I'm a relatively new writing. Ratings, comments and suggestions are all appreciated!
*****
Anna stretched herself on the towel, enjoying the warm sun on her body. Although early in the season, it was a perfect beach day. With temperatures hovering around eighty, a cool breeze off Lake Michigan kept the temperatures pleasant, and the bright sun felt like a miracle after months of midwestern winter and still more months of the gray wet gloom of spring.
In three or four weeks, the beach would be packed. She'd been here at high season before, waiting in the agonizing long line to enter the state park and fighting with day trippers from Chicago and Detroit for a parking space and a sliver of sand barely big enough for a towel and a beach bag. Today, however, it was mostly empty. Although it was Saturday, only a few couples of retirement age had spread out along the fine beige sand, carefully distancing themselves from each other. There was at least one larger group of older kids in their 20s - probably students from Grand Valley playing hooky on account of the weather. An older man walked a dog, periodically throwing a piece of driftwood into the surf for the overjoyed labrador retriever to chase. Behind the dunes, she glimpsed the outline of several RVs and a few stray tents from off season visitors happy to brave the inconstant May weather. Days like this were paradise, and she found herself consistently amazed that more people didn't take advantage of these types of afternoons. For too many people, beach season began on Memorial Day, and not a day sooner.
Oak Grove Beach was one of her favorites. Shifting dunes dotted with beach grass and a few gnarled pines framed a broad beach of some of the finest sand she'd ever encountered. The facilities weren't great, and it was a long walk through a winding path among the dunes to get down from the parking lot to the actual beach. And at the end of the day, that walk was uphill and exhausting. The water was, granted, always a little too cold, but it was also fresh. It carried none of the sulphury smell of the sea, nor any of the stinging and biting things that lurked beneath the dark waters of the Gulf. The beach also always turned her on. Something about a diverse range of bodies basking in the pleasure of the sunlight, with only the barest fabrics separating their most intimate parts from the eyes of the public, drove her nuts. It was a rare occasion that a beach day didn't end up with Anna getting herself off fantasizing about what might happen if everyone just decided one day to shed their clothes and their inhibitions. "Say Yes to Michigan," she thought to herself, bringing back the echoes of a tourist campaign from days when she was significantly younger.
Not that she was old now, she thought. But fifty hit her hard when her birthday had rolled around earlier in the spring. She had tried to keep herself in shape, but the gradual sagging and graying that had started a decade ago had suddenly seemed to accelerate. She found herself thinking about what the next decade - really the next two decades - would bring. Statistically, she was as close to death now as she had been to birth when she graduated from college. Now that was a sobering thought.
And of course it didn't help that her sex life had sunk more rapidly than her boobs. Donald was an attentive husband, but whatever spark endured after thirty years together had dimmed almost to the point of nonexistence. Perversely, as his passion declined, hers had only increased. He'd blessed her purchase of a series of high end toys to keep the physical longing at bay, and sometimes watched or even participated. But the moments of pure lust were few and far between, and Anna found herself often fantasizing about fucking a younger guy, eager to taste the many pleasures that her body could offer. She kept herself in good shape, but she also knew that her chances of pulling an eighteen-year old - or even a thirty-year old - were slim. So whatever fulfillment she got would be alone, or at best with someone her age or older. And that made her feel even worse about the whole damned thing.
She sat up on the towel and stared at the lake. It was a calm day on the water, and the rhythmic churning of the lake made her sleepy. Time to snap out of this, Anna. It's a beautiful beach day, and you're feeling sorry for yourself.
She tried to read, but the paperback she was working on barely kept her attention. She suspected she'd reached the point where the pile of badly written mysteries she used to enjoy had blended together into a boring stew that no longer brought any pleasure. Like so many things, she sighed. When the tedium of Jack Clancy, PI, became too much to bear, she shut her eyes and dozed.
*****
She awoke with a start, unsure of how long she'd been out. The sun was still high but clearly had begun its descent towards the horizon of the lake. She hadn't been asleep for too long, but long enough that the already sparse crowd on the beach had clearly started to thin. The lurking spring chill kept at bay by today's sun would start creeping out soon, so she'd need to think about packing up within the next half hour or so.
She sat up and scanned the beach. A few couples remained, and she saw the man sitting in the sand much farther down the beach, while his dog romped in the waves. The group of college kids had gone, save for one straggler - a tallish boy in board shorts and a white t-shirt, wearing a Tigers hat. He sat on a towel, sideways to the beach, checking out his phone and apparently oblivious to the rest of the world. For reasons that she didn't fully understand, she lowered her sunglasses and subtly checked him out. He seemed good looking and in shape. She wondered why he'd stayed behind, especially since there had been some awfully pretty girls in the group. A romantic soul, she thought. Or addicted to Candy Crush or whatever inanity was keeping him occupied on his phone.
Her mind drifted and she wondered what it would be like to wrap herself around a man - no, really a boy - like that. She imagined he would be urgent but clumsy, the exact inverse of Donald. She wondered if he'd be the type to get hard just from kissing. She thought he might be. She thought it might be fun to find out.
What the fuck, Anna? She shook her head, clearing the cobwebs. Somewhat surprisingly, she realized that she felt turned on - warm and tingly and yes, a little wet.
Slightly flustered, she stood and started walking towards the water to rinse off and hopefully cool down. She was fully committed to this path before fully realizing that her steps to the water would take her right past the boy. She was sure that the black one piece wouldn't show anything too embarrassing. And, she thought, it was a chance to get a better look at... she wondered what his name was. College Boy, she thought. That would be good enough. As she closed the distance, she saw that he really was attractive - thin but muscular, a good face, a good head of brown hair slightly mussed in the lake breeze.
As she walked by, her shadow passed over him and he looked up from his phone. His eyes were strikingly gray. She smiled at him brightly. "Beautiful day."
He grunted, gave her a half smile, and then returned to his phone.
Welp, that's that, she thought.
The water was, unsurprisingly, frigid. While she napped, the wind had picked up and now small whitecaps lapped at the shore. She walked into the lake up to her knees, but the waves were high enough to soak her to the waist. It was cold, but not unpleasant, especially after basking in the sun all afternoon.
She turned and walked back towards her towel, passing College Boy again. This time, to her surprise, he had put aside his phone and watched her intently as she moved up from the waterline toward him. When she got closer, he averted his stare somewhat awkwardly, acting like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Before he looked away, however, she caught a look that she had seen many times before, in a very different stage of her life. It was the look of a boy in a pussy trance. Times may change, she thought, but young men don't.
When she got back to her towel, she realized with some embarrassment what might have caused that awkward little scene. Although she had not been aware of it, the combination of cold water and the light breeze had stiffened her nipples. As she bent over to retrieve her sundress from her bag, she realized how hard they were... really, like gumdrops straining against her black lycra one piece. Well, I guess that gave him a show, she thought. She wondered if he'd put that image in the spank bank. She hoped he would.
Her mind suddenly veered into uncharted territory. As she stood with her sundress wrap in her hand, she turned back towards College Boy and scanned the beach. It was now almost entirely empty. In the far distance, she thought she saw the lab and his man, now walking further away. What if...
Without giving herself time to second guess, she jumped right into it. She snuck a glimpse in his direction and was delighted to see that he was staring at her again, although somewhat more subtly now. Standing and staring into the horizon, she pretended that he wasn't there. Boldly, she slipped the straps of her suit from her shoulders, and slowly peeled it from her body. Her heart raced as she first exposed her breasts, then worked the suit down, stepping first one foot, and then other, out of the suit. In an instant, and without any rational thought at all, she was suddenly fully nude on the beach, pretending that College Boy wasn't there and wasn't checking her out.
She hoped that what he saw was a turn on. She had bravely tried to fight back the march of time with diets and workouts, but gravity and the years had put on a few extra pounds and a few extra curves. Her breasts were large, but less firm than they'd been thirty years ago. She was proud of her nipples, though. Her peach gumdrops still stood at attention in the light breeze and she felt the tight pleasure that they gave her in this state. She'd given up on anything more than a cursory trim of her pubic hair several years ago and wondered if that would put him off - she'd gotten herself off to enough online porn in the last three years to know that a smooth shave was the norm nowadays. She wondered if boys these days even knew how to navigate a full bush.
