Undressed

by Kimberly Derting

  Whatever. There was plenty going on to keep me distracted.

  I went to the bar and got a refill. Too many more of these and I’d need some food too, otherwise I’d end up facedown in the sand.

  As I sipped my drink, I wandered around listening to a couple of the bands that were set up along the beach. Most weren’t half bad. But even better than the bands was the ocean. Even after my harrowing experience, I doubted the rhythmic sound of the waves could ever get old.

  Letting the breeze hit my face, I took a breath and felt my shoulders relax.

  My mom was wrong to keep me away all these years—I belonged here. The water might hate me, but I definitely didn’t hate it.

  And just when I thought I’d found the perfect spot to write a sonnet or a song—an Ode to the Ocean—a voice interrupted my alcohol-induced musings. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Will.

  Just hearing his voice caused my nerve endings to tingle. I wanted to walk away. To hold on to the way he’d made me feel yesterday, when he was in my kitchen and he’d made it clear he was disappointed to find me there rather than Emerson. But I was frozen.

  “Are you following me?” I quipped, hoping he couldn’t read minds, because what I really wanted to know was whether he was shirtless the way Lucas had been. Could I peek without him noticing?

  His voice was husky when he answered, “Would that be so wrong of me, Brown Eyes?”

  I knew he was probably only calling me Brown Eyes because he didn’t know my name, but the fact he’d given me a nickname still made my knees wobbly. When it came to Will I felt like my instincts had gone on sabbatical.

  His feet scratched through the sand until he came to a stop beside me. It was darker here, away from the flickering lights of the tiki torches. The silence that settled over us stretched out, going on for longer than I was comfortable with. I wanted him to say something first . . . anything. But he just stood there. He hadn’t exactly struck me as the silent type, so this felt . . . odd.

  I opened my mouth, deciding I would have to be the one to break the ice. That’s when his skin grazed mine. It was nothing, really. Less than nothing. Just the slightest brush of his elbow, bare where it skimmed my arm. But it was enough to light my entire body up.

  I shivered, despite the warmth of the breeze, and both our heads turned at once. Even in the dark, his eyes were so intense I could have identified the exact shade of green.

  “About yesterday . . .” he started. He didn’t finish. He just shook his head, like I was supposed to know what that meant.

  I didn’t. And then it became even more confusing when his hand closed around my shoulder, his thumb searing a path along my arm.

  This time when I opened my mouth, I wasn’t sure what I planned to say.

  “Hey! You made it. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Noah’s cheerful voice cut through the moment, putting a stop to whatever might have been about to happen.

  Disappointment—or maybe that was relief—unfurled inside me. Considering the mortifying scene in my kitchen yesterday, getting too close to Will was likely a mistake.

  Taking a step back from Will, I saw Noah converging on us with a group of three other guys who looked like his surfer buddies from the day before.

  “What’s up, man?” Noah acknowledged Will as they approached. Will just nodded back at him in a way that made it clear they already knew each other.

  In fact, they all seemed to know one other. A couple of Noah’s friends decided I was worth a second, and even third glance, finding my cleavage more enticing than the ocean. None of them bothered to be sly about it, either.

  Will moved to stand in front of me, blocking their view. “You two have met?” Will asked Noah.

  “Yeah, man,” Noah explained with a sideways grin. “This is Lauren—the girl I was telling you about—the one I rescued yesterday.”

  Awesome. So now Noah was telling people what a hero he was . . . and I was the damsel in distress.

  But I never got the chance to be embarrassed, because suddenly Will spun to face me. His teeth were clenched and the muscle at his jaw twitched. “Are you fucking nuts?” he said. “What the hell were you thinking? Noah told me you don’t even know how to swim . . . and you just . . . what . . . dove right into the ocean to figure it out?” He ran his hand through his already-tousled hair, agitation clear on his face. “I’ve heard a lot of stupid things in my time, but never—never—anything as fucked up as that. You’re lucky you’re not shark bait right now, you know that?”

  I glanced around at Noah and his friends who were all gaping at Will and me. Useless. Then I spun on Will.

  What right did he have to preach at me about anything? I was embarrassed, but more than that, I was furious.

  I stabbed him in the chest with my finger. “No one asked for your input. If I want to learn to swim by jumping off a ship, then I’ll damn sure jump.”

  A couple of Noah’s friends snickered, and I turned to glare at them too. That shut them up, and then I started back in on Will again. “You know what? You’re a piece of work. You come to my place and treat me like crap, then you think you can just apologize . . .”

  I was gearing up to tell him where he could shove his stupid apology, but he cut me off mid-rant when his hand clamped over mine. The expression on his face went rigid, and even in the dark there was no mistaking that all the color had drained from his face.

  “Holy hell,” Will ground out. I had no clue where he was looking, or what he was looking at, but whatever it was, he was even angrier than he’d been at me.

  Scowling, his fingers gripped me even tighter. His absurdly green eyes dropping to mine. “We can talk later. I need to deal with something.”

  Dumbstruck, I watched as he stalked away.

  He was heading straight toward a couple who looked like they’d stolen away from the rest of the crowd. It was hard to see them clearly. For the most part, they were camouflaged by shadows . . . not to mention the way they were practically fused together. The guy’s face was so buried in the curtain of the girl’s long hair that it looked like he was trying to eat her neck.

  But the girl wasn’t exactly pushing him away. Her head was tipped back, and on her face she wore a look of sheer bliss.

  Suddenly, I felt like one of the subscribers to my webcam, like I was spying on something I shouldn’t be. A private moment none of us should be watching.

  Will obviously didn’t agree. I could hear his roar above the waves, and then behind me, one of Noah’s friends muttered, “Aw, shit,” just as Will reached the twosome and I saw his fingers close around the girl’s arm.

  As he yanked her away from the guy, I wasn’t sure who was more shocked by Will’s actions, me or her.

  The guy shouted something along the lines of, “What the hell, man!” but it was hard to make out his exact phrasing. All I knew was that when he caught the look on Will’s face, which even I could make out from all the way over here, he shrank away and kept his mouth shut. I saw Will’s lips move, and from the dark look on his face, I imagined it wasn’t anything pleasant, and then the guy turned tail and fled.

  Chicken shit.

  The girl’s reaction wasn’t nearly as cowardly. She stood her ground. Her expressive face was almost as easy to read as Will’s, even in the dark. She went from astonishment to indignation in about three seconds flat.

  I couldn’t blame her. I was still trying to process the whole scene myself.

  I might’ve thought Will was a jerk before, but I was still having a hard time reconciling the charismatic bartender from The Dunes with the brute I was witnessing now.

  I would have laughed when the girl poked Will in the chest, the same way I had a few minutes earlier, except I was pretty sure nothing about this was even remotely funny. I suspected I had just witnessed Will catching his girlfriend cheating on him.

  Then Will was shouting at the girl again, and I was almost glad I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Her outrage was nothin
g compared to whatever he was unleashing on her now. The poor girl didn’t stand a chance.

  I heard fleeting bits of his words, and even I couldn’t believe the things coming out of his mouth. “How dare you . . . warned you . . .” and something about “. . . should have known better . . .”

  When she burst into tears I thought he might take pity on her, but instead he grabbed her arm again and started to drag her across the sand.

  That’s when she twisted around and punched him. Hard. Right in the face.

  “Daaamn,” one of the guys behind me cracked.

  I told myself to stop watching, that none of this was my business, but I was in too deep. I had to see where this was going.

  Will lifted his hand to his nose, a dazed expression on his face.

  The girl didn’t look the slightest bit apologetic. She looked fed up, and I figured I’d just witnessed the end of something. The two of them stared at each other for several long angry moments.

  And then she stormed off in the opposite direction of the guy who’d been making a meal of her neck.

  Will muttered something under his breath, and then ran his hand under his nose, wiping it across his board shorts, leaving a streak I was pretty sure was blood. Part of me was glad she’d hit him so hard. Maybe he’d gotten what he deserved.

  “Guess poor Will’s in the doghouse,” Noah said, his arm settling heavily over my shoulder.

  Poor Will.

  I wasn’t sure I agreed. I might’ve felt sorry for Will, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d basically backed the girl into a corner. What kind of man treats a woman he cares about—even if he did just catch her with another man—that way? He had no right to manhandle her like some sort of caveman.

  I felt sick, and suddenly the weight of Noah’s arm was suffocating.

  “Where you going?” Noah asked, sounding disappointed when I shrugged out from underneath him. “I thought we were gonna hang out? See where the night takes us.”

  I took off the way I’d come, away from where Will was standing, and where his girlfriend had just gone. I hoped I’d find Emerson, but if I didn’t, that was okay too. She and Lucas were having fun and I didn’t want to spoil that.

  “Thanks but no thanks,” I called back to Noah. “I’m not in the mood for a party tonight. Maybe some other time.”

  But I already knew . . .

  Noah wouldn’t be the guy.

  LAUREN

  I leaned back in one of the wobbly plastic lawn chairs that I’d dragged outside onto our small lanai, where I balanced my laptop on my knees. I’d gotten up early to enjoy the peace and quiet of the morning. We might only have a semi-view of the beach, but I was seriously getting used to the sounds and the smells that came from living this close to the water. I wondered how I would ever go back to living inland again.

  This was the one perk of calling it an early night—no hangover when I’d rolled out of bed at the crack of dawn. Although it was maybe the only perk, because I was pretty sure I’d missed the party to end all parties.

  I never did find Em when I’d decided to leave, not that I’d tried all that hard. I’d made my way home by myself, and by the time I had, the festivities had stretched all the way to our end of the beach. I’d been propositioned and catcalled all the way back. Once I’d locked myself inside, the sounds of the party raging out on the sand had continued late into the night.

  I must’ve been dead to the world by the time Em came home, because I never even heard her sneak in.

  My coffee was starting to get cold, but I sipped it anyway, too lazy to get up and top it off.

  I heard the slider over at Lucas’s place scrape on its tracks. His patio was impossible to miss, littered with an array of surfboards and beach towels left hanging in the sun to dry. There were beach chairs and candles and High Surf Advisory and Clothing Optional Beyond This Point signs that looked so real enough he must have stolen them. In the dark last night, I’d used the colorful string lights he’d hung in crisscrossing patterns as a beacon to pick out my place from the rest.

  I totally didn’t want to be that annoying nosy neighbor in everyone’s business, so when I heard the door rasping closed again, followed by shuffling footsteps, I tried to peek around the small wooden wall that served as a divider between our patios, without actually moving my head.

  But it was no use. The wall wasn’t see-through enough.

  After a few more steps the footsteps froze.

  “Um . . . I . . . Hey, you . . .”

  I didn’t have to see the person sneaking out of Lucas’s place to know who it was; her drawl was thicker in the morning. No wonder I hadn’t heard her come in last night.

  “Oh. My. God!” I gave Emerson my best holier-than-thou once-over. “Are you doing the walk of shame right now?”

  Her hair was a cloud of frizz, looking like blonde cotton candy. Her face was still creased from the sheets, and her clothes were rumpled as she clutched her sandals to her chest. Her grin went from sheepish to brazen as she realized there was no point denying it. “Since when do I have any shame?”

  “Where’s . . .” I nodded toward the house next door. “You know who?”

  She chewed her lip. “Still in bed. I think I might’ve killed him.”

  I took another sip of my cold coffee and passed it to her. “That sounds about right.”

  She dropped her sandals and settled onto the tile patio beside my chair, sitting cross-legged. She took a drink of my coffee, not complaining that it was pretty gross by now—caffeine was caffeine.

  We watched a couple of seagulls fight over a cigarette butt, before one of them realized it wasn’t food and flew away, giving the other full access.

  Emerson finally said, “Sorry about last night. You mad at me?”

  “For what?”

  “Ditching you.” She turned and squinted up at me. “I . . .” She shrugged. “Lucas and me . . . you know.”

  “Gross. Spare me the details.” I reached for the cup. “But it’s fine, really. Besides, I’m pretty sure I ditched you first.”

  “You mean . . . you and what’s-his-name?” When she said what’s-his-name she wasn’t messing with me, she really didn’t remember Noah’s name.

  “No. Nothing like that. I came home by myself.”

  “Aw. That makes me sad.” She made a pouty face for my benefit and then took the coffee again. “So, you never found him?”

  “No, I did.” I thought of Will then, and how, for a second there, when he’d first sneaked up on me, I actually believed maybe there’d been some sort of shift between us. Some change. That maybe . . .

  Maybe, what? I asked myself. Maybe I’d misjudged him?

  Hardly. Not after the blowup I’d witnessed between him and his girlfriend.

  But even if she had cheated on him, he must’ve had some role in it, right? Done something to push her into another man’s arms?

  I wondered what had happened after they’d taken off. Had Will gone after her so they could make up? Or had that been the final straw? The end of them?

  What was wrong with me? Why did I even care?

  “But I got . . .” I tried to decide how to explain my craptastic night. “. . . sidetracked.”

  Emerson nodded, as if I’d just offered a perfectly reasonable explanation. Then she hopped up. “Hey, what are your plans for the day? Wanna go shopping?”

  “Can’t,” I said, grateful to have an excuse. I wasn’t like Emerson, who considered shopping a sport. I nodded toward the computer, still perched on my lap. “I’ve got a date.”

  LAUREN

  At exactly two-thirty that afternoon I was being buzzed through the gates of the Weston Hills Pool Club. Butterflies swirled in my stomach at the thought of what I was about to do.

  Swim lessons.

  I’d been putting this off for the past four years, ever since I’d been out of my parents’ house and old enough to decide for myself. I’d always made some excuse—too busy with school, I didn’t have a wa
y to get myself to lessons, I was broke.

  But then I started making money of my own and I bought a car, and my class load, well, that had never really been an issue. School had always been easy for me, even college. What it really boiled down to was that I was a full-grown woman who was afraid to swim.

  But clearly I wasn’t going to just magically overcome that fear on my own.

  Noah might not have been the hero I’d been hoping for, but he’d been right about that at least: it was time I enlisted some professional help.

  I gripped the steering wheel as I made my way up the long, winding hill toward the entrance. Noah had warned me this place was swank, but when I rounded the final curve and caught a glimpse of the building it seemed less like someplace you took swim lessons and more like an upscale hotel, complete with valet service.

  The butterflies launched into assault mode. I was so out of my element here.

  I was more worried, though, that if I didn’t figure this whole swimming thing out, I might have to admit that my parents had been right all along—swimming was dangerous.

  I’d lived in the shadow of their fears my entire life, even if I’d never heard the whole story behind them.

  I wasn’t stupid though. My mother’s family had fled Cuba when she was just a girl, and there was no way that wasn’t, at least in part, at the root of her anxiety. She never talked about that part of her childhood. It was a taboo subject in our house. But I’d gathered enough information on my own about—those voyages had been treacherous. Overcrowded and plagued with disease and starvation, and those were the boats that had withstood the crossings. Some sank with everyone onboard.

  If I were her, I might not ever want to set foot near water either.

  But that was the thing. I wasn’t her. And for as long as I could remember I’d wanted to swim. Now was my chance.

  After parking my own car—yes, thank you, I can still handle that much myself—I checked in at the front counter. A girl who was barely in puberty slid some release forms across the counter. Basically, I was promising not to sue the club if I drowned—like that made any sense.