This story is copyright 2006 by Adam Gunn. All rights reserved.
*
I'm winded, but I know Christie will keep going. I wave her on, and she trots down the firm sand of the Carolina beach. We've played this game all week, and I know she'll go on another quarter mile while I rest up, then turn around and together we'll race back to our starting point.
I watch the muscles in her long, strong legs as she pulls away from me, and then, further up, the bottom of her firm gluteus maximus peeking out from the cutoffs she's wearing. I love the way her blond ponytail swishes first left, then right as she disappears into the haze of the early morning.
For two or three minutes I huff and puff, stretching, then dip my hand into the waves and cool my face with a splash of salt water. Less than five minutes have gone by, and I sense her approach. The soft golden eyebrows, the length of her aquiline nose with nostrils flaring in exercise, the full lips surrounding perfectly white teeth, and, always, the cobalt eyes, the orbs that bore through to my soul. Below her taut neckline and long collarbones lies the perfect midriff that surrounds a navel most men would grovel to place their pinkie into. Between her neck and flat stomach, the breasts, the ones I finally know to be perfect. Even though the thick fabric of the athletic bra binds them, I realize just how beautiful they are. Perfectly round where they rise from her breastplate, they climax to the perfect zenith of the rosy aureoles, protruding from the firm flesh, and crowned by the tip of her nipple. Women five years younger than she would be proud to have any single part of this Elysian body, but they would sell all they would ever have for simply her breasts.
I fall into step beside her, and tell her simply, "You're gorgeous."
"I know," she replies. "You'd be all right, too, if you'd lose that life preserver." She's teasing, at twenty-seven I'm in better shape than any of my friends, studiously avoiding the beer belly that I might develop through constant workouts. For another mile we trot wordlessly past the seaside grasses covering the dunes. Finally we halt at our backpack and retrieve the water bottle. She drinks from it first, and then passes it to me. I catch a hint of lipstick in the taste, and wish I could kiss her. But I know this is meant to be the impossible dream.
We kick off our shoes, and stroll into the slight ocean waves till our knees are covered in the water. I started this tradition the first day of our sunrise runs, and she now expects it. She shades her eyes from the glare of the water with her hand, and catches me admiring her elegance. "You're thinking of last night." It's a statement, not a question.
"Yes," I admit.
"You jerked off, thinking about me, didn't you?" Subtlety has never been one of Christie's vices.
Trying to sound nonchalant, I reply "Of course. Do you mind?"
"No, if you hadn't I think I'd be disappointed. I could be an exhibitionist, you know," she divulges.
"Really? Have you ever done anything like that before?"
"Once." She pauses, and I wait with the ripples of the ocean lapping at my thighs for her confession. "In college I was at Cancun on spring break, and during a wet tee shirt contest a boyfriend persuaded me to go up on the stage, and when a couple of the other girls ripped off their shirts, I did too."
"Would you do it again?" I prod.
"For a long time I thought about being an exotic dancer. I just never got around to it when I was in college, and now it's too late."
"You wouldn't do it for a second job?"
"Right," she smirks. "I can just see it now, 'rising young executive wannabe caught showing the world her bush.'" I reveled in her laughter.
"How about private parties?" I ask.
"Like for you?"
"Sure, why not?"
"Maybe I will," she suggests. "But if I did, you'd have to give me something."
"Like what?"
"I'll think about it. It'll be something big, though, bet on it."
"Okay," I promise. I know we're just teasing, the chances of anything like this happening are infinitesimally small. "But I want to see you go all the way."
"You mean totally nude, not just topless?" She gazes into my eyes. "If he doesn't object, it's a deal."
It's coffee time. We walk the two blocks back to the condominium and enter her uncle's timeshare. Entering by the patio door, Christie yells into her bedroom, "Get up, lunkhead!"
"Why?" Jake sleepily replies.
"For one thing," I holler, "we've got an early tee time."
"Shit, I forgot."
Christie and I putter around the kitchen, grabbing the cereal, fruit and juices, putting a pot of coffee on. We'd been sharing this chore every day since we'd arrived, five days before, and I still thrill every time she puts a hand on my arm or we bump together. Left to our own devices, I would have put a move on her long ago. Somehow, perhaps telepathically, I get the feeling that Christie would probably enjoy the pass, maybe even cooperate, but you simply don't try to make your best friend's girlfriend. Well, at least I wouldn't -- you can never tell about Jake.
By the time we've got everything on the table, Jake emerges from the bedroom, dressed in boxers and a shirt that doesn't quite cover his protruding stomach, his hair uncombed. Christie pours him a cup, quickly kisses him good morning, and sarcastically tells him, "You look great today."
"Shut up," he replies, only half in jest. "When do we have to leave?" he asks me.
I look at the clock. "About twenty-five minutes." This was typical. Ever since we'd been in grade school together, I was the one who prodded Jake, made him get his act together. All our friends in high school thought it was perfect when we got the starring roles in the junior class production of The Odd Couple. I, of course, was Felix, the anal-retentive neatnik. Jake didn't have to stretch very far to play the boorish Oscar. Now that he's living with Christie, she's taking up most of my duties.
"What are you going to do today?" Jake asks Christie.
"More of the same," she tells him. "My thesis is coming along nicely." Christie's taking night classes to get her MBA, and her final hurdle is due in less than two months. "And it looks like it's going to be a great day. I'll probably sit out by the pool awhile."
Half an hour later, Jake and I are driving to the golf course. "Shit, she was hot last night," Jake brags. "She gets so turned on sometimes." I thought back to the evening. After we watched some chick film on cable, Jake threw an X-rated video on and the three of us watched the people on the tube taking all their clothes off and screwing. For a few minutes I felt embarrassed. I mean, I'd never done anything like that with any girl that meant anything to either of us around. But Christie got into it, making the same lewd comments Jake and I always do, and after awhile it seemed like old times. Then Jake started making out with her, and I figured if they wanted privacy, they'd go into their bedroom, so I stayed and watched. When Jake took her blouse off and started sucking on her tits, she locked eyes with me and smiled invitingly. I wasn't sure what was going to happen, but she soon pulled Jake into the bedroom with a lilting, 'good night,' leaving me with her bra and lewd thoughts. Sure, I whacked off, right in the living room, thinking not of the naked people on the screen, but of the couple in the bedroom.
"Remember the time the two girls swapped on us?" Jake asks. He probably banged Christie three times last night, but he still wants to talk about other women.
"Yeah," I reply, "The one you were with first needed me to finish her off."
"Screw you," Jake laughs, as he pulls the car up to the bag drop.
Seven and a half hours later we get back to the timeshare. I whipped Jake's butt all over the golf course, and we smell, I'm sure, of chicken wings and beer. Christie's nowhere to be found, and Jake figures it's time for a nap on the sofa. Sitting in a golf cart all day isn't my idea of activity, so I decide to take a swim and head for the beach. Only a few couples laze in the warm, late afternoon spring sun, only one elderly woman wades in the ocean. I'm not disappointed, I learned the first day we were here that this commune is populated by mostly retired couples, escaping from the snows of winter. The nearest hope of nightlife is ten miles away, too far for comfort. No, this is a vacation simply to relax. I see a blond reclining in the lee of a dune, and when I approach to within shouting distance, I'm sure it's Christie. This isn't a clothing optional island, but apparently the restriction hasn't bothered her; she's topless. "Hey," I call from twenty yards. Quickly a hand drops to her cover up, and then she recognizes my voice. I can almost see her shrug, as if musing, 'he's seen it before.'
"Hi," she calls, a slight movement of her hand waving me over. I refuse to quicken my pace, and as I approach I take long looks at her from behind the safety of my sunglasses. Her only adornment is a necklace and her very brief bottoms. Her mons rises between the sharp hipbones, and I wonder if she shaves or waxes. Quickly I notice her nipples crinkle, then smooth, as if she's had a dirty thought she decided to put into a mental drawer. I sit down beside her, facing the ocean, hoping she doesn't recognize the erection inside my baggy trunks. "What are you doing here?" she joshes.
"Just getting some exercise," I reply. "Had enough of the homework?"
"I put four and a half hours into it. Then I started going through my day-timer. Listen, did Jake ever get you anything for your birthday last week?"
"No, not really. He called, talked about going out one night." I couldn't tell her that our birthday bashes were over, now that he was living with a woman. "It's okay, really. This trip is sort of a birthday party."
She doesn't buy it. "Jake told me about some of the things you guys used to do. Is it true you set him up with two girls for his birthday once?"
What the hell has Jake been sharing with her? "Yeah," I admit, a little guiltily. I remember how three years earlier I talked a lady I was going with into getting one of her girlfriends to go out to a swank dinner for Jake's twenty-fifth. After we went back to our place, the girls started fooling around with each other and stripped naked, sort of a lesbian scene, and then they both did Jake while I just watched and snapped pictures. I wonder where he hid them so Christie wouldn't find them.
"Didn't you mind sharing your girlfriend with him?" Now her nipples are definitely crinkling; I can tell there's a perverted side to Christie I'd never seen before.
"Linda wasn't really mine," I explain. "We were both seeing other people, and it was actually her idea. Haven't you ever teased a guy you liked?"
"Not like that!" she protests.
"But you've thought about it?"
"Sure. Who hasn't? But I couldn't afford to do anything like that. The world's becoming too much of a safe, secure place. Something like that would be too much of a risk."
"I don't know," I disagree. "Yesterday, I wouldn't have thought you were an exhibitionist, yet here you are."
