“No kidding,” Allie laughed.
“At least they’re well-behaved.”
“To a point.”
“Mmm.”
We watched through the windows as the girls coated their arms and legs with sunscreen. Emily didn’t, but I wasn’t worried about her. Instead, she helped Susie do her back, while Madison and Carly did the same for each other.
“And helpful,” I added.
“Heathens one minute, civilized the next,” Allie agreed.
They tossed the bottles of sunscreen on the table, and both of them fell over. I had visions of sunscreen oozing onto the wood—it was teak!—but all four girls raced away without a second thought. The dogs followed and leapt into the water with wild abandon, even Molly.
I sighed. I was turning into my parents. In fact, my mother had once said that they’d waited until Erin and I had moved out before they’d bought nice things. My own children were just as careless, thoughtless, and destructive as I’d been.
I brooded for a moment before I reminded myself that it was just stuff, and we could buy more. Then I adjusted my attitude, like I always did. I heard Christy’s voice in my head, Thank you, Mr. Positive.
Mmm. Harumph, harumph.
Allie was smiling at me, which improved my mood a thousand percent.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” I asked.
“Cranberry Snapple?”
“Have to keep the plumbing clean.”
“Oh, it’s clean. That isn’t the problem.”
I shot her a look.
“Yeah, sorry,” she admitted, “we’re flirting again.”
“That’s cool. As long as it’s just friendly.”
“It is.”
I handed her the Snapple and opened one for myself, a lemonade. We drank in silence and watched the mayhem in the pool. I pointedly ignored the sunscreen bottles and focused on the girls instead. They were having fun, and we couldn’t buy that.
“Thanks again for inviting us,” Allie said.
“My pleasure.”
“And I guess we should talk about the swimsuit thing.”
“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I said. “I mean, I’m fine telling the girls they need to wear them. We do it all the time when we have company who aren’t nudists.”
“No, that isn’t fair. Besides, it’s your house.”
“Well, yes,” I agreed, “but you’re our guests. So we’ll do what makes you happy.”
She gave me a sideways look that I couldn’t interpret. Regret? Annoyance? Desire?
“No,” she said at last. “The girls’ll keep bugging me. Besides, it isn’t a big deal.” She gestured at the yard and the forest beyond. We could see the lake through the trees, but only in a few places, and only because the sun scattered off the waves in pinprick flashes.
“I mean, no one can see,” Allie finished.
“No. That’s why we built here, the privacy.”
“It’s nice.” She paused and watched the girls for a moment. “I don’t want them to be ashamed of their bodies. I mean, not like I was.”
“I think we all were,” I said.
“But it’s worse for girls, especially when they start developing. They become women all of a sudden.”
“Only they aren’t,” I agreed.
We’d had this discussion before, several times, in fact. The last one had been recent, too, back in May, when I’d hired a new group of summer interns. I’d chosen four young women, third- and fourth-year architecture students from around the state. I wanted them to start their careers at a company that valued them as architects, not as token hires or ornaments to some executive’s vanity. In spite of that, I had few illusions about their maturity. They might look like women, at least on the outside, but they were still girls on the inside.
Whereas Allie…
I inhaled slowly and kept my libido in check. She wasn’t interested either. She’d made it clear, and I needed to respect it.
She must have been thinking the same thing. “Sorry, I…”
“No need to apologize,” I said evenly.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Anyway… back to the original question. Do we want to let the girls be nudists?”
“I think it’s probably okay, but I’ll support whatever you decide.”
“It’s up to you,” I countered. “I mean, they’re your daughters. Mine grew up with it, so it’s no big deal to them.”
“No, you decide. It’s your house.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. Part of me wanted to err on the side of caution. But part of me—
Me, me, me!
—wanted to see Allie without her swimsuit.
“I think it’s okay,” I said at last. “But… what about you?”
She feigned ignorance. “What about me?”
“Your suit. You should set an example. For the girls.”
“Oh, is that it?” she laughed.
“Of course!”
“You just wanna get me naked.”
“Duh. I even said so.”
“What about you?” she shot back.
“I’ll take off mine right now.” I flipped up the hem of my T-shirt and grabbed the shorts’ drawstring. Allie pursed her lips in anticipation, so I decided to tease her instead. “Well…?”
“Go ahead.”
“And what about you?”
She clearly wanted to, but something stopped her. “I… don’t think so,” she said at last.
I hid my disappointment. “That’s okay.”
“Sorry. I hope you aren’t upset.”
“Nope,” I lied. “I told you, it’s your body.”
“Thank you.”
“Let’s go ahead and tell the girls, though.” At least we can make them happy.
* * *
The girls stripped as soon as we told them. I wasn’t surprised at mine, but Allie’s didn’t even hesitate. All of a sudden I realized that they’d tried it before, probably during a sleepover, and maybe more than once. I glanced at Allie and watched her come to the same conclusion.
Emily drew us back to the present. Her swimsuit landed on the side of the pool with a soggy plop-plop. The other girls tossed their own suits, and water darkened the flagstones in spreading circles where they landed.
Then Susie splashed Carly and streaked up the stairs. Carly raced after her, and they shrieked toward the deep end. At some unspoken signal, they both cannonballed into the water. Spike and Buck paddled after them, and the girls kicked away in a game of chase.
Emily and Madison went the opposite direction, toward the shallow end. Molly climbed the stairs and shook the water from her coat in a rainbow spray of droplets. Then she lay on the warm stone, while the girls stopped on the steps in front of her.
Overhead, the sun climbed toward its zenith and blazed down steadily. The summer haze did little to stop it, and sweat prickled at the small of my back.
“Let’s have a seat.” I gestured toward the shade on the breakfast patio.
Allie joined me, and I righted the sunscreen bottles before I settled into a chair. We watched the girls in silence. The younger ones were playing a game that only they and the dogs understood. The older girls rested with their elbows on the stairs and chatted about who-knew-what. They were pretending to be grown-ups, doing the exact opposite of the younger girls.
“I… had no idea,” Allie said. “I mean, they couldn’t care less. I thought they’d be self-conscious or something. At the very least that they’d need some time to adjust.”
“It’s ’cause they’re kids. They adjust quickly.”
“No. You saw it too. They’ve done this before.”
“Probably,” I agreed. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. “Are you okay with that?”
“I guess,” she said after a moment. “I mean, it could be worse. They could’ve been playing doctor with boys or something.”
I chuckled and didn’t mention Christy’s suspicions about Laurie, that she’d been “playing doctor” with girls. At least Laurie and her friend were teenagers. The other girls were all too young.