This is a sequel to Rope and Veil. As with that story, any mistakes or misunderstanding of the issues facing PWD communities are mine and mine alone; and I hope I don't cause offence.
A key element of the story was inspired by Pascale Honore, a woman with paraplegia. Use your favourite search engine.
--ooo OOO ooo --
"Alex, take me down to the sand, be my legs today."
We're staying in a small town in the far north of the state, where Amelia's grand-parents built their summer retreat before she was born. By the ocean, this is the town where Amelia first found her love of water and learned to swim like a fish. When her mother returned to her family for southern Christmases, Amelia was a gleeful child, a dolphin skimming down the waves. She was dark and small and ran like a sprite.
She parked her wheelchair at the top of the dunes, where the grass ended and the soft sands began. The chair placed so conspicuously declared her presence.
"The town gossips might as well know I'm the woman in the wheelchair, right from the start. They'll get used to me quicker that way."
The existence of the sand gave Amelia the shits the first day when the wheels bogged, but she was kind to me by taking her own weight on her arms around my neck, and I carried her lightly onto the beach, rewarded with a kiss.
"Alex, slather me with sun cream, this sun is glorious on my skin, so warm. Thanks, my darling man."
She wore a black bikini, high cut on her hips and a lovely curve over her ass, the top cupping her perfect breasts. Amelia goes a darkness in the sun, her skin colouring with some ancestral trace, and our bodies quickly become a contrast. Her darkness and my lighter tan, my hair turning blond in the sun and salt; her coloured hair, flame red at the moment but that will change next month. She's never constant, but she's always Amelia. Summer by the ocean, there is no better time. Amelia by the sea, there is no better woman. Amelia anywhere, really. She doesn't need a place.
Amelia lay on her front, and I rubbed the cream onto her long legs and up over her slender, muscled back, lingering over her shoulders. I wished she was lying on her back, her breasts a delight for my eyes.
"You're horny, aren't you? I can always tell, your fingers slow on my skin."
"Who wouldn't be horny, looking at you, Amelia? God, look at you, lying there all tanned and gorgeous in a black bikini, barely there."
"Oh go on, fuck off and collect some shells or something. I'm just getting to a good bit in this book, you can wait..."
She paused, two beats and a promise.
"Besides, it's a public beach and there's too much sand."
The problem with Amelia is that she's right. It's a public beach, and of course there's sand. It's a beach.
I wandered off to the edge of the water, scattering sprays with my feet and kicking the water into flickering patterns.
At this end of the beach, fishermen back between the wars cleared rocks from the shallow reef, making a wide landing place for their boats. Now, the place was a small lagoon, and when the tide was low, safe for children, the sandy bottom slowly sloping away to about six feet deep. Some two hundred yards out from the shore, a low reef broke the surf, and kids bobbed on their boards. Out there, I saw snorkels, and remembered Amelia telling me about fish on the reef.
I looked back up the beach to Amelia, but she was engrossed in her book and didn't see my wave. I did as I was told, and bent to collect some shells. She'll want to see them when I go back to her, to wonder at their colours and shiny surfaces. She'll turn them over in her long fingers and trace the corrugations on the shells, all tactile and sensual. I'll watch her fingers, fascinated, and I'll want them tracing along the shaft of my cock. Amelia's touch is always worth waiting for. Her fingers have no weight, they float across the surface of my skin, bringing shivers to my spine.
My fingers on her skin are less successful, sadly. She can see my caress, and know its intent is true; but sometimes I wish she could feel my love for her on every inch of her body.
Her gaze was strong and direct as she watched me return to our wide towel on the beach. I knelt by her side, and dropped a small pile of shells in front of her. It's a little offering.
"Did you read more of the chapter?" She'd sent me away, and I wanted to know it was worth it.
"No. I didn't read another word. I wanted to watch you walk along the beach, bend down, stand up, kick the water, bring me shells."
Sometimes I can't keep up with Amelia. I thought she wanted me gone so she could finish her chapter. No, she wanted me gone so she could see me come back to her.
"I love watching you, Alex. You're a fucking Adonis, you know that? All tall and golden and blond. I watch the women looking at you, and I see their eyes narrow and glint. They want you so bad. I see them look across at me, here on the sand. Sometimes their astonishment shows, before they can hide it."
"Yeah, well, just because you can't walk on the sand, doesn't mean you can't have the hottest man on the beach. Fuck 'em. They can check me out all they like, but only you can have me!"
But I was flattered, of course I was, that the other women on the beach were jealous of Amelia.
She rolled onto her back and propped herself against me, resting her weight on one elbow. She'd undone the string of her bikini top, and as she re-arranged herself the black scraps of cloth slid to the towel. Her breasts were the same dark tan as the rest of her, her nipples darker circles with a small tightness at their centre. Amelia reached for the sun cream and rubbed it onto her arms, breasts and belly.
"Can you rub the cream in on my legs?"
She knows that I love to care for her long, thin legs, and she watched my hands caress the cream into her scarred thighs, the long gouge on her right thigh still pale, never tanning. The lighter, more regular cutting scars were silvering with time, fading memories. I stretched down to rub cream over her lower legs and feet. As I did so, I felt her gentle touch upon my waist sensing the twist of muscle under my skin. Whenever Amelia sees my fingers on her legs, which she cannot feel, she rests her fingers somewhere on my skin, which she can.
"Can you believe that my mother, when she first came here for summer hols, used to rub baby oil on her skin, deliberately, to go brown?"
"You're kidding, you mean she would lie in the sun and just cook? Jesus, that's asking for skin cancer, isn't it?"
I was incredulous. I'd met Amelia's mum, couldn't imagine her cooking herself in the sun.
"You'd think so. Probably just as well mum lives in England most of the time. Mind you, by the time I first came here, proper sun block lotions were being used. I don't remember though, I was only little."
She looked around, down to the water, and back up to the dunes.
"I've just realised something." The tone of her voice changed, and I knew from past experience that I was going to hear some quiet reveal.
"This beach, maybe even right here, this must have been the place my grand-dad died, that first Christmas I was here. I must have been about three. I can't remember a thing.
"Apparently, the whole family had come up to the holiday house for Christmas. Mum's younger brother drove back south the day before we all arrived, so he wasn't here when it happened. Mum, Judy and I flew from England on Boxing Day, and we'd only been here a day when grand-dad died. Mum said he'd taken me for a swim, right there in the lagoon, came out of the water, and bang, collapsed and died right here on the beach. That's not fucking right, is it?"
"God, it's like he waited until he'd seen all his children, and you. Fucking hell, that's cruel, isn't it? Fuck."
Nothing more could be said. Amelia was too young to remember, but I was reminded just how quickly the impossible can happen and change everything. No, that's not fucking right.
After ten or fifteen minutes, our silence together became a stillness, and I felt Amelia's fingers press on my skin. I squeezed her shoulder and kissed her hair, affectionately. I suppose love and death go together, and being with Amelia reminded me all the time about life. Being around her, I'd learned never to take anything for granted.
Her fingers were a slow, unconscious movement, circling softly on my flesh. In the drowsy heat of the sun, the touch of her fingers soothed me into a doze. Then her fingers were slower on my skin.
"Alex, take me into the water."
I looked down at her, and saw that her nipples were tight and taut. She was aroused, and I'm so slow. Maybe not such an unconscious movement, then. Perhaps sex and death go together, as well as love.
I took her up in my arms, and she clung tightly to me like she was drowning, but we're not even in the water yet.
In the water, Amelia wrapped her arms around me until I was waist deep. She slid from my arms and swam in circles around me, her strong arms pulling through the water like her palms turned the wheels of her chair. Her legs trailed behind her like a mermaid's tail, and the water freed her. She dove down between my legs, and when she surfaced, she flung her arms around me, droplets of water a rainbow around her as she flicked her hair.
"Further out, come on, let's go where it's deeper. Where no-one can see."
Her voice was joyous, laughing. She was weightless in the warm water, and her bare breasts had become perfect globes, her hard nipples tighter still. My cock hardened in my swimming briefs. Her hand went down inside them and gripped me, tight. She pushed herself away from me, her feet knocking against my body. Amelia's body curved in the water around me, but she's so quick, she's gone.
