She stood for a moment, leaning her head down on mine as if I could hold her up. I curled my arm around her waist. Then she kissed me.
It was nothing, really. She just pecked the top of my head. But I held my breath, anyway.
I leaned in against her and soaked up her warmth. The waves caressed the sand and we watched as if hypnotized.
“Swim, Kim?”
I couldn’t help laughing. I turned to go inside, but she pulled on my arm.
“Come on.”
“I’m getting my swimsuit.”
She smiled my brains out. “It’s just you and me. Nothing we haven’t seen before.”
“Jezebel.”
“Prude.” She pulled her loose sundress over her head and tossed it, walking down to meet the water.
I felt exposed enough in my tank top and cutoffs, so I simply tagged along, as usual.
We dipped our feet into the tongues of water. It was cold, despite the heat of the afternoon.
Serena shucked off her bra and dumped it on the sand. She squealed as she quick-stepped out into the water and then dived into a breaking wave.
I inched out after her, cursing my cold blood. Serena rose like a Roman goddess, the sun winking from her golden skin.
“Come on, Kimmie! Just dive in.”
I shook my head. “You know me. All Anglo, all the time.”
“Pussy!”
I bit my lip instead of responding. As she stood, I realised that pussy was all I could focus on. White panties, black hair, sea water…a very heady mix.
I walked out until the water reached my knees. Waves swept past me and slipped up my thighs like nightclubbers’ hands until I bit the bullet and sat. I shivered and squealed as the cold water bit into my skin. Change has always been hard for me. Even when it’s just the change from dry to wet.
Serena came up and sat beside me. “If you can’t be yourself now, when can you be?”
“Uh, wh…what?”
“I’m just saying…loosen up. Do what you feel, not what you think.” She hooked her finger into the neck of my tank top. “Your body doesn’t scare me, you know. I won’t be offended.”
“I thought this weekend was therapy for you, not me.”
She shrugged, her breast carving a dizzying oval against the surface of the water. She seemed to lose herself for a while, just drifting against the push and pull of the water, her eyes scanning the horizon for memories.
“Serena? Where did you just go?”
She lowered her gaze to the water roiling around her body. “I know about you and Wade.”
“Me and Wade?”
“The kiss.”
“It was all him, I swear. I only slapped him because I didn’t think my knee would reach his balls.”
“No, I know. It just hurt that you never told me.”
I drew patterns in the water. “I didn’t think it meant anything. He was drunk. And male. It was before Hannah.”
“‘Actually…it wasn’t.”
And I’d thought he couldn’t sink any lower in my eyes. “What a pig.”
She kept her face down. It was wet, but I was pretty sure it was all ocean. No tears. She brought handfuls of seawater up to eye level and let it trickle through her fingers back into the ocean.
“You know, I went to see her.”
“Her?”
“Hannah.”
“What?”
“I wanted to know. What it was she did that I didn’t.”
I gave her forehead a little slap. “Let me guess…red wine?”
She batted my hand away. “Just the one bottle.”
“And?”
“Let’s just say I left unsatisfied.”
“You should’ve called me, babe. I would’ve been there for you.”
“I couldn’t, Kimmie. We barely saw each other outside of the business.”
“Because of him.”
She nodded sadly. “I know you didn’t like him. He had a real thing for you, though.”
“I don’t wanna know about his thing.”
“He told me once that you asked him if you could join us.”
“Join you?”
She looked up from the doodle she was making in the water, the rich brown of her eyes almost blending with her black lashes. “In bed.”
I snorted out a very unladylike laugh. “What a fuckwit.” I held her gaze but I couldn’t read it. “I never did. You know that, right?”
“Hm.”
I let a couple of waves pass us by. “God, what must you have thought of me?”
She stood up and took a couple of steps back toward the cabin before pausing. “I thought it was weird.”
It felt like she’d kicked me. “But…I…”
“I mean, we’re best friends.”
“I know…”
“Why wouldn’t you have asked me?”
She started walking back to the cabin again, and I sat still for a moment, running the last minute through my head, looking for every possible meaning.
Didn’t matter it was a lie. She would have thought it was true. Was she pissed because I’d supposedly asked him and not her? Was it because she hadn’t wanted to share Wade? Or because she had no desire for me?
I slapped my hand into the water a few times. I’d done nothing wrong, other than hold back a secret that might have hurt my best friend. Wade, with his selfishness and his stupid fucking cock-dwelling brain, had messed up everything in Serena’s life. Now that looked like spilling over into my life, too.
I went back to the cabin, coming in just as Serena finished in the shower. She didn’t look at me as she walked into her bedroom, but I didn’t know if that was on purpose. I jumped into the shower to wash the salt from my body.
With the water running I didn’t hear Serena come into the bathroom until she spoke.
“Ugh!”
“Fuck, you scared me!” I pulled open the shower door and caught my breath. She was naked. With her bottom turned toward me, appraising her hips and thighs in the mirror.
“Wade was right. I’m getting huge. I look like gnocchi.”
I squeezed my lips together, but the words forced themselves out.
“I love gnocchi.”
She smiled and looked at me.
“I’d love a body like yours, Kimmie.”
“What, this old thing? Got it cheap from a ten-year-old boy. He’d grown out of it.”
Her breasts vibrated as she laughed. “I mean it! You can wear anything.”
“Yeah…dolls’ clothes, those little puppy sweaters…”
She frowned and faced me. “You’re being silly again. Stop it.”
“Whatever you ask, your majesty.”
She turned back to the mirror and studied her face for wrinkles. Fucking Wade had done such a job on her self-esteem. “Hey, Kimmie…I’m sorry about out there.”
“Forget it.”
“No, it wasn’t fair of me. It was Wade’s mess. We both just stepped in it.”
I grabbed my towel and teased my hair with it. “It’s okay, girlie. I don’t blame you for freaking out.”
She pushed her hair behind her ears and looked at my reflection. “So…you haven’t asked me what I said.”
“Hmm?”
“When he asked me…that.”
I took my tension out on my poor towel. “And?”
She laughed again. “I said no, of course.”
Relief and sorrow warred within me. “Yeah…yeah…of course.”
She turned to leave, but stopped at the door. “No way I’d share you with a cunt like Wade.”
“What? Wait…Serena…”
I scurried after her, back to her room. She sat at the end of her bed, her nakedness apparently not bothering her. It was having quite an effect on me, though.
I sat behind her, my hand on her shoulder. I thought of what she’d said out in the surf. Do what you feel, not what you think. Your body doesn’t scare me. And it felt like it was time.
A small shiver ran through her body as I pressed my lips to the side of her neck.
“You knew. Didn’t you?”
“I was pretty sure.”
“That’s not why…why you and Wade…”
“There really hasn’t been a ‘me and Wade’ for months. Turns out we both…fell in love with the same person.”
I let my towel fall and I stood in front of her. With my hands on her shoulders, and my pussy only inches from her face, it was the bravest thing I’d ever done.
She looked up at me. There was apprehension in her eyes but no fear.