“Relax, you big baby,” Mary said acerbically. She then proceeded to swiftly and purposefully cover my back in a good layer of sunscreen. I found myself realizing how grateful I should be for her sparing me the weird, patchy sunburn I would certainly have suffered if I’d tried to do this myself. She wasn’t stroking or caressing me, just applying the lotion. But I still found my muscles relaxing. Even the big, problem ‘muscle’ calmed a bit, despite the fact that I was being touched by the second girl to do so in my life.
I breathed a sigh of relief as she moved to my legs. This would be less intimate. Unfortunately, turns out the leg bone is connected to the embarrassing bone, and I got hard as hell again, even though she was just as businesslike as she had been with my back, and never went above mid thigh. The undersized board shorts were still at least that long.
When she was done, she sat up and started talking more about college.
I kept lying firmly on my chest, willing the stubborn boner to, er, beat it.
“Are you going to talk to me,” Mary asked, “or are you going to lie there and take a nap?”
“Sorry,” I said, keeping on my stomach. “That actually felt relaxing. Almost as good as a massage.” Flattery might deflect any speculation about why I didn’t want to turn over right then.
“Sure,” Mary snorted. “Like you’ve ever had a massage.”
“I have,” I said, looking at her and glad for a change of subject. “Last winter, I wrenched my back lifting weights and…”
“Oh that’s right,” Mary laughed. “Al Taylor is a jock now. Look at you, lifting weights!”
“I am not a jock,” I laughed. “But we all have to do some sport or something every damned season. In the winter, well… I can’t skate, so hockey is out. I’m too tall to wrestle at my weight. And believe me, nobody wants me on their basketball team. Not even their intramural one. So I have lifted in the winters the last two years. Hence the wrenched back and the doctor prescribing a massage for it.”
“Wait,” Mary said tauntingly. “Your school doctor prescribed a massage? It must be nice to be rich!”
“I go to a school with rich kids,” I emphasized. “Doesn’t mean we are rich. My dad about shit when the bill came.”
Mary laughed.
The conversation moved on. After Mary tried taunting me about the Auburn versus USC football programs, I told her that when she finds the giant hall that Auburn had to build to house all its Heisman Trophies, she could send me a picture of it. (USC’s room full of Heismans is mandatory part of all admissions tours.) More importantly, I finally got the ‘situation’ under control, and could sit up.
It turned out to be a very nice day at the beach. We ate lunch at the hotel a ways down from our home base, played paddle ball in the surf (badly in my case), and we even built a sandcastle. We talked more about school. And that was it. No more touching, alas. And definitely no real flirting… beyond the sexual tension inherent in a girl that looked like Mary simply talking to a hormonal, inexperienced, eighteen year-old guy like me.
It was still early in the year, though, and the wind started getting chilly at about 3:30. We covered up, packed up, and headed for Mary’s car, where we added beach sand to the chips and fries on the floor.
Driving back, about halfway the conversation died off into companionable silence. It still made me quickly nervous that things were getting awkward. I also realized that I had had a super great time, and that I wanted more time with her. Out of character for me, I decided to try to make that happen. It wasn’t even spontaneous this time. I thought before I opened my mouth.
“Uh, thanks for calling me, Mary. I had a great time,” I said quickly, before I could chicken out. “Listen, are you busy, like, Thursday or Friday night?”
“Thursday or Friday?” Mary asked, cocking an eyebrow at me.
“I, uh, just wanted to say thanks. Maybe I could buy you dinner? I was thinking someplace beachy like the new Red Lobster they just built…” I trailed off, my nerve expended.
“Someplace beachy… like the Red Lobster,” Mary laughed. I did too, chagrinned. It had been worth a shot.
“Friday sounds great, thanks,” Mary said almost absently as she negotiated our exit from the freeway.
Without meaning to, I actually said, “Whew,” out loud. “Really?” I went on, too quickly. “Great!”
“Don’t sound surprised, moron,” Mary said, smiling a little. “I just asked you to spend the day with me at the beach. Seems like I might be open to a date…”
“Sorry,” I chuckled, and she chuckled back.
*
The next day, I realized that I should not wear the same Robert Graham shirt for this date as the one I had worn out with Carrie. Mary might have seen our selfies… No, she certainly had seen those pictures.
Much to my mother’s amusement, I drove to the Whiskett Shopping Plaza where the Robert Graham store was. I was still getting the hang of dressing well, and at least I knew that brand. After last Sunday, it was now practically my fashion spirit animal. “Voluntarily shopping for himself…” my mom muttered to herself happily as I walked out.
I was just walking into the store when my phone rang. It was Chris. “Dude, come over. Spring Break is burning away, and we need to get the clubhouse in shape!” The clubhouse was a pre-fab shed in Chris’s back yard which provided his only refuge in a house with three much younger sisters.
“One, unlike you, I won’t be able to use your clubhouse for months,” I replied quellingly. “Get Tony or some other patsy to help you clean out the mouse shit. And Two, I can’t. I am out shopping, for crying out loud. I need a new shirt.”
“A new shirt,” quoted Chris incredulously. “Wait not another one of those things that looks like a crayon factory threw up on it?” He paused. “No…” I heard him breathe. “Do you have another date with Carrie?”
“No, I do not have another date with Carrie,” I snapped. “She and her family are in Vail for the rest of vacation. I won’t see her again until the summer, if ever.”
“Sorry dude,” he said apologetically. Then he seemed to sense the surprisingly low level of despair in my last words. “Wait a second… You said no date with Carrie. Are you going out with someone else? Who?!?”
There was no use in hiding it from him. He’d find out the broad outlines regardless. Chris was a geek, but he kept his ears open.
“Mary,” I said, shortly.
I heard the phone literally clunk to the floor on the other end of the line. Chris scrambled for it and enunciated very clearly. “Let me get this straight. You go out for your first ever date. It is with Carrie god-damned Croenke. Then four days later, you are going out with her best fucking friend?”
I just hung up the phone. Boring conversation anyway.
I had barely gotten in through the door of the mall when he sent me a gif of Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World, bowing, and captioned “We’re Not Worthy!”
Asshole.
But I was kind of getting arrogant enough to say into the thin air, “Damn straight you ain’t.”
The shirt I ended up buying was a pretty dope cloud pattern of sky blue and white. The only place the Crayola factory had thrown up on it were the insides of the collar and cuffs.