The Pool

I was sitting eye-level with Dad's balls. Despite being built like a lumberjack, Dad didn't have much body hair, only a patch in the middle of his chest and, as I could now see, a light covering where his thighs met. His penis was wide at the base with a narrow head, coming up to a rounded point. As he turned and moved his body to get more of Sara, it bobbed back and forth. My throat was dry and I couldn't take my eyes off him. Matthew had eaten my pussy twice, haltingly, and if could look like that, I was pretty sure now he didn't do it right.

Sara arched her back and ground down onto Dad's face, squeezing a breast in each hand until the flesh bulged out between her fingers. I thought she'd scream again, like she had when he was hitting her with the belt, but the sound she made as she came was like a deep, growling chuckle followed by a high, prolonged, "Oooooooooooooh!"

She dismounted and moved gingerly over to the side of the bed, where she knelt in front of him. If she turned, we'd have been eye-to-eye through the slats of the closet door. I held my breath. She grabbed Dad's member and milked it a few times, rubbing her fingers up and over the head, then stroking back down and pulling the skin taut. She was leaning closer to put her mouth on it when a ring tone I didn't recognize went off. With one hand still on Dad's dick, she dug around in her discarded clothes, pulled out her phone, and flipped it open. "This is Sara Tate, what can I do for you?" Her side of the conversation mostly consisted of "uh-huh" and "I see" after that, though she kept a slow stroke going on Dad with her free hand. Finally, she ended the call with, "Yes, that's really too bad. I'm glad you called the paramedics. I'll be there right away." She dropped the phone to her lap and let go of Dad to scrub both palms across her face. "Kid with a peanut allergy ate the wrong snack and went into shock," she looked at him through her splayed fingers when he sat up. "I have to get back to the club right now to talk to his parents. I am so sorry. I had a clear schedule this afternoon."

"Hey, it's alright. They can't run that place without you." Dad patted her on the shoulder and smiled. He had a warm, wonderful smile, slightly crooked but better looking for that. His smile could turn a decent anecdote into an amazing story and thaw icy contract negotiations. It was such a normal thing, to see Dad comforting someone and smiling, except that his penis was pointing right at my hiding space like an accusing finger. "I'll run you back over there and drop you off at the edge of the parking lot." They dressed quickly and left. I stayed in the closet for a good half an hour after, terrified Dad would come back and catch me, that he'd known I'd been there all along. I was prepared for it to be the most shameful thing that had ever happened to me.

Instead, the most shameful thing was what happened when Dad didn't come back. An hour after he and Sara left, I knew I was in the clear. He hadn't seen me, and if he came back now, I could convincingly tell him I'd been let out of my last class early. I had the house to myself until 4:30, when Jason got off the bus. I spent the next two hours spread out on my bed with my fingers working my clit and achingly swollen lips. I even used the smooth wooden handle of an old hairbrush to satisfy the burning cascade of longing inside. I wasn't interested in getting spanked, that one went immediately on the "things Matthew and I won't be trying" list. But I came and came thinking about my father setting me on his face and plunging his tongue inside me; crawling out of the closet when Sara got up to take her place between his legs, opening my mouth to taste his hardness; being speared on the end of his pointed manhood while I moaned and sighed and called him "Daddy." By the end of the afternoon, I was too sore to touch myself until after graduation.

When Mom looked at Dad's cell phone three weeks later and found out about Sara, we obviously had to stop going to the country club. Jason was pulled out of summer camp, which was great by him, he had wanted to go to chess camp and hang out with me all summer instead, anyway. Dad got a new cell phone because Mom threw his out the car window on the freeway; Mom, Jason, and I all got new cell phones because Dad was sorry he got caught.

When I would masturbate in college, my mind would wander back to that afternoon unless I gave it something bigger and dirtier to focus on. It was impossible to be home on a break and not think about it. Sometimes I stripped down to my panties and rubbed myself to repeated climax while crouching in the closet for the full experience. Every time, thinking about Dad got me off but made me even more ashamed of myself. It was a rotten tooth I couldn't help touching.

But I also couldn't help touching myself with both hands bunched under my boyshorts, thinking about what I'd seen that day eight years before. It was sick, I knew it was, but it had been a bigger part of my sex life than my husband had, and I couldn't keep from going back to it when I needed comfort and relief.

The next morning, rain was coming down in steady sheets. I spent the morning reading and Jason messed around with his laptop with something he wouldn't let me see. I made rolled omelets and rice. At eleven, Jason interrupted me in the middle of my page by jangling his keys in my face. "Come on, mall's open. We're going to go look at swimsuits and then I'm taking you to lunch and a movie."

"Can we just do lunch and the movie?"

"Nope. Package deal. I will even let you pick the restaurant and the movie if you agree to try on and consider just one bathing suit I pick out for you."

"You're serious about this?"

"Serious enough to sit through whatever Mister Darcy crap you want to see instead of a real movie, yeah."

"You're such a charmer."

"You have no idea. I am the Date Master. I give amazing date."

"But no girlfriend I've ever heard about."

"Nope. The Date Master cannot be tamed."

"Come on Date Master," I rolled my eyes at him, "I don't want to be late for our double-date with Mister Darcy."

I found practically everything at the swimwear store too skimpy to consider. Jason and I had made it a contest: I would pick one suit I liked, he would pick one he liked for me, and I would try them both on. Whoever had picked the more attractive suit, according to the bored girl behind the register, would get a small favor from the loser. Jason and I teased each other a lot, but were generally nice enough about small wagers that I wasn't worried. I also wasn't worried because I knew I'd choose something another woman would like better than whatever spandex monstrosity he thought was sexy.

In the dressing room stall, I turned and looked over my shoulder in the mirror. I'd picked a cute halter one-piece, black with cherries printed on it. It slimmed my lower half enough and did as much as it could with my little teacup tits. The best part was that it had a diamond-shaped panel cut out of the front. I had often wished my hips smaller or my breasts bigger, but I'd always loved my flat stomach. I felt too exposed in most two pieces, so it was rare I got to show it off. I walked out of the dressing room, confident in my victory.

"What the hell is that? Dice?" Jason was leaning back in the only chair outside the dressing rooms, arms crossed. "I should have known you'd pick something with dice on it."

"They're cherries, and they're cute," I stuck my tongue out at him. "Aren't they?" I asked the sales girl.

"Yeah," she nodded, "that's really cute. You've got hard competition, Jason." So, she already knew his name. It looked like the Date Master had struck while I was getting changed. I felt a strange jab of jealousy even as I gave a victorious little pirouette.

"It's not over yet," he said, handing me a wad of purple fabric. I took it without even looking until I got back into the stall.

Predictably, Jason had picked a bikini. I'd half-expected it to be the tiniest piece of dental floss in the store, just to see if he could get me to wear it. When I got it on and adjusted, I was legitimately surprised. It wasn't anything I would have chosen on my own, but it wasn't terrible at all. In fact, the triangles over each of my breasts emphasized their perky shape and the delicacy of my arms and shoulders. The bottom covered my ass completely but was slung low, showing much more of the curve of my hips than I had ever dared. Their smooth swoops in to my waist made my taut stomach the center of attention. I even liked the color.

"Oh, wow," Jason sputtered when I walked out, the smug look siding off his face as he almost fell out of his chair. "Wait right there," he held up his hand to our teenage judge, "she just needs one more thing." He walked over to me and pushed my dark brown hair off my shoulders, then pulled his aviator sunglasses out and put them on me. He ruffled my short bangs, "Alright, Bettie Page. I think even you have to admit you're a stone-cold stunner in this suit."

The shop girl declared Jason the winner, though I later accused him of bribing her with the prospect of a date. Not content with that, he pulled me over to the full-length mirror in the dressing room and draped one arm across my bare shoulders. He rested his chin on top of my head and looked at my reflection, quiet. "You really are beautiful, you know. I know things with Matthew probably made you think..."

"Hey! You won! What favor do you want? Because the one I really want is for us to stop talking about this. Like now."

"I want a picture of you in that suit. Nothing slutty, just...here..." He pushed the sunglasses up over my bangs and turned me slightly to the side so the tattoo on my left shoulder showed. Jason held up his cell phone and backed up so he was out of the shot. "Look over your shoulder. Give me a little smile, Katie." I did smile, looking at my tattoo. Fifty tiny black star outlines, one for each state. Fifteen were filled in with red for the states I'd visited. Matthew and I had planned to go to all of them together, but for the first time in months I thought I might just see them on my own.

"Perfect," Jason said, putting his phone in his pocket, "I knew I could get proof you could smile. Get your clothes back on, pin-up girl, I want a gyro."

If my kid brother had been taking girls on dates like the lunch and movie we had that afternoon, it was a wonder he didn't have a girlfriend. He listened attentively while I answered his dozens of questions about my favorite books, movies, and restaurants. He got me telling long stories about places I wanted to travel. I learned a lot about Jason, too. Despite the six year age difference, we'd always been friendly and close, but we didn't really talk about ourselves or our lives as much as we did about our past and our parents. It was great to meet this other Jason - we didn't have the same taste in movies or music but he was engaging and funny. We almost missed the movie because we were having such a good time.

Later that night, the rain stopped but the water still hung heavy in the air. I was tired of being stuck inside all day, so I dangled my feet in the pool and read as well as I could by the lights on the patio.

"Kate?" Jason poked his head out of the sliding glass door, "you out here in the dark?"

"It's light enough. I just wanted some time to read outside." Truthfully, I hadn't gotten very far into my book.

"I need to tell you something." His earnestness made me uncomfortable. I'd had too many terrible conversations that started off that way in the past two years and my day with Jason had been so close to perfect I wanted to hold on to it for a little longer before my life went back to being a shitty shambles. "I'm afraid you might be mad."

"Alright, out with it," I sighed, setting my book aside, "but if this is about farts, I'm going to throw you in the pool." He laughed, caught off guard, but I could see as he came closer that he was genuinely nervous. I'd spent the past week being constantly surprised at what a handsome man he'd turned into, but his worry made him look like a teenager again.

"It's not about farts. You can throw me in the pool if you want after I tell you, but not my phone, OK? Unless dad gropes a French maid while they're on vacation, I'm not going to get another one any time soon." He eased down next to me and put his feet in the pool next to me. It was just a trick of the light through the water, but his feet looked twice as long as mine. He sighed, building up courage, and showed me the screen on his phone. "I made you a profile on this dating site."

"What?" I grabbed at the phone, he kept his hand wrapped firmly around it.

"No. Throwing. Promise?"

"Yes. Now show me this bullshit." I scrolled through the profile, and the whole scheme hit me at once. Of course this is what he was doing. The bikini picture, the self-esteem pep talk, the questions at lunch, all of it had been to put together a dating profile. "Holy fucking shit, Jason. Did you see this in a movie or something? Why would you think this was a good idea?"

"I don't know," his dark eyes were pained under heavy lashes, "I was tired of seeing you look sad all the time. I thought," he shook his head, staring down at his feet in the water, shoulders slumped forward. "Never mind, it's stupid. I'll take it down. I'm sorry."

"No, it was...sweet? Misguided. Definitely misguided, but sweet." It killed me to see him so down. Was that what I'd looked like to him since we'd been home? No wonder he'd tried to fix it in the best way a twenty year old who'd never been out on more than three dates with the same woman would. I wanted to hear him laugh again, for this not to be terrible between us. Even if it was all for a dumb teen sitcom-grade plot, I'd had the best day of any I could remember since Matthew and I had decided to divorce. I checked him lightly with my shoulder. "Did I at least get any good responses?"

"Oh, man," Jason said, obviously relieved I wasn't going to storm off. "I have a totally new respect for what girls have to go through. I put that profile up four hours ago and I've already seen three different junk pics and been invited to fly out to Oklahoma City for a weekend with a wealthy older gentleman."

"How wealthy?" I joked.

"You should be asking 'How much older?'" Jason put his arm around my back, his hand resting on the concrete by my hip. "There was one guy who was actually pretty promising. Here," he took the phone from me with his free hand and scrolled through to the messages, pulling up one for me to see and clicking through to the profile. "This guy. He's twenty-eight, a financial planner, likes movies with subtitles, Thai food, and three of your favorite bands. Good looking too, don't you think?" He was, with short, dark curly hair and blue eyes crinkled with his smile. It was a nice smile, slightly crooked like Dad's. The thought sent a shock of desire twined around with shame right through me.

"Ok, let me look at his profile on my own tonight. I'll send him a message if I like him and we'll see how it goes."

"So you're not going to push me in the pool?"

"Not for this. Your heart was in the right place, even though you did it like a dumbass. We'll see how it goes." We sat there in silence, and he moved his hand to my upper arm, pulling me closer to his side in a half-hug.

"I really am sorry, Katie," he whispered. "About Matthew. I loved him, too. I thought you two were going to be one of those old couples that still walks around holding hands in the park, like eighty years old."

"Yeah. Me, too."

"I thought you'd found a way to not be Mom and Dad."

"Yeah," I leaned my head in and rested it on his shoulder, "me, too." I closed my eyes and focused on the feeling of my feet swishing in the water, on the heat of his side pressed against mine, on his smell of fabric softener and deodorant over the chlorine of the pool. I let him fall away from my mind as my brother and just held on to the part of the moment that was being held by a man who loved me. We were silent for what seemed like a long time, and I was grateful.

"Kate?"

"Mmm?"

"Can I tell you something else?" He didn't sound as nervous as telling me about the dating profile, but it didn't sound like it was going to be anything to joke about, either.

"Of course." He took a deep breath.

"Last summer, when I was home from college, Mom told me that Dad wasn't my real father. Is that true?"

"What?" I sat up sharply and looked at him. His expression was tense, not joking.

"Did she ever tell you that?"

"No!"

"I wasn't sure. I mean, she was drunk. Really, really drunk. It was two in the morning and Dad still wasn't home from 'working late.' I was sitting up with her out here by the pool because I couldn't stand listening to her bump around in the house." We were quiet again, not looking at each other, his hand rubbing slowly between my shoulder and my elbow. I thought about how different we looked, how anyone seeing us at the mall together that afternoon probably wouldn't have thought we were brother and sister.

"Jason, do you really think that's true?"

He looked down at me, the tips of our noses a half inch apart. The shadow falling on his face made his expression impossible to read now. "Would it make a difference?"

I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think. "No," I exhaled at last, "you'd still be my jerkwad baby brother."

The following Friday night, I had a date with Greg, the guy from the website with the great smile. I had originally packed my two suitcases to come out here with the plan of lying out by the pool and slinking around miserably for three months, so anything acceptable for a date was still in storage in another state. After another trip to the mall and actually listening to Jason's advice, I had a blue floral sundress and a soft white crochet cardigan. No skulls, no flames, no dice. I had reminded Jason that the first picture Greg had ever seen of me was in a bikini, showing off my tattoo. Jason had reminded me that Greg was a financial planner so I had to square it up a bit. I looked great and felt confident as I headed out to Basil Thai. Jason made me turn and show off for him before I could leave the house. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my forehead, "Any man would be crazy not to fall for you, Kate. I won't be waiting up for you tonight, if you know what I mean." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Two hours later, I opened the front door as quietly as I could and shuffled into the living room, crushed under humiliation. Thankfully, Jason wasn't there. I couldn't hear him in the kitchen and I didn't see him in the pool. I'd been so distracted when I pulled into the driveway, I hadn't even noticed if his car had been in the garage. If I was lucky, he was out, too. I just needed some time to myself to process what had happened before I had to explain it to him. I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. No, that woman wasn't me at all. She didn't have any darkness to her. She was going out on dates. She hadn't given her whole life over to a husband who wouldn't touch her and disgusting fantasies about her father. She was wearing a sweet little dress under a lacy drape of yarn. A wave of rage and frustration overcame me and pulled me under.

"Whose fucking clothes are these?" I kicked off my sandals and tore off the cardigan, wadding it up and throwing it as hard as I could at the wall. "Who fucking wears this?" I grabbed the hem of the dress and pulled it up over my head until it stuck on my shoulders. It enraged me even more. "Grrraaaaaaaah!" I yanked it the rest of the way off and tossed it to the floor. I hadn't bothered to wear a bra under my strappy little dress, so I was staring at myself in nothing but a pair of lace panties I'd bought in what was now clearly forlorn hope. I stomped off through the sliding glass door and walked right into the pool so I could scream as much as I wanted under water.