For some weird reason, when I look at Dad's latest boyfriend I can't help but be angry. It's not that I don't like him...he's a great guy. He's certainly a lot better than most of the men that Dad brings home, and he's cute to boot (though so very not interested in the kid of the guy he's dating ^_^;) But I still don't trust him, and I have yet to figure out why.

I think it's the fact that he's always smiling. No one smiles all the time, not even Nanami-chan (and the fact that he is the smiling person who came to mind first is proof that I have had way too much Sukisho recently). But this guy smiles all the time, when he's saying something awkward, when Dad is getting all pissed off at me, even the time I accidentally walked in on him in the shower. That just sets off one of those alarms in my head that says that he's up to no good.

I tried talking to Dad about it, and he just smiled and wrote it off as me being all protective again. This guy isn't Mom, just like all of the other guys that Dad's brought home (what a surprising thought, the men that Dad sleeps with aren't Mom...), so obviously I'm feeling like he's trying to replace Mom. I know that that's only partly true. It isn't that he wants someone just like Mom, just that he wants some companionship, and has decided that men make better companions than Mom does. And considering that I think he and Mom would kill each other if they tried to be together again, I don't blame either one of them for choosing to find companionship elsewhere.

And, of course, I really do feel the need to protect Dad. Mom is strong. She has common sense (more than I do, even), and she knows when someone is bad for her. But Dad is so very much a menkui. He will go with the first pretty face to call out to him, or when he's drunk, just the first person with a dick to show the slightest bit of interest in a man who's already old enough to have a child in college. He's come home with some of the worst people I've ever met, and a few of them I literally had to chase out of the house with a weapon before they would leave us alone. I have a restraining order on one of them for trying to rape Dad, and a few of them are still locked up in jail today.

So this guy really seems quite a bit better than most. I did a background check on him, and he doesn't have any major strikes against him. A few parking tickets, a speeding ticket that he paid right away...nothing bad. No rape, no theft, not even any jail time for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct (that is rare for a guy that Dad brings home). And he's nice. He has a good degree, from a good school, a good job, a nice apartment (that he hasn't spent a night in since Dad found him wherever he found him and dragged him home for a night of wild sex that I unfortunately was able to hear every moment of)... All sorts of things going for him.

But there's still that something about him that rubs me the wrong way. I can't say what it is. I can't even figure out when it first hit me. I just know that every single time I see him looking at me with that big smile on his face I have this sudden chill that runs down my spine and this feeling that something bad is going to happen because of him someday.