by Jody Gehrman
Something hits me ruthlessly upside the head. All at once, my legs sweep out from under me and I’m being thrashed about in the blue-gray world of salt and foam. I figure it’s sad, but at least I’ll drown a highly aroused woman.
I land on the beach with my bikini half off and sand in every crevice.
Clay runs over, trying not to laugh.
“You okay?” he asks, bending down to help me to my feet.
“Jesus,” I say, and choke for two minutes straight. He pounds on my back gently, but luckily I’m spared the humiliation of puking up all the seawater and stray fish lodged in my lungs.
“Sleeper wave,” he says, when I’ve finally caught my breath. “Sneaky bastards.”
By now it’s afternoon and we’re both starving, so we laugh off our coitus interruptus episode and walk back to our towels, shivering. I produce the paper bag of groceries I purchased frantically on my way to his house, and pull each item out one at a time.
“Ze French bread,” I announce, pulling the baguette out and trying on a ridiculously bad French accent. “Ze French wine.”
“Mmm.”
“Ze Brie.”
“Très bien!” Clay’s accent is even worse than mine, if that’s possible.
“Pasta sal-ad.” As I pull the plastic container out, it leaks oil down my arm, which Clay immediately licks off. This is getting good.
“And,” I say, my voice all husky now from watching his tongue on my wrist. “Le pièce de résistance—chocolate et cherries!”
Clay’s eyes light up with delight, and I take a mental picture of his face like that, thinking if he ever dumps me, I’ll torture myself with the memory of this moment.
We demolish the bread, Brie and pasta salad like wolves. Then we pour plastic cups of the merlot and have that with the chocolate. By two-fifteen we’ve eaten everything but the cherries. We feed them to each other one at a time, stretched out side by side in the warm sand.
“Mmm,” he says as I pull the stem from his teeth. He chews as if he’s memorizing the flavor, a hedonist taking notes. “That one was so tart.”
I brush a few stray flecks of sand from his cheek. “That’s right,” I say, looking him in the eye. “Learn to love it.”
TART
A Red Dress Ink novel
ISBN: 978-1-4592-3136-8
© 2005 by Jody Gehrman.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real. While the author was inspired in part by actual events, none of the characters in the book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.
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