by Lynn Cole
The Seduction of Molly Brown
the aloha stories
~~~
MollyBrown was sick and tired of people telling her how beautiful she was. She’d heard it all her life, really, but beautiful wasn’t something you accomplished, it was an accident of nature. At least, that was the way Molly thought of beauty. What Molly wanted to be praised for was being strong, independent, athletic, and intelligent. Yet what she constantly heard at home and at her high school where she had just graduated was, Molly, you are so beautiful…or Molly, you are so pretty…or Molly I wish I was as pretty as you…or from random guys around Oahu…Hey babe!
At least the random shouts of Hey Babe! happened to almost every cute girl in a bikini walking along the Kamehameha Highway, known to locals as The Kam, near Sunset Beach on Oahu. Molly was happy living in ‘paradise’, but she was done with high-school. She was done with the slacker surfer dudes and Oahu-country-boys who had no ambition. Most of the guys that came onto her in high school had zero ambition…other than finding the perfect wave off of Sunset Beach, or maybe opening their own Shrimp-Shack down on the Kam.
Molly loved the ocean and the beach life but she wanted more than that. She had ambition. She wanted to make a difference. She wanted to become a doctor and to then come back and work in Hawaii in a rural area that was underserved medically. She’d busted her tail for four years of high school, often depriving herself of fun, of the kind of experiences her friends were having, but finally it had paid off.
Last December she’d come home from school and walked into her kitchen from the lanai that overlooked Oahu’s North Shore and noticed a thick buff-colored envelope lying on the kitchen island. Her dad, Noel, a retired Navy officer who’d become a private detective as his ‘retirement job’, sat at the kitchen table reading a Jack Reacher book on his Kindle and feigning ignorance of the letter.
“Dad, what’s this?” Molly asked.
“ What’s what?”
“The letter?”
“No idea,” her dad said with a slight smile. “It’s not addressed to me.”
Molly picked up the letter and saw the crimson, raised crest of Stanford University in the left hand corner.
Holy crap! She thought.
“You gonna open that?” Noel asked.
Molly felt her heart racing as she used a butter knife to open the envelope. Then, her heart felt like it skipped a beat when she read…”Dear Ms. Brown, we are happy to welcome you to Leland B. Stanford University as a valued member of the class of…”
She’d made it! All of her hard work had paid off in early acceptance to Stanford. Her dreams were becoming a reality – finally. But then Christmas break was over and it was back to the grind of high school and putting up with the idiots and asshats who only saw her as a hot chick, and whose sole goal in life seemed to be to get into her pants.
The rest of the school year dragged by and now the rush of graduation was over and Molly was awake on the first day of summer vacation. She lay with one leg tangled in the peach sheets of her bed and felt the warm breeze from her open window and heard the waves rhythmically breaking on Sunset Beach. The night before, her dad Noel, had taken her out for a special dinner after her graduation from high school. She’d been valedictorian and also had won an award for her leadership as the captain of the cross-country team.
“I wish your mom could have been here to see this tonight,” Noel had said, a trace of tears in his eyes. They were sitting in a quiet corner of The King Kamehameha Beach Club in Honolulu where they’d gone for dinner after graduation.
“I know, Dad. I wish she could have been there too.”
They were both quiet for a moment, thinking of their loss. Molly’s mother, Kim, had been killed when Molly was thirteen. Kim had been an avid trail runner and was training for Oahu’s Hurt 100 Endurance Trail Race when a distracted driver on vacation from Tokyo had swerved off the road and run Kim over while she was running along The Kam. The young driver had been texting while driving his rented blue convertible Mustang and had just momentarily lost control of the car. An instant later Kim was dead and Molly was motherless. Noel had wanted to kill the guy but the police and his friends held him in check. After the funeral life went on for Noel and Molly although both felt the acute loss of Kim at times like this.
“I’m really proud of you, Molly.”
“I know, Dad. I know.”
“Listen honey, I have to leave in the morning early for a flight to Kauai, and then probably over to the Big Island. You gonna be okay for a week or so?”
“Sure, I’m just planning to sleep and do some running and swimming. Nothing too heavy.”
Noel smiled. “That’s great. You need to take a little rest. You’ve been working hard in school and in August you are gonna get busy again when we head over to Stanford to get you enrolled and moved into the dorms.”
“I know,” Molly said, “Stanford won’t be as easy as high school.”
“Are you planning to get a job this summer or just rest?” Noel asked.
“I’m not sure… what do you think, Dad?”
“I think you should rest… just take it easy. This might be the last summer when you can just enjoy the beach and home until you graduate from Stanford.”
“I know, that’s what I was thinking already. But it’s weird not to have a hundred things to do in a day.”
Noel laughed. “You get that energy from your mom. She could not slow down or rest much. Fun for her was training for a hundred mile endurance race.”
“I know, right? But I’m trying to enjoy life some. I think I may just make this the summer of hanging out at the beach and sleeping. I think that’s Lily’s plan too.”
“Well, there are worse things to do than hang out at a beach. Lily might have the right idea. That girl spends almost all her time on the beach, doesn’t she?”
“She basically lives on the beach, Dad. That’s the Hawaiian way. I think she’s coming over later tonight and we may go to the beach tomorrow.”
“Okay honey, I’ll be off to the airport early in the morning, but I’ll have my cell on Kauai. You can reach me if you need me. I’ll probably be gone on the case for a week to ten days, tops.”
~~~
“I am sooo glad that lame high school shit is over,” Lily said. She was sprawled on Molly’s bed about ten p.m. She’d come over right after Molly had returned from the dinner with her father.
Lily had been Molly's friend since Molly had moved to Sunset Beach when she was eleven years-old. Lily was short compared to Molly, the top of her head just coming to Molly's shoulder. Lily’s hair was straight and jet-black, falling just below her shoulders. Molly thought Lily had perfect skin, the beautiful red-brown that only a native Hawaiian girl can have after spending years in the waves and on the beach. In comparison, Molly was a brunette, golden skinned, haole-giant of a girl. She was a lithe, fit, five foot-ten young-woman, who had moved repeatedly while her father was in the Navy but could now only recall her life in Hawaii -- specifically her life on Sunset Beach.
“So what are you planning to do tomorrow, Molly?" Lily asked.
“The beach, I think…and read… after a run. I've been going so fast all year that I think I need some time to just relax and unwind. Dad is gone for a week or so and he specifically told me not to look for a job because this would be the last summer for a long time where I don't have a ton to do."
“Yeah, yeah, yeah...I hear you. You've been going like crazy for as long as I've known you. I don't think you really know how to slow down, relax, and have fun. I mean, it is always work, work, and work. You are so driven. I don't think you’ve even had
time for sex.”
“Lily, you know for a fact that I am not a virgin. I had sex our sophomore year with Miko Kono.”
"Molly, that doesn't count. I'm not even sure he got inside your pussy. And even if he did, sex that lasts like 30 seconds doesn't count. You are going to go off to Stanford and will be the hottest kinda-virgin in the university.”
Molly frowned at her friend. “Lily, I'm just not as comfortable with sex as you are. You probably had sex last night after graduation, right?”
Lily looked slightly offended. “You are damn right I did. I rode Andy’s cock like I was surfing a killer wave…like it was for style points or something. And here's something else -- it was good, the kind of good that’s hard to explain. So good, in fact, that I fully plan to go track down Andy and have some more sex after I leave here tonight… and tomorrow after I'm done shopping at the mall, I will probably see Andy again, and have sex all weekend until he’s begging me to either stop or marry him. That's just the way I like to roll. Maybe if you weren't so uptight you’d understand that sex is part of life and life needs to be lived in the real world, not just in a textbook."
Molly stood there with a pained look on her face, shocked that her friend would be so blunt with her. One of the things that hurt so much was that in her heart she knew that Lily was right. She’d had her nose in a book for so long that she really didn't know what the real world was like. The sex she’d claimed she’d had during sophomore year was terrible. She was just checking a box off: Teen-sex? Check! It was exactly like Lily had described it: Sweaty and fast. It happened in the field behind the football bleachers at Sunset High School. There had been a bonfire for some big game or something and Lily had hooked up with a football player named Shawn. Molly had tagged along and ended up in the field behind the stadium with Miko. Miko was Shawn's best friend and it just seemed like the thing to do. After all, Lily and Shawn were going at it like rabbits.
At the time Molly really wanted to have sex and Miko was there. No romance, just two awkward teenagers doing what they thought teenagers were supposed to do. Was it good? No. Not that it was bad per se; it was just over so fast she didn't really feel like she'd had sex. She wasn’t really attracted to Miko but obviously he was attracted to her enough to get a hard-on and to cum about two strokes after slipping his cock inside her. At least he’d worn a condom.
Disappointing was the only way to describe that night. Since then she’d thought of herself as an ambitious woman who didn’t need boyfriends or sex, right? But the reality was that she really didn't know what sex really was. Now, she was about to head off to college and a very busy life and she felt as if she was missing out. There was definitely something missing in her life.
In a lot of ways Molly envied Lily and her simple ambitions more than ever. Lily didn’t want to save the world. She just wanted to swim, surf, and have sex – simple goals. Lily would settle down at some point, but she’d do it on her own terms and when she was damn good and ready. One thing was for certain…Lily seemed alive, happy, and comfortable in her own skin. She never pretended to be anyone other than who she was. That was one of the things Molly loved about her.
“Molly, honey, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings,” Lily said quietly. “I know it's tough for you without a mom and I'm just here on this planet to have a good time, I think. You are going to do something great and I love that about you. I wish I was more like you, Molly. You have a vision for your life, and all I seem to want is to have fun. I'd like to be a little more like you, Molly."
Molly reached out and grasped her friend’s hand. “Lily, you're right more than you’re wrong and I'll tell you something from my heart…I could stand to be a little bit more like you. I really could.”
Lily didn't stay too late. She was heading to the Ala Moana Mall in Honolulu early the next day for a celebratory shopping trip with her mom. Lily’s mom, Keiko, was somewhat shocked that Lily had made it through high school and felt the occasion called for new slippers and brightly colored dresses. Lily said she'd call Molly the next evening and maybe they could get together and hang out. That was fine with Molly because she had a lot of thinking to do, and she wanted to clean the house during the day so that by late afternoon she would be able to go for a long run and then swim at the Cove on Sunset Beach.
~~~
Molly didn’t set her alarm on the Saturday after school ended. Instead, she allowed the warm sunrise and the trade winds blowing through her open window to awaken her. It was a beautiful day outside and she could hear the waves building and crashing on Sunset Beach.
The house she had known her whole life was a traditional Hawaiian home, where the living area was on pilings above an area used for storage and a small garage and laundry room. There was a lanai off the lower area beneath the house and another on the main level just off the living room.
Having lived with just her dad for such a long time Molly had taken on many of the chores her mother had done before she passed away. At least once a week, usually on a Saturday morning, Molly would clean the house from top to bottom. Generally her father helped after he was done with yard work. However, even when Noel was away on a case Molly would still get the housekeeping done. It was just the way she was -- self-motivated, and very responsible. Maybe that was why Lily and Molly were such good friends, because each of them saw in the other person something that was missing inside them.
Finally, at just about four o'clock in the afternoon of a beautiful, warm, Hawaiian summer day, Molly had the house cleaned to her satisfaction and was ready for her run. She was a little dirty and sweaty but she felt as if she had accomplished something good in the way she methodically cleaned the house.
She went to her room, slipped on a cotton sports bra, a CoolMax running shirt, and a pair of her slightly faded soccer shorts. She walked down to the lanai and sat on a bench her father had made and slipped her Vibram running shoes on her small feet. She looked out at the ocean. The sky was blue, cloudless, and the trade winds were blowing softly across the white sand of Sunset Beach.
"After my run, I think I will go for a swim," she said aloud.
Molly then walked across her smooth green lawn to where the beach sand began. She stepped from her yard onto the beach -- something she did not take for granted -- something she would very much miss when she left for Stanford. Not many people could walk across their yard and be on a beach as beautiful as this one. It was her father and mother’s dream and yet she was the beneficiary of their dream.
Her mother had been an amazing athlete and she remembered her with love. Her mother worked hard at everything but she also was fully alive and lived in the moment. Molly hoped she would become half the woman her mother had been. It was hard not to have her mother around but it was what it was, and Molly knew she could do nothing about it. She could only make her own choices now and she had a lot to think about. She wanted to really think about what Lily has said about living her life differently and that not everything had to be about textbooks and ambition.
Molly crossed the sand near her yard and turned left, running slowly along the edge of the beach above the tide line. In the distance she could see the surfers at Sunset Beach and see what looked like a huge surfer-luau being set up.
I'd better avoid that. Surfer competitions and luaus are not what I want today, she thought.
Molly made her way up to the highway and then turned and ran towards Haliewa. She warmed up for a half-mile or so and then picked up her pace, running smoothly for another three miles. She stopped at a roadside park, drank some cool water, and then turned back towards home. When she was about a mile from Sunset Beach she started to hear music coming from the luau that she’d previously seen being set up. She didn't want to cut through the luau and yet her heart was set on swimming, so she immediately turned towards the ocean to find a secluded stretch of beach.
She was on the very edge of Sunset Beach in an area she had not come to often and could not recall having swum at. To get down to the beach fr
om the road was a challenge, but she ducked under some plumeria trees and Australian pines, and scrambled over a few large lava boulders to the water’s edge. It was worth the effort. To her left she saw a blazing orange and purple Hawaiian sunset. She was still amazed at the beauty of Oahu’s North-Shore. No wonder so many tourists loved to come to the Hawaiian Islands. No wonder her parents, who had lived all over the world, chose to make their home on Sunset Beach.
~~~
Molly walked down to the water's edge and looked to her right and her left and saw no one. The beach was deserted. That was perfect because she wanted a secluded swim in her ocean. The tide was in, so the waves were lapping against the dark lava rocks near where she stood. Molly sat down on a rock and removed her shoes. She dug her toes into the warm, wet sand. She was thinking about what Lily had said, about how she was so responsible and seldom had time for fun. It was true and Molly knew she wanted change things – needed to change the way she lived. She did not want to go to Stanford and be caught up in the same over-responsible, obsessive life she was living now. She wanted to live her life and to have fun and to feel more alive and free. Yes, she still wanted to become a doctor, and she knew that would take a lot of work, but she wanted to live life more like her mother did -- doing something meaningful yet having fun. She wanted to keep the responsible part of herself but also have a little more of Lily’s wildness.
Okay, she thought, I am going to start living my life right now. This is my ocean and I am going to swim in it on my terms.
Molly smiled as she carefully placed her shoes on the lava rocks above the tide line. Then she stood up and pulled her running shirt over her head. Next, she unhooked her sports bra and dropped it on top of her shoes. The warm breeze touching her breasts felt amazing. She loved it. Molly glanced right and left again and saw no one.
"I am so doing this," she said.
Molly then quickly pulled her running shorts and panties down and stepped out of them. She was naked, standing on her beach. She felt alive. She dropped her shorts on top of her other clothes and ran into the surf. She dove under the warm water off Sunset Beach and swam out to sea. The waves were breaking gently against the beach and Molly felt at one with the ocean. She felt supremely happy and fully alive. She swam further out to sea and floated, looking up at the first stars as they were appearing above the Hawaiian Islands.
