As she reached the side of the boat, he held his hand down for her to take hold. He hauled her into the boat. He found a stack of laundered towels stowed under the tiller and handed her one.
She shook her long hair and wiped her face with the towel. Her T-shirt clung to her breasts, tight and wet over her nipples that were drawn up and erect from the cold water. She had kicked off her sandals on the dock. She wiped her long tanned legs, and finally having caught her breath she looked over at Rick and smiled. "Ready?" she asked.
"Ready," Rick said. He set sail.
In half an hour they were in open water. The resort was a tiny speck behind them on a low rise on the horizon that was all they could see of North America.
Rick had not intended to sail out this far. Now he was out too far to get back in time for his afternoon classes. But since he did not feel like giving the classes anyway, he forgot it. He wanted only to swim, sail, let the sun, sky, wind and sea relax his mind.
Jenny said, after Rick dropped the sail, "You're hard to catch, you know that?"
"I didn't want anybody with me."
"That was obvious. Why did you take me on board then?"
"I couldn't leave you to sink right off the end of the dock."
"Don't worry about me, Buster. I wouldn't have sunk."
"Well, you're nicer to look at than staring at my own knees all afternoon."
"Don't you have classes this afternoon?"
"I do, but I won't be there."
She let her head roll back on her shoulders. Her black hair was caught in the wind. Her nostrils flared as she sucked the fresh clean air down into her lungs.
She was possibly the most beautiful girl Rick had ever known. Her features seemed to have been carved in flesh, rather than allowed to grow haphazardly like most people.
"I wanted to talk to you," she said. "Seriously, I want you to knock off all this nonsense with the old ladies, including my aunt. I want you to go back to school."
Rick was relieved that she did not know yet that he had been fired. He decided not to lie to her, but he would not yet tell her the whole truth.
"Jane and I spent a lot of time together last night. We know where you went, and what happened there. It's pretty crumby, you know. It's almost like being a whore, going to that place and letting people you don't even know watch you."
Rick let the anchor over the side and felt the boat slow when the heavy weight reached the end of the rope. The boat bobbed' and drifted easily in the gentle, deep-water rolls of the ocean.
Rick stood up and stripped off his shirt. He didn't care what Jenny thought of him. He only wanted to be in the water, cooled from the hot sun, away from everyone's voice telling him what to do and who to be. He dropped his pants. He let her look briefly at his cock, then he dove off the side and swam out a few yards.
His body cooled right away. He felt better, cleaner. The water between his legs lifted his cock and he felt cleansed, as if the ocean was baptizing him in some mysterious manner. He turned in the water, his bare ass flashing against the surface, and looked back at the boat in time to see Jenny poised naked, her young firm breasts pointing at the sun.
He saw the darker patch at her crotch, the long lines of her legs. She looked like a sacrifice that would appease the cruellest god.
Her ass flashed in the sun as she turned. Her legs moved sharply as she dove off the other side of the Sail-fish.
Rick thrust himself out of the water and dove down, forcing. himself deeper until his lungs hurt. Then he stroked his way to the surface and burst into the blinding sun and he felt he could see everything he would ever need to see.
When they were both back on the boat, they lay side by side on the deck. The sail flapped overhead, luffing gently in the sea breeze. Jenny's T-shirt and shorts hung from the mainstay.
Rick lay on his stomach and looked down Jenny's body. She lay on her back, and her breasts were smaller than when she stood. The nipples were erect. A pool of water was caught in her belly button, and raindrops shone in her curly pubic hair. In the sunlight, Rick saw faint, soft hairs on her thighs; Jenny was one of the lucky girls who never had to shave her legs. Her body hair was so soft, invisible, impossible to touch. She looked tender along her thighs, as if she had never been misused and still had all the hopes of a virgin.
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Twenty."
"I'm nineteen." Her voice was deeper because she was lying on her back. She sounded more serious, as indeed she felt. "We're both old enough to be past the kid-stage of screwing, don't you think."
"Tell me what you are talking about."
"All right. You lay still and let me do the talking. We're both old enough to be past the kid-stage of screwing. What I mean, by that is that we're old enough that it doesn't scare us anymore. We don't have to do it in a hurry anymore, in a back seat or wherever we can get it. But we're not old enough to settle down to one thing, either. Neither one of us. And what I mean by that is that you are throwing your life away if you stick with the plan you told Jane about, that you are looking for Easy Street and you're going to screw old ladies to get there. You're going to follow them to Florida when the season here ends. It's going to be your life. Well, how long do you think you can keep it up, and I don't mean your dick. What kind of life is that? You're too young and too smart and too damn good looking to spend your young life screwing old ladies. There's a lot of young stuff that would like to get into your pants, and all you have to do is give it away free. Stop selling it like some fifty-dollar whore. I guess that' what I'm saying. Don't be a whore. Stop wasting yourself on old ladies, even for money."
She waited, and when Rick said nothing she continued. "Now here is my sad story: "I was a virgin when I left home for college. Plenty had tried to get into me but they never got anywhere, especially the old men who used to hang around hoping Auntie would drop some money on them. But I damn near lost my cherry to one of her gigolos, and therein lies my story.
"I was fifteen at the time. It was at our place in Florida and I had been swimming at night in the pool. When I came into my room it was dark and I only turned on a single light by my mirror. I took off my suit and started looking at myself, you know how kids do. I examined my breasts, pinched my nipples until they stood up, turned around. to see how my ass was rounding out. I probably checked to see how thick my pubic hair was, and I might even have parted my vagina to look up it. Anyway, you know kids. I don't know what all I did in front of the mirror. Anyway, the first I knew anybody else was in the room was when I heard him get up from my bed.
"I knew right away who he was so I wasn't really afraid. But I was embarrassed at having been caught naked like that. But he crossed the room and started to touch me. I knew he was Auntie's lover, and I thought I'd let him go as far as I wanted him to. I was pretty sure I could turn him off if he got too serious. I let him touch my shoulders, my nipples, he squeezed my breasts. He touched my stomach and my hips. I let him touch my pubic hair. He was the first man who ever touched that. He stepped a little closer and I could smell the mints on his breath. He used to chew mints all day to cover up the fact that he was always raiding Auntie's gin closet. He pushed his hand between my legs and when I felt him trying to get a finger into my vagina I spread my legs to help him. He almost made it. He took my hand with his other hand and brought it to his own crotch. That was the first time I noticed that his penis was out. He had his pants open. He wrapped my hand around his cock. It was hard, but not very long. I liked touching it and he slipped his finger further up me and he knew how to work a finger. Then he made his mistake. He said, with that minty breath coming all over me, `I want to fuck you. Please let me fuck you.'