Page 3 of Daddy’s Naive Little Neighbour

I hear her splashing in the water, more than I see her. The sound is relaxing, especially with the breeze through the trees and the distant sound of neighbourhood children playing. I grow more and more fond of my new home every day, and today is no exception. After a little while, I start to hear the neighbour girl humming to herself, as the repetitive splashing of a swimming stroke ceases, and a glimpse through the gap in the fence shows that she’s floating on her back now, relaxing in the water, staring up at scraps of blue sky overhead.

I don’t know the song she’s humming, but her voice is soft and sweet and the sound of it distracts me from anything else, until I hear the soft sound of splashing once more, and look over to see her standing in the shallow end, undoing the straps of her bikini, loosening it until it floats away on the surface of the water. Her back is towards me as she slips towards the deep end, floating on her back once again.

I sit up, eager like a man half my age to get a better view, then realize that the distance and angle won’t cut it. I creep through the overgrowth of my own backyard, towards the fence, until I manage the view I desire.

Her breasts beneath the surface of the water are pert and small, nipples pointed skyward, blush against the paleness of her skin, all of her tinted blue by the tiled interior of the pool. Her hair is a black halo around her head, and her soft humming hasn’t stopped. The water covers her ears, and stifles the noise of the world around her, and I watch her, stealing the sight of her, until I hear the sound of a car door slamming. One of her parents is home.

She doesn’t hear it. I can’t shout to warn her. I can only crouch frozen where I am, watching as the glass back door of the neighbour’s house slides open, and there’s a furious, startled gasp. And then, “Bethany Amelia Waterson!”

Bethany thrashes in the water, rolling over and diving beneath the surface, poppping up again in the shallow end with her pale cheeks flaming crimson and her arms crossed against her chest. She casts about the pool for her bikini top, but the blue of it is camouflaged in the water, and she fails to see it.

“You little whore,” her mother’s voice seems to waver between a whisper and a shriek, desperate to scold her daughter, but terrified for her reputation in the neighbourhood. “Get inside now, Bethany. What if the neighbour had seen you?”

The neighbour has, and I wince on Beth’s behalf, and watch her struggle out of the pool with one arm still wrapped around her chest, and the other pulling her up the pool ladder. She doesn’t even bother with her towel, just runs into the house still soaking wet, and her mother slams the sliding glass door behind her.

Then the yelling starts. I can hear it through the closed door, all the way on the other side of the fence, and my heart breaks a little bit for this poor girl, and the way her parents treat her. I remember being her age, and being home with my folks for the summer, past the point when I’d had my first taste of freedom out in the world. I love my mom and dad, and they never treated me like this, but it was still stifling to be trapped under someone else’s roof and subject to their rules.

I trudge back over to my lounge chair and my beer and my magazine, but my afternoon feels a little bit ruined. So much for my innocent (maybe not so innocent) fantasies about the girl next door. As I head back inside, my fantasy shifts, away from the idea of the girl next door and towards what it would be like to make a home for her, here. Right beside her parents, where they can watch her being treated better than they ever treated her, because she’ll be living her own life, and not theirs, under my roof, where she’s mine. It’s a wild, ballsy idea. And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get me hot as hell.

The next day, I watch the neighbours drain the pool.

CHAPTER FIVE

Bethany

I didn’t know I could still be grounded, but I guess you learn something new every day.

My parents have gone for the weekend, ostensibly to take the boat out, and while they’re gone, they’ve taken away my computer, my consoles, and locked them up in an old footlocker in the attic. I’ve been left alone at home to look after the house, and complete a list of chores around the yard if I want to get my stuff back.

All for the high and terrible crime of taking my top off in the privacy of my own backyard. My parents had the pool put in back when I was on the high school swim team, and they still fostered dreams of me swimming competitively—those fell apart when I tore my rotator cuff after years of swimming through the already painful injury. Now I only swim to relax and because I enjoy it, but the edge of my mom and dad’s disappointment never quite left.

Anyway, they’ve drained the pool, and the biggest chore on the list they’ve left for me to get done by Monday is to pressure wash it clean.

I don’t want to do that, though, and I woke up early on the morning they left, specifically to call Meghan and complain about my trashfire of a life.

It’s early afternoon in England, and thank fuck my parents didn’t take my phone, so I can call my best friend while still lying in bed, my face illuminated by the glow of the screen.

She doesn’t pick up the video call the first time I try, despite clearly being online, but eventually she calls me back over voice.

“Hello, Bethany,” she greets me, placid and unflappable, in a way that the Meghan I remember never was. “How are you?”

“My parents are the worst,” I whine at her, our roles reversed from what they ever were before, where I was always the straight one, and Meg was always the melodramatic whiner. “They took all my stuff and if I want it back, I have to pressure wash the pool and get the backyard in shape. It’s like a hundred degrees here this weekend and I’m going to fucking die.”

“That sounds unpleasant,” Meghan agreees, from half a world away. I wonder why she didn’t want to video chat. Maybe because in the last few videos I’ve made a few comments about how her sugar daddy likes to dress her up like a school girl and I find it kind of weird and uncomfortable.

Right now it seems like a small price to have to pay for whatever other freedom Meg enjoys, or at least, a strict obedience of her own choosing. Maybe it’s because I’m still mad, but I heave a heavy sigh and mutter, “Right around now, I kinda wish I had your deal with somebody. Some hot older guy who only treats me like a child when he wants to fuck me, not when I’m just trying to live my god damn life.”

Meghan gasps at this. Meghan never used to gasp. “Bethany. Don’t be vulgar.”

Being vulgar used to be Meghan’s job, but a year later, and this “Professor” of hers has pretty much trained that out of her. “We got a new neighbour,” I blurt out, desperate for Meghan’s approval in the way I always used to be when we were younger. “And he’s old, but he’s hot. I was watching him out my window the other day.”

“Oh?”

There’s the first spark of Meg’s interest, and I chase it like a child chasing after a butterfly. “Yeah. He’s gotta be like, at least twice my age, about as old as my dad. But like, fit? I think he used to be a contractor. He’s really built and he wears tight black t-shirts and his name is Marshall. I’ve never talked to him before, but he’s always out front of the house next door. I set up my webcam to watch him.”

I’m babbling, because I can feel desire bubbling up inside me again, along with the wild, crazy scheme of wanting to seduce the neighbour while my parents are out of town, out of some weird desire for revenge and also because I’m super horny. I don’t even know where I’d start. But Meghan would.

And her facade finally cracks, I can almost hear it split right down the middle in the few seconds of silence that pass in the wake of my confession, before she says, “So are you gonna fuck him, or what?”