Thursday, October 22 (cont.)

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“Wait, is this a Victoria’s Secret?” Marcus asked, looking around the store and confirming his suspicion from some of the labels around the store. “Aren’t they kinda designer or something? Like really nice but kinda pricey?”

“I mean did you think I was gonna take us to Walmart?” she giggled. “And Victoria’s Secret isn’t desiiiiigner, they wouldn’t be so famous if everything was super expensive.”

I don’t know about that, he thought. By his daughter’s logic, most people wouldn’t know what Gucci and Balenciaga were. But in fairness, those kinds of brands cost thousands of dollars, and he didn’t expect things here to be anywhere near as costly. “I don’t think we’ve ever been the kind of family who can afford to scoff at Walmart,” he reminded her.

“Well I think some things are just worth spending a little extra on,” she replied. “Like toilet paper. Or shoes. Or actually, cheese, oh my God, I love gourmet cheese.” She sighed dreamily, like she was picturing a handsome prince made out of brie in her head. “But yeah, bras are definitely worth the extra money. The comfort of my boobs is too important to allow something from Walmart to hold them all day.”

She made a decent point, and he declined to push her any further. “So how many do you think you need then?”

She paused, trying to gauge an appropriate answer. “Probably more than you’d be willing to get,” she decided, laughing somewhat nervously.

“Well if you need them we should get them, I’m not broke Jess.” Not yet. His slowly dwindling bank account was definitely something that lingered at the back of his mind, but he didn’t want to let that worry infect Jessie’s attitude. The disappointment and shame from not being able to adequately provide for his daughter was a feeling that scared him. He faintly remembered when he was a kid and his parents were between jobs, and they’d had to go on food stamps for a few months. He felt like his parents weren’t as good as his friends’ parents, and he never wanted Jessie to have to feel the same way about him. 

Jessie became drawn to a mannequin wearing a cute, pink pair of matching underwear, and started browsing the nearby offerings. “I like to have about two weeks worth of underwear myself,” he commented as she perused the aisle, “in case I accidentally put off doing my laundry for a few days.” She couldn’t help but scoff at his reply. She didn’t even have enough bras to last a week, let alone two. “But you’re also young, so you’re still growing, and I don’t want to buy too much of something that might not fit you in a couple months.” Jessie couldn’t argue with him there, he had a point. “So since you know more about bras than me, as the woman in this scenario, how many do you think is a good idea to get?” 

“Umm… well, seven?” Marcus nodded approvingly; one for each day of the week, that seemed fair enough. “And how much are these ones you’re looking at?” he asked, motioning to a pair that Jessie had held up to her chest.

Jessie’s face turned pale as she saw the price, and she swallowed nervously, already anticipating how her dad was about to react. “Well, I was looking at this brand in particular because a friend from school wears them and let me try one of her old ones on, and it was honestly like probably the best one I think I’ve ever worn. But, um… the price is, like… 60 bucks…?”

Marcus almost sputtered, and he hadn’t even said anything yet. “Sixty—for one bra? Jessie, I don’t wanna spend 400 dollars, especially considering what you’d get in return! Even if I still had a job, that would be too much. I know there are cheaper bras out there than 60 bucks, even ones that are probably still comfortable,” he sighed.

“Oh yeah, cuz you know what having breasts is like Daddy,” she groaned, rolling her eyes.

He was taken aback by her statement, and she giggled at his inability to come up with a reply right away. “Jess, I know there’s stuff you’ve experienced that I haven’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely ignorant about shopping for new clothes. You might think I’m wrong, and that’s okay, but I guarantee you there are other bras out there that will work just as well and save us some money. And you know how I know?” He pointed to the tag, “Because I don’t see any indication that it’s on sale, so even if it’s not at this store there’s gonna be somewhere around with 25% off, or a buy two get one free. Maybe even for the same brand that you like. But a deal like that could save me a lot of money.”

“Well I’m at least gonna look around a little considering we’re here,” she said. “I already know the brand I want and what size to get. Oooh, actually I should get a C cup one too though, just in case I have a growth spurt, so I can have something that already fits.”

“How’d you hear about this brand again?” he asked. “Since you seem so confident that you’ll love them.”

“I heard about it from…” Jessie mused, pulling out her phone and opened up Instagram, “…her!” She turned the phone around to show her dad the screen. The photo was of a young woman standing in front of a sunset, smiling and posing for the camera. Marcus noticed it had a couple thousand likes, but he also noticed that the collar of her shirt rode a little low, and it was clear that her boobs were bigger than average. “I figured that if anyone’s gonna know which line is the most comfortable, it’d be her, right?”

Marcus raised his eyebrows and nodded, “Sure, I suppose. She certainly seems to be pretty well endowed. I don’t think I recognize her from any movies, is she an online celebrity, what are they called… an influencer? Someone you follow?”

Jessie’s eyes widened and she squeezed her lips shut, before bursting into such an uproarious laughter that a couple on the other side of the store looked her way. “Oh my GOD, Daddy, she’s not an influencer,” she managed to say, giggling almost uncontrollably. “She’s just somebody from my class.”

Marcus’ heart skipped a beat upon realizing that he’d been looking at a picture of someone who was still only in middle school. The shocked expression on his face inspired another round of laughter from his daughter, who gently made fun of his phrasing with a mocking voice, “She’s well endowed, ooh, ah, very well endowed breasts indeed, hmm.” Her giggling died down after a few more seconds, before she added, “Ohhhhh, God that’s so funny. I can’t wait to tell her that my dad thought she was famous and called her breasts ‘well-endowed.’”

“Oh, hold on Jess,” Marcus said anxiously, “I wasn’t trying to say she was, um… I didn’t know she was your age. I was just replying to your comment and making an observation based on what the conversation was about.”

“Daddy relax, I know,” Jessie chuckled. “It’s not like you walked up to her on the street and tried hitting on her, it was just part of the conversation. She won’t be creeped out; she’ll think it’s funny too.” She zoomed in on the picture, peering at her classmate’s chest with envious eyes. “I hope mine are gonna get that big eventually,” she murmured wistfully. “God, I’m so jealous.”

Marcus didn’t know what to say but desperately wanted to change the conversation, and he was lucky enough for a woman’s voice on the intercom to save him. “Good evening shoppers, it is now 9pm so we’ll be closing for the day, we ask that you please finish up your shopping and make your way to the register.”

Jessie inhaled sharply, having forgotten that they’d arrived so close to closing. “Uh, okay, umm…” she mumbled, her eyes quickly darting around the aisle to decide what she’d liked the best, before beginning to grab the seven pairs she liked the most.

“Whoah, what did I say about not wanting to spend a ton of money?” he said, feeling uneasy about how many she was purchasing.

The 13 year old sighed, “We watched this Ted Talk in class today about the way people speak, and how saying ‘I don’t want to do that’ doesn’t mean the same as ‘I can’t do that.’ You said that you’re not broke so I know you can, you just don’t see the point. Because what I’d say isn’t that I want some new bras, it’s that I need them. And it’s not like I’m wearing something designer or anything, this is a regular brand—so like, logically speaking, my need should matter more than your want.” Having picked up the seventh bra, she turned to look down at him in her hand.

“Jess, that’s gonna be $460 after tax. I…” He bit his lip, remembering that feeling from his childhood, that his parents were somehow inadequate and weren’t as good at providing for him as others were for their kids. Being a parent so often means acknowledging a love for one’s child before they’re even born (or adopted); even if the pregnancy is a surprise like it had been for Marcus, he could've persuaded her mom to get an abortion, but instead he'd chosen to go through with being a father. Jessie would never have to vie for his affection, because Marcus’ love for her was natural and automatic as a result of his decision. But it wasn’t the same for the other way around. Nobody ever chooses to be born, to be thrust into the world with the parents they have. Jessie loved him because he was a dad, her dad, not just her father, because he had raised and nurtured her into the person she was today. There was a social (and biological) expectation that came with being a parent, but never one that came with being parented. Jessie could get in trouble at school or start acting moody and it wouldn’t change a thing about how he saw her, but if he got in trouble or he started acting moody, it could more easily tarnish how she saw him.

Jessie was right: he had the money, technically, and his only objection was he didn’t want to spend it. He had a good reason, in his opinion, but that feeling of not wanting to let his daughter down kept nudging him just as much. Taking a deep breath, he was about to propose a compromise when luckily she decided on one for him. “What if I get three from here tonight, to at least last me the next few days, and then we can get the others from somewhere else.”

He sighed with relief, “I was just about to suggest keeping it to four, so that sounds—”

“Four it is!” she exclaimed happily, lifting her hand up to gently kiss the top of his head. “Thanks Daddy!” He rolled his eyes but smiled anyways, as she put three of her choices back and took the rest to the checkout.

The employee at the register rang up Jessie’s picks, and Marcus uneasily eyed the screen as the cost reached triple digits just from the first two scans. “$262.76 is your total,” the worker said once his daughter’s new bras were tallied up, and Jessie hovered her hand near the payment machine so Marcus could hold his credit card up against the tap-to-pay symbol.

“Remind me why I’m spending this much money on you,” he commented.

“Because you loooooove me,” his daughter cooed.

He glanced up at the employee with a smile, nodding back at his daughter. “She’s right, I love her,” he told the woman, who smiled warmheartedly and put the receipt in the bag before handing it to Jessie.

“You two have a great night,” she said, and the two of them thanked her before turning around to leave.

When they got back to Jessie’s bike, her dad looked down at the seat uneasily as she unlocked it from the rack. “Are you gonna have to sit on me again, Jess?”

She frowned, “Well don’t say it like that, that makes it sound weird. It wasn’t like I was on top of your entire body, I just tucked your feet in to make sure you couldn’t fall off.” Just my feet? he thought. More like my entire legs. “And I mean, you can walk home if you want.” She pursed her lips, taking a second to think about what she just said. “OK, I didn’t mean it like the way it came out. I guess we’re both sounding weird tonight. I just meant that you seemed pretty adamant about not liking the other option of me holding you against the handlebars.” Once the bicycle was unlocked, she sat down on the seat and looked at her dad in her hand. “So what’s it gonna be?”

As he looked uneasily between the seat and the handlebars, Jessie got an inkling of an idea. Since she was holding him in her fist, she uncurled part of her hand and shifted her fingers so she was holding him between her thumb and pointer finger instead. “If you feel weird being back there because it’s close to my butt, maybe the front would be better?” She lowered her dad’s body down between her thighs and lifted her hips enough to tuck his lower half beneath her, sitting back down on him and closing her legs in on him to the position they’d be in while riding.

Marcus looked up at his daughter, innocent and unrealizing of the place she’d just put him. She’d placed him right under her crotch, nearly squishing him between her thighs, and didn’t even see right away why that spot would be an awkward choice. Despite his daughter being hundreds of times bigger than him, the 13 year old had naively tested out a position that had her literally riding her dad—I mean, literally riding him, between his position and the fact that they were on a bike, she was pretty much double riding the man—before her brain finally caught up with itself and she quickly pulled him out from underneath her.

“Oh my God wait no, holy shit, I’m so sorry Daddy,” she blurted out, her cheeks reddening out of such intense embarrassment, and avoided looking at him as an emotionally pained expression overtook her face. “I don’t even… I, um…”

“It’s fine Jess,” he told her, even though he knew it most certainly wasn’t fine, and he avoided looking at her too. “How about you just put me in the bag from the store?” he suggested, and she nodded quickly. She hooked the bag’s handles on her handlebars and then dropped her dad inside, where he tumbled onto one of her new bras and came to rest on the inside of its cup.

“Let’s just head home now,” the girl squawked, wanting to erase the memory of putting her dad down beneath her sex, and pushed off to begin the ride home. She inadvertently went over a bump, which shifted the items inside her bag. Her dad became tangled within the pile, trapped under the curve of another one of the bra’s cups, but Jessie didn’t notice, so he rode the rest of the way back to their house in a jungle of expensive lingerie that served as a constant reminder of just how big his daughter’s breasts now were compared to him, and how big they’d continue to grow, whether he liked it or not.

*       *       *

At bedtime, Marcus and Jessie were both in the bathroom together brushing their teeth, and had moved on to flossing when suddenly Jessie threw down her floss in anger, huffing in frustration at the task she was trying to accomplish. “I hate trying to do this every night,” she complained. She bared her teeth at the mirror—in what was definitely not a smile—and glared at the small impenetrable barriers that were her braces. Glancing down at her dad, she remembered his help from a few days ago. “Do you… um, do you think you can help floss for me again Daddy?”

He paused, taking his own floss out and heading over to the trash can to throw it away. When he turned to look up at her, she flashed him a grin, kneeling onto the floor so she could rest her head on the counter. “Pleeeease?”

Marcus cringed at the thought, not too enthused about the idea. “Seriously?” he sighed.

“Yes seriously,” she answered. “What if I cook dinner tomorrow night?”

“You always cook dinner,” he laughed. “Or at least you have ever since I shrank. It’s not like I could cook for you very easily.”

“I don’t always make dinner,” she shrugged. “Not on Tuesdays and Thursdays cuz of when I get home.”

“And is tomorrow a Tuesday or a Thursday?”

She rolled her eyes, “OK, fine. But I don’t have to make enough for you. Maybe I’m really hungry and I eat every single bite.” Her eyes flared, and she chomped her teeth together dramatically with a grin. “You heard what Coach Kyle said, I could be an Olympian one day, maybe from now I need to eat every single scrap of food that I make.

Her dad frowned, although he knew she was mostly joking. “A single one of your bites is always enough to be a meal for me, and in this hypothetical future, you’d never share with me again?” She shook her head no, but giggled at the absurdity that she could ever be so needlessly petty to her dad. “But you have to help take care of me, because I’m shrunken and doing stuff is harder at my size.”

“And you have to help take care of me because I’m your daughter! And doing stuff is harder at my age.”

He paused, and then asked, “Are we still arguing about flossing here?”

She sighed and stood up, not trying to intentionally intimidate her dad, but suddenly towering over his little body nonetheless. “OK, the difference between dinner and flossing though is that you can make your own food when you need to, even if using your own cooking stuff is a little harder, but I literally can’t floss. Or like, I guess I barely can, but you can fit your hand between the wires and do a proper job of it. Do you want my breath to smell? Cuz not flossing and having plaque build up would do that.”

“Your breath already smells,” he chuckled, “why do you think I don’t wanna do it?”

She narrowed her eyes, loudly exhaling and then darting her head forward to try and smell it. “No it doesn’t,” she pouted.

“Maybe not to normal people, but everything smells a lot stronger when you’re my size.”

“OK then plug your nose, or breathe through your mouth, I dunno.” She put her hands on her hips, staring down at him with a focused look, persistent to convince him. He glanced at her belly button that peeked through  the small gap between her pajamas shorts and t-shirt, imagining the bounty of food that such a relatively massive person was able to consume. Looking up at her face, so high above him and with an expression of tense tenacity, he thought back to all the times he’d held Jessie’s hair when she had to throw up, or all the times she’d had the flu and would be too fatigued to clean up a mountain of tissues, and the myriad of other somewhat gross things that he’d had to do in the name of being a parent.

“Alright fine, I’ll at least help you out for tonight, but you have to swig your mouth with Listerine first, deal?”

Her determined look immediately softened into one of joy, which of course made Marcus feel good inside, and she nodded happily, grabbing the nearby mouthwash. “Deal!”

After taking a minute to make her breath smell minty fresh, she lowered her head back down to the counter and opened her mouth as wide as she could. Her dad already had the floss in hand, and stepped right up to her lips, leaning over carefully so as not to fall in. With each of his hands firmly gripping the string like it was rope, he lined it up with the edges of a pair of teeth and pressed downwards, able to reach past the wires of her braces, far further than she was able to, and then pulled it back out. Then he got the next wedge, and the next, and one more, but after that point he stopped and stepped back so he could look her in the eyes. 

“I’m not gonna get your back teeth, by the way. I can’t reach that far.”

“That’s OK, I didn’t expect you to,” she told him. “I’m just glad you’re able to help me at all.” She opened her mouth back up, and he returned to do the other side of her mouth, and then her top row of teeth. Images of her suddenly biting her teeth down and snapping him in half passed through his mind, like his nightmare from a few nights ago, but he just tried to ignore the silly idea and continue with his task.

By the time he finished up a few minutes later, the strip of floss was covered in faintly yellow clumps of plaque, and a few pieces of food that he’d been able to save. “Ugh,” he muttered, almost feeling nauseous from the smell of the young girl’s mouth waste, and whisked his way over to drop it in the trash.

“Mmmm, that feels so much better,” she sang. “See why I needed your help? Look at all that stuff you got!”

“You’re welcome honey,” he sighed, and she lowered her hand so he could step on. “Let’s just get to bed now.”

“Good idea,” she replied, and turned to take him to his room for the night.