He let go, picked up my bag to take it to my room. I just stood there, staring at him. I remember having to tell myself to breathe as I bent to exchange greetings with a small carpet of ecstatic, welcoming spaniels.
“Devon,” he called back into the house. “Your sister’s here!”
I heard a squeal from upstairs and caught a wink from Paul.
“Nice to have you here, Sam,” he said.
Devon flew by him on the stairs and launched herself into my arms. I was lost in BFF catch-up for the rest of the afternoon.
Paul BBQ’d his special ribs that night and we had a pleasant evening, just the three of us talking. I didn’t mention Jessica and neither did they.
It was fun, a good time, but my dreams that night were confusing.
+
There wasn’t a lot of setup required (pool party, remember?) but there was a volleyball net to raise, stacks of towels to lay out and the bar by the pool to be restocked — routine stuff, undemanding, but it gave Devon and me more time to talk.
People didn’t start arriving until early afternoon. Paul was there to greet them, but always disappeared once Devon and I showed up to lead them to the pool.
.
The setting…
Be amazed.
There was a 25-yard pool suitable for Paul’s endless lengths and a smaller, irregular-shaped soaking pool beside it. The room was set out with warm-colored timber — walls, beams and ceiling, rising from maybe 10 feet on one side up to maybe twice that on the other. It was a warm, golden place and, except for the snowdrifts built up against the outside windows, it was almost possible to believe that it was summertime. Two windows looked down from inside the house, one from the family room upstairs and one from the master bedroom beside it.
A net had been stretched from side to side in the shallow end for the always-hotly-contested volleyball game. Water volleyball, you ask? It’s a thing; you can look it up. Playing volleyball waist-deep in water is a very different experience. Sprinting to reach a fast-moving ball isn’t possible and it helps to have a lot of people. Diving for the ball is possible, but it takes a long time to get up and teammates have to cover the gap. It’s different, but a lot of fun.
The usual crowd gradually drifted in. It was the same twenty or thirty people every year; some of us friends as far back as grade school. Oh, there’d be the odd new boyfriend or girlfriend, but it was always the same core crew.
My last boyfriend and I had split up when he’d enlisted in the Coast Guard; Devon and I were just about the only single girls there. As much as the party theme was romance and couples, I found that I didn’t mind being there solo. Jerry and I hadn’t been all that solid anyway, mainly just the person sitting highest on each other’s friends list.
As couples arrived, the fun slowly built. It was a time for greetings, for admiring new swimsuits, new tattoos — and a couple of rings not present the last time we’d all been together. Deep down inside, every woman likes looking at diamond rings on other people’s fingers. Everyone being of age, there was a self-serve bar and spirits went both down and up.
Before there were enough people to properly fill two volleyball teams, the usual chicken fight started — boys standing in waist-deep water, girls on their shoulders. While the object was to unseat the riders, the boys weren’t permitted to do anything but try to keep their balance. That left the ‘fighting’ to the women on their shoulders. Like that made a difference in ferocity…
There were ten people in the pool initially. Bruce and Daga were the reigning champions from pool parties going back three years. Not very surprisingly, the other four couples independently decided that the champs would be the centre of attention for the everyone else.
The four men surged forward, bringing their women into grasping range of Daga. She and Bruce were outnumbered, but Bruce could have played linebacker and Daga was built to scale. His arms clinging to her legs, he fought for balance as the other women shoved and yanked. Daga herself was hardly inactive; her pushes and lunges almost toppled a couple of girls off their ‘mounts’ and laughter grew from the sidelines.
It was, I suppose, inevitable that a bikini tie would fail. Looking back, the wonder is that it hadn’t happened before. With a whoop of triumph, Daga’s arm emerged above the mêlée, waving a bra. A slim hand reached for it, but a laughing Daga sent it sailing high out of reach to land in the deep end.
Amid the shrieks and laughter, Missy Carson’s now-topless state didn’t immediately register with Sam Tanaka, the boy holding her. Blushing wildly, Missy initially covered her breasts with her hands as Sam kept pushing into the fray. Eventually, she shrugged and dropped them to cover Sam’s eyes. Puzzled, the boy backed away until Missy lifted her hands and he looked up.
From where I sat by the side of the pool, I could see the expression on Sam’s face. He spun in the water as he looked for Missy’s bra.
Missy gave up, leaned down and said something to him. The side-lines laughter was so loud that I couldn’t hear, but I saw Sam nod grimly and wade back into battle. Missy was out for blood — or, at least, Daga’s own top.
It turns out that it’s a lot harder to pull somebody off their boyfriend than it is to deliberately pull off their swimsuit. Within a minute, Daga’s bra went flying out of the scrum, landing on the brick deck.
Keep in mind that Daga is one of those people whose poise would remain undented were they dropped stark-naked into the middle of the dance floor at the mayor’s annual ball. I doubt she gave her bra a thought and it’s possible that Bruce didn’t even notice. Not that it really mattered, for the tall girl had shifted strategy herself and two more swimsuit tops soon went flying. The sound of laughter from both players and spectators was thunderous.
The game continued, but the ice had been broken. Some of the young women watching from the sidelines, accustomed to open-minded vacation beaches anyway, looked around, thought about it briefly and quietly removed their own tops.
I was considering it myself when I caught sight of Paul in his second-floor bedroom window overlooking the pool.
His face bore a wistful expression, an echo of earlier happiness, I suppose. There was a slight smile on his face, but I think it was more due to his pleasure at the sight of his pool being filled with happy people rather than seeing his daughter’s friends topless. That would be so like Paul…
His eyes swept the pool, came to rest on me. For some reason, my hand fell away from my bikini ties and I turned my head to look instead in time to see Daga and Bruce triumph yet again. When I looked back at the window, Paul was gone and the curtains had been drawn.
I went looking for Devon. I wasn’t the only one still fully dressed, but I was definitely in the minority. She still had her top on, too; maybe she thought it would be too weird to be topless in front of her own father.
“Why don’t you invite your dad to join us?” I yelled to her over the shouts and laughter. “We all know each other, right? You know he’d be welcome. Everybody likes him.”