Daughter Swap Down By The River

It was August and my loneliness was coming to a boiling point, right as the heat in the North Carolina mountains reached its own unbelievable crescendo. No one could remember a hotter summer.

My family, however, had moved from southern California, and the nearly-90-degree days didn't seem that bad. My dad would just shake his head and laugh when the locals complained to him. "I thought these mountain types were tough." He was always finding things to feel vindicated about.

Almost always, when people found out we were from California, something in their demeanor would change, they'd become cold, pissed that we were buying up cheap property none of the locals could afford. But my dad's intentions had been purely good in moving us here. California kids were spoiled, insulated, out of touch according to him, and he wasn't wrong: none of the kids I went to school with knew how to change a tire or what poison ivy looked like.

The idea was to give us a little bit of real-world education, get us aquatinted with how the rest of the world lives, far away from all the obsession and status and stuff. My dad was a drummer and a burner, but he'd made a fair amount of money with a couple of music spots on Netflix shows and commercials. Even just a fraction of his savings bought us—me, my kid brother, my mother, and him—a pretty little A frame situated on a particularly deep part of the river cutting through a town of less than 4,000 people.

So we bought some paddle boards and a chicken coop and caravanned to the east coast in a beat up old RV. In no time I found I had been too optimistic about the move: I had envisioned the summer being full of southern boys and bonfires, crushes and maybe something like the summer camp I had attended as a child. I couldn't have been more wrong.

The first few weeks were busy enough, setting up the house and buying out the local greenhouse of cucumber and tomato starts for the garden. But once that had all been done, and I had ripped through all the old romance paperbacks that had been left in the basement by the last tenants, I realized what had happened: I was a 19-year-old girl who had moved to the middle of nowhere with her parents and her little brother, and an endless, empty summer lay before me.

Our neighbors—Daryl, Kristy, and their daughter, Skye, my age, and a son, JD, around my brothers'—seemed promising at one point, but it became evident very quickly that they hated our guts. They were real, true redneck types, and didn't need any reason to hate us other than that we were outsiders from out west. But we inadvertently gave them more reasons in our first few weeks here: our chickens had wandered too close to their property lines, a floodlight shone too bright into their bedroom windows. My dad drove around an old hearse—a relic from his rocker days that transported a surprising amount of sound equipment and instruments—which the neighbors found sacrilegious and offensive. Mostly, though, they hated the nudity.

Growing up, I never knew there was anything

odd

about our family—maybe it was the part of California we were from, or that my parents had cultivated their inner circle over the years to exclusively reflect their specific lifestyle. But I had never noticed or even known that other kids' families weren't naked all the time at home, like mine was. Mom and dad were often nude around us and their friends, and their friends nude around us; it's just how it always was. They weren't nudists, per se, but if we were swimming in the backyard pool, we were naked. Spending a day at the beach? Nude beach. Some really warm days, we'd be lounging naked around the house. Mom doing chores totally naked

should

have seemed weird to me, as I had learned over the past few years, but it just didn't. And neither did being naked around my father. We were just open like that, and it wasn't out of the ordinary for him to comment, offhandedly, about my body, noting new developments or giving me specific compliments. To him, that was just being a loving father.

So it never occurred to me to put clothes on down by the river at our new house. My father and I both swam and tanned nude—it was convenient, natural, and I liked never having to worry about tan lines. I was old enough now to know this wasn't the norm with other families, but I never really gave it a second thought. Our new neighbors, though, had taken issue with it almost immediately. It had been the source, first, of passive-aggressive signs nailed into the sand—"NO TRESSPASSING, NO NUDITY, private beach!!!!!"—and then full-on aggressive confrontations. But both of my parents still insisted that Daryl and Kristy were the backwards ones.

The way they responded to us baffled me: they were ostensibly reverent Christians who judged us for not going to church on Sundays, but they drank and smoked every night of the week. They cared deeply about nudity, apparently, but cursed and screamed at each other so loudly that we knew the ins and outs of nearly all of their family drama. There was so much about the South that confused me that I had basically given up ever understanding it.

Most days, I followed the same routine: get out of bed at noon, toast with peanut butter, sit on the porch and devour the latest novel I had ordered overnight from Amazon, and then an afternoon dip in the river. Dinner and bed promptly followed.

It had been one of those days, to the letter, and I was just dozing off in the lounge chair on the deck when my father tossed a beach towel over my face. He stretched out, face to the sun, and I tried my best to avoid making eye contact with his soft dick, which was flopping around exactly at eye level, inches from my face.

"Go for a swim?"

I whipped the towel back at him. "Already did." I tucked my chin into my book and slumped down, resolved to stay put.

"Come on, Anna. Your mother's given me about a hundred things to do in the garden, and I need a break." He made a noose out of his hands and wrapped it around his neck.

I stared at him, emotionless. "Humor me, kid. Please."

We swam for an hour or so, floating on our backs or laying on the rocky beach; intermittently, I sprayed my arms and legs with sunblock or had dad rub my back with the thick, white lotion. We'd waved at a couple kayakers in long sleeves and sun hats who floated by, stunned by our nakedness. After reading a few chapters of my book, I dozed off in the sun for what felt like just a moment, but when I opened my eyes the sky had darkened, and dad wasn't lying next to me anymore. I propped myself up on my elbows, scanning the riverbank for any sign of him.

He was a ways down the riverbank, just out of earshot, chatting with Darryl. Chatting wasn't exactly it, I realized as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. It was more like yelling, and I could see both of their arms gesticulating wildly. Darryl, specifically, was gesturing in my direction.

Oh shit.

I hopped up and made my way over, wondering if our chickens had gotten loose or if our dog had bitten one of Daryl's children.

"Anna, sweetie, go back inside. This doesn't concern you," dad said, pointing up the bank to our house.

Daryl threw his hands up, exasperated, and turned toward me. "Actually, it does concern you. It concerns all you people." Darryl stared at me, trying very hard, it seemed, to maintain eye contact.

"I don't know what you—" I began, before he cut me off.

"It's just...we 'bout had enough," Daryl said, his voice filled with anger. "We just had fucking enough."

"Hey, let's not use that kind of language with—" dad started.

Daryl's face turned bright red. "Language? You're fuckin' concerned with language? You're walking around my property with your dick out and you're concerned with my language?"

I reflexively attempted to cover myself with my hands, cupping the flesh of my breasts, which now felt exposed in the light breeze that had begun to descend with the evening.

Daryl pointed back towards his house. "I've got an eighteen-year-old girl in there who's fucking ovulating, and you're walking around her swinging your dick around. I just can't fucking take this shit anymore, man."

My dad shook his head. "I just don't see it that way, Daryl."

I glanced up at their house and saw Skye watching the altercation through the window. I felt intensely embarrassed as I looked back over at my dad, his penis waving back and forth as he argued with Daryl. When I looked back up, she had disappeared from the window.

Great

, I thought.

She thinks we're total freaks.

"And you," Daryl said, turning towards me. "I've got a son on the cusp of puberty and you're walking around looking like this," he said, gesturing at my breasts. "He doesn't need any more encouragement, trust me, he doesn't need any—"

My dad stepped between me and Daryl, putting his arm across my chest protectively. "Hey, she's not doing anything wrong," he said.

But Daryl was done with listening. He turned to my father and bellowed, "If you all want to expose yourself to minors, go find somewhere else to do it!" His booming voice ricocheted off the rockface around us.

My dad raised his hands in the air, defeated, and had reached for me, presumably to guide me back home, when we all heard the thud of the door above us. Skye ambled down from the porch to where we were standing at the river and asked, "What's going on, dad?"

She chewed on a fingernail, staring out at us from under heavy, dark eyelids caked with eyeliner. I was always surprised by her height—from afar, she looked like a normal size, if petite, but up close, she just reached my shoulder and was delicate like a bird. She wore black boots and ripped jean shorts, a toughness that might perhaps be a sort of overcompensation for her height and size. She had dark black hair, messy, curly, and knotted, and translucent skin. She looked at my father and I with bored curiosity, scanning us up and down. I saw her rest her gaze on my father's flaccid dick, which he refused to cover. He just stood with his hands on his hips, thrusting it forward into the air while I tried to coax the fleshy bits of my breasts to fit into the palms of my hands.

"Skye, baby, this is none of your business," Daryl said, his eyes still fixed on me.

It was clear Skye was going to make it her business, and it became evident she had been listening to the whole altercation when she said, "Honestly it don't bother me."

"Excuse me?" Daryl said, turning to stare at her with a mix of indignation and incredulity.

"I said it don't bother me, their whole freaky nudist thing," she said, waving her hand in our direction. She locked eyes with my father. "In fact I kinda like it," she said, her thumb posed between her lips.

Daryl grabbed her by her shoulders and tried to push her towards the house. "I can't fuckin' handle you when you're ovulating, god damn, kid."

I couldn't help it anymore; I laughed. "It's not like she's not a dog in heat," I said. "And why do you know when she's ovulating anyways?" I could see Skye smirk as she pulled away from her father's grasp. "You might think it's weird that we swim naked, but I think it's weirder that you care about your daughter's ovulation schedule."

"Okay, okay," dad said, waving me down. "Let's all just take a beat. Anna, why don't you and Skye let us dads talk it out, okay? I'm sure we can find a resolution here."

My dad and Daryl sat on the porch talking while Skye and I skipped rocks at the lip of the river, watching the sun descend behind the mountains. We didn't have much to say to one another, and kept looking over our shoulders at our fathers, deep in what looked like serious conversation. I kept overhearing encouraging bits—"never meant nothing" and "would be forgotten"—and eventually, we heard the sound of two beer bottles clinking, seeming to cement an agreement, perhaps.

Our fathers approached our post by the river, suddenly appearing chummy, as if they had been friends in school. "Why don't you come inside, Anabelle," my father said. "Mr. Henderson has very kindly invited us inside."

I glanced back and forth at them, and then at Skye, who was looking back at me with the same confusion. Daryl gripped my shoulder playfully. "C'mon. It'll be fun."

Begrudgingly, and wearily, we followed them up to the small wooden house I had wondered about so many times before. The inside was dark, smelled vaguely of mold, but was cozy: wide planks of dark walnut flooring, brightly colored wallpaper vaguely reminiscent of another era, fresh floral arrangements that gave off a powdery, ancient aroma. I ran my fingers along a slightly dusty wicker bookshelf in the corner, upon which were neat rows of ceramic angels carefully placed in innocent scenes.

"That would be Kristy's work you're admiring," Daryl said as he filled four coffee mugs with portions from a bottle of Jim Beam. "She's in Charlotte visiting her mother right now, or else you'd be in for something a little more substantial than whiskey." He chuckled and threw open a cabinet, banging around in its insides. "Although I do have a tin of oysters in here somewhere..."

"All Dad can cook is frank and beans," Skye said, throwing herself down on the worn leather loveseat in the middle of the room.

"Damn good frank and beans," Daryl added. He brought over the glasses, placing one gently in my hand. I looked down at the thick, dark liquid, the alcohol hitting my nose. "Sign of good will," he said, gesturing for us all to come over to the seating area. I knelt down onto the rug and made myself comfortable on a couple of tattered throw pillows. Daryl sat down next to me, placing his glass on the glass coffee table between us. My father, I noticed, looked mischievous—it was the only word I could think of to describe it—sitting down next to Skye. Like he knew something I didn't. I watched him take her in curiously, almost as if her dark eyeliner and heavy boots were amusing to him. He placed a hand casually on her knee, drawing tiny circles with his thumb.

Meanwhile, I felt suddenly very cold and very exposed: the air conditioning unit hummed in the corner, and I felt very aware of being naked in a stranger's house. My nipples became so hard that they ached—I wanted desperately to pull a cushion over myself or wrap myself in one of the quilts neatly folded and placed on the back of the couch, but I felt it would be an intrusion, so I just tried to cover myself as best as I could and took a gulp of the whiskey in front of me.

Daryl's attention turned to me. "So, where do you go to school, Anabelle?" he asked, swirling the Beam around in his glass. I answered as best as I could, given the curiosity of the situation and the strong drink that went straight to my head. There followed a string of questions from Daryl—what I liked to do on the weekends, what sport was my favorite to play, did I have any boyfriends around town. I almost didn't notice Daryl's hand drawing a faint line up my back, almost playfully, like how someone would pet a cat. He rubbed up and down, softly, listening to me chatter on about the books I had read already this summer. I could feel myself becoming intoxicated by his attention. The feeling of being listened to, stroked carefully, regarded with interest—it had been so long since I had really even been able to talk to someone other than my parents and brother, had been so long since anyone had really seen me.

I became so hypnotized by the rhythmic stroking of my back and the slow creeping of his hands across my hips, his eyes holding mine, that it took me a while to notice what was happening on the loveseat beside us. Skye now sat on my father's lap, stroking his hair, winding herself around him like a boa. His hands gripped the mounds of flesh around her hips, pulling her into him. Daryl's hands snuck slowly around my middle, cupping my breasts softly from behind. He pulled me up against him, so that I could feel his breath in my ear and smell the warm, musky smell of him.

I looked back at him, then at my father, who met my gaze. "Nothing to worry about, sweetheart," Daryl said into my ear. Almost as if he could read my mind, my confusion, he said, "Skye and me—well, we do this all the time."

"D-do what all the time?" I managed to squeak, feeling the throbbing between my legs as loud as pounding in my ears. I could see in the corner of my eye that Skye had now sunk down onto her knees before my dad on the couch and was taking his cock in her mouth, drool messily leaking from her lips. Dad's head tipped back in pleasure, but through half-closed eyes he locked eyes with me with intensity. Everything had moved so fast. "What's going on?" I asked, trying to muster the willpower to remove Daryl's hands from me, when all I wanted was to pull them down between my legs—surely there was a puddle beneath me on the carpet. I was scared to check.

"Your father and I had a little idea," Daryl said, rolling my nipple between his two fingers. Against my leg I could feel his hard dick, pulsing with an apparent desire. "A way that we could...come to an agreement."

"Well, sweetheart—you now, Daryl feels wronged, and I do too," Dad said, one hand gently gripping a knot of hair on the back of Skye's head. "And, I mean, Jesus, this girl is horny as hell anyways," he laughed, gesturing down at Skye, whose eyes were rolled back in her head as she hungrily bobbed up and down on my father's cock, looking very satisfied.

Daryl chuckled next to me. "She's nearly always raring to go."

Dad sighed and looked at me, cocking his head to the side. "This is a fair trade, pumpkin," Dad said. "Trust me." I could hardly believe I was making eye contact with my dad as he got his dick sucked.

The weirdness I should have felt at the prospect of fucking Daryl in front of my dad was overshadowed by the intense, growing fire that was spreading throughout my abdomen.

It's not like I'm fucking my dad,

I thought.

Just fucking...adjacent.

In the same room.

"Okay, just like, don't look," I said. A smile spread over my dad's lips as I watched his eyes trace my body, Daryl's pervy hands fondling me hungrily.

"Right, right, no looking," he said, turning his attention back to Skye, who was making loud, slurping noises and little, kittenish moans.

I hoped his attention really was entirely focused on Skye as I straddled Daryl on the floor, rubbing my dripping pussy against the bulge in his shorts. I felt like I was in heat—I had never been this turned on before. I pressed my mouth into his, our tongues deep in each other's mouths. The scruff on his face was rough, and tickled me as he kissed down my neck, taking a nipple into his mouth and sucking so hard I wondered if something would come out.

Daryl lifted me in his arms and placed me on my back, crouching over me, drawing his wet tongue over the length of my body. He buried his face between my legs, moaning as I bucked up into him, begging for more. He sucked and licked at me hungrily, slurping my juices, and only briefly came up for air to turn to my father and say, "Man, you've got a tasty fuckin' daughter over here. I mean, fucking delicious." I pushed his head back down into me, grinding my clit on his jawbone.

"Oh really?" my father said between low moans and grunts. "She takes after her mother, then."

"You're a lucky man," Daryl said, though it was mostly muffled by my crazed grinding. I felt myself on the verge of orgasm. "If I had a daughter this delicious, I wouldn't be able to keep my hands off of her. Really, you should taste this."

I looked up at my dad, who was watching me frantically rub my pussy against Daryl's face. Almost so quiet I couldn't hear it, a near whisper, my dad said, "You have no idea how badly I want to."

I dug my fingers into the back of Daryl's neck as I began to ride wave after wave of orgasm, his lips wrapped around my clit. "Atta girl," I heard my father say as I moaned and sighed—could he really tell I was coming just from my sounds?