“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” she sighs luxuriously as she arranges her limbs in the sunlight.
I hear the hitch of her breath as she sucks down some more Diet Coke. She practically lives on that stuff. If she were ever in a car accident, I would have to make sure there was a full IV bag of that blackish, mysterious liquid pumping into her arm the whole time. She wouldn’t be able to recover without it.
The cap of the suntan lotion squeaks open and she squirts out a bunch, then I hear the scraping friction of her smoothing it over her belly and thighs. A buzzing insect of some kind—a hornet or bumblebee or something—swoops low over my face, but it is gone in just a moment.
“This is nice,” she murmurs as she settles back again, dropping the suntan lotion bottle in the grass next to her. “Isn’t this nice?”
“Really nice,” I agree.
It’s not that I don’t want to talk to her or anything, it’s just that it really is nice. Beautiful day, close to the end of summer. It is about 85 degrees here in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The sun is at exactly the right angle in the sky: clear enough to bronze our skin, not so blazing hot that we get burnt to a crisp. There’s a nice little breeze too, so it isn’t too unbearably hot.
Fall will be coming soon, though we probably still have another month or so of beautiful, balmy weather. Compared to Seattle, where we used to live, this place is a regular tropical vacation. But as my father likes to remind me, his duties as an officer in the United States Army are much more important than whether or not our location is suited to my personal tastes.
Well, that may be true, but Seattle does not have a lot of sun. There is no getting around that. It has a lot of… green. Green trees covered in green moss dripping from green vines that sprawl all over green hillsides. It has a lot of rain. If you are the sort of person who likes to either stay inside and look at the beau
tiful, foggy landscape through window, then Seattle is for you. Also, if you are the kind of person who likes biking over hills with your hair all kinky and sticking to your face, and your blue jean cuffs perpetually soaked so that they scrape against your ankles, then Seattle is definitely for you.
But if you are like me, and you enjoy being able to lie underneath the bright, cheery ball of flame that scoots across the sky every day, then North Carolina would be much more to your taste.
I open one eye just a sliver when Mona shifts around on her lawn chair. The sunlight reflects off of her ample thighs in golden, blinding sheets. She is wearing a turquoise-blue bikini with silver beads around her cleavage. The color perfectly sets off the deep, lustrous tan that she has achieved. She looks pretty amazing.
She told me that she has been working on that tan since she was about seven years old. I knew that tanning was not such a great idea long before I started nursing school, and now that I have done a few dermatology rotations, I can see what long-term exposure to the sun really does to a person. But I am nineteen, and Mona is twenty-one. If we stop soon… Well, probably… Well, I hope it will be okay.
Even through SPF 60 I have managed to get a pretty good base. Not as chocolatey as Mona, but respectable. Especially considering I spent the first sixteen years of my life in jeans and a baseball jersey or military fatigue piece, pretty much constantly. I’ve never been the girly sort, or at least not until recently. Once we moved here and I met Mona, whose family conveniently lives right next door, I got a whole new set of influences in my life. I haven’t touched my skateboard in years. It’s still in the corner of my bedroom, but usually has a couple of tank tops thrown over it.
Probably because I was raised on Army bases, I always gravitated toward more tomboyish adventures. I liked climbing trees and playing catch. I liked getting muddy. I enjoyed hitting a ball though I never got to really play on organized teams, so I don’t really understand the rules of individual sports. But I do like being strong and unbothered by what might happen to my makeup or nails. That’s the important thing.
But over time, I got to appreciate the curvy, luscious beauty that Mona demonstrates. It’s another way of life. I suppose I will always be a tomboy, but as my hair grows out and my body fills in, and my attitude changes to… Well, let’s just say it has taken a turn from sports to… other things of a physical nature.
“Did you bring me a Coke?” I ask.
Without answering, she holds the sweating bottle out to me. I take a quick drink, only slightly disgusted by the damp bottle and skin-temperature liquid. So I guess that means she did not actually bring me my own Coke. Still, it is good to hydrate.
Twisting the cap back on, I just drop it in the grass underneath her chair. The grass is thick and green, trimmed to exactly the right height. Everybody on base takes very good care of their lawns.
Mona readjusts her arms, making sure that she’s not casting any shadows by mistake. Sometimes she even raises her wrists over her head to make sure that she gets a little bit of tan in her armpits. That seems dangerous, but she swears she has never gotten a sunburn there.
“I like your suit,” she sniffs, her voice liquid and lazy.
“Thanks. I like yours too.”
“Did you get that at Target? I think I saw those purple ones at Target, right?”
I glance down at my suit, the eggplant-purple triangle stretched between my hip bones. It’s simple and undecorated, with only a double-tie detail at the hips. I don’t need overly flashy embellishments.
“Yeah, totally,” I smile. “I hate buying bathing suits, you know what I mean? It always seems like 99 percent of them are engineered to fit no one in the world. This was some kind of magical meeting. It fit right away.”
“Oh yeah?” she answers, her voice sly and drawn out as she enunciates every syllable. “And is that what inspired you to wax your girl bits?”
I bite back a gasp, instantly embarrassed. It takes all my self-control not to cross my legs protectively.
“Oh yeah,” she crows, “I can tell. You are bare as a Barbie doll down there, aren’t you? You naughty minx!”
“But… But… How can you tell? You just knew? What… by just looking?”
She giggles, the vibration jiggling the whole front of her bosom and belly. Sunlight shimmers off the tiny hairs there, making her glitter all over.
“Well, it’s pretty obvious,” she smiles. “I mean, I can practically see the outline of all your parts! Is it weird? Does it tickle? Wait… did it hurt?”