“Get with the program, country boy,” I replied, then strode across the footpath, slinging my legs over the stone wall that separated the beach from the road and then dropping down into the soft, powdery sand. I let out a sigh as my toes wiggled deeper into it.
I heard a rustle behind me and saw he was sitting on the wall, removing his own shoes.
“Well, any thoughts you might have of making out are about to get blown away,” he said. “I’ve been wearing these boots all bloody day.”
But when he strode forward, I didn’t care. I felt young, light, free, in ways I’d never felt when Soph and I had come down here in the past. The beach was empty, ours, and we could do whatever we liked with it, which had my mind racing.
I watched him cross the sand, a massive dark shape and I shivered from the cold and anticipation. He came to stand just before me, blocking out the harsh artificial lights behind him, and as he cast a soft, cool shadow over me, I smiled.
“Out of this whole big city, why did you choose this place?” he said in a low, husky voice. OK, that was dead sexy.
My response, however…
I plopped down on the ground, my butt burying itself firmly in the sand.
“Sand castles,” I replied. “Duh!”
He chuckled in disbelief, but when he saw me pushing mounds of sand around, he shook his head and sat down behind me, his legs either side of mine.
“Show me your creation, city girl,” he said, his voice a low rumble that resonated through me now, my hands slowing as a result. “I expect to see a three-storey castle with a moat.”
Castle? Castle?Any thoughts about what I was doing went clear out of my head at his presence behind me. My hands moved aimlessly through the sand until my stupid idea belatedly came back to me. I was notorious for my competitive castle building in my family, always going for bigger and more complex designs where the other kids were content to just dump buckets of sand everywhere, willy nilly.
“I’d need to bring a bucket and spade down for something that grand,” I said.
“Yeah? Wait here.”
I felt smaller, colder and weirder when he pulled away, climbing back up over the wall to go to the car. I dragged my phone out on reflex, my thumb tapping the screen to bring up my socials.
Sand castles, Lily?I asked myself, and lemme just say, giving yourself the stink eye is a weird experience.He’s probably gone back to the car and taken off to go look for a girl who isn’t completely freaking bugnuts.But right as I began to fear my suspicions were correct, I heard a clanking sound. Ben appeared back on the beach toting a full size metal bucket and a spade.
“Whoa, are we burying a body, or…?” I asked, looking up at Ben with trepidation.
“If we’re gonna build our castle, we need proper tools.” He stabbed the spade into the sand, then set the bucket down. “I’ll be in charge of construction. You can be the architect and interior designer.”
I laughed then, the sound whipped away by the breeze as soon as it spilled out of me, and Ben’s head jerked up. He gave me this slow, lopsided smile then, those damn dimples popping up.
“What?”
“Nothing, Mr Head of Construction,” I said, knowing this whole thing was ridiculous, but not caring. Building sand castles on the beach in the dark. If this was adulthood, then I approved wholeheartedly. “You better get digging.”
And he did.I’m not sure what fired either of us up. We hadn’t drunk much, so we couldn’t even blame it on alcohol, but he filled bucket after bucket of sand and I directed him to where to place them. Of course, the hard work got us sweating and then I got my one true reward for all of this dumbarsery. His shirt was unbuttoned and pulled off, the arms tied around his waist before he leant on his spade handle, wiping away his sweat.
“What?” he asked again as I stared at him, but this time the question was delivered in a much deeper, raspier voice.
I went to say nothing, to brush it all off, but my mind was stuttering, like one of those old movies when the projector gets jammed. My eyes raked over his body, because, dayum. He was huge. I’d known that academically, but, right now, all that muscular splendour was being shoved in my face.
He had abs like cobblestones and a vein that travelled down the taut surface that I wanted to follow with my tongue. His thumbs hooked into the belt loops of his jeans as he gazed back, though god knows why. I was hardly ugly, but I was well aware I possessed a kind of middling pretty that got me by, but not much else. We were having fun just a minute ago, but now? Now I just stared and stared, like I would have if a unicorn stepped onto the beach, because he was just as rare.
“You OK there, city girl?”
The spade was abandoned and so was the bucket, his jeans making a whooshing sound as he strode across the sand and closed the gap between us. A thumb went under my chin, tipping my head back gently until I was forced to stare into his eyes, illuminated by the moon that shone over his shoulder.
“We don’t have to do this,” he said in a low reassuring voice. “If you want to go back to the uni—”
“No!” I replied, my tone way too definite, and he smiled in response.
“If you want to put your shoes back on, I’ll put on my shirt and we’ll go up the road and get a feed of the fish and chips I’ve been smelling.”