Hunter's gaze scanned the beach in search of his quarry.
There were hundreds of people at the lake. A heat wave and school holidays always combined to bring them out in great numbers. For Hunter, it was easy to filter out the women and the children so that he was only tracking the men, and not even all of them. He was looking for men of a specific type.
The Dad Bods.
Those guys who tended to be well-built and fit, but for a bit of a paunch or beer-belly. For Hunter, they tended to be between forty and fifty-five, but he considered older men appealing as well sometimes.
There were quite a few dad bods at the beach this day. Hunter's eyes darted between them as he assessed each one's ripeness for his intentions. This one was too hairy, that one not hairy enough. Some might carry a little too much weight while others might have an over-developed musculature above the waist. He was looking for average joes. That was his target. His turn-on. His fetish.
Those criteria reduced the pool to just a few dozen possibles. Hunter was able to juggle them all in his view, selecting his favourites from the remainder, while rejecting others. One man seemed unpleasant and his voice carried over the distance to Hunter as the man berated his wife over wasting sun-tan lotion. He was out of the running. His aggression was a turn-off. A few more men were glued to their matronly wives' hips, following them wherever they went, whether over to the midway where the rides were set up for the kids or the snack bar. They were off the list too. Hunter needed his dad bod alone.
Several of the remaining men were sleeping under beach umbrellas beside their partners and a few of those might be solid possibilities. They had coolers beside them. Sooner or later, all those Diet Cokes and Pepsi Zeros would fill their bladders and they'd need to take a walk to the washroom on the edge of the beach. A few others were sitting in the sun, reading through sunglasses. Hunter saw at least a couple of such men who might do.
Hunter's own sunglasses hid the movement of his eyes and a baseball cap shaded his face. He wouldn't be easy to recognize even if someone he knew came along. The shades and visor altered his appearance while few people he knew were accustomed to seeing him in a state of undress for the beach.
Below his neck, he wore only a pair of blue and black swimming trunks and brown leather sandals. Fair-skinned, he was built lean and tight. His body radiated strength despite its smallness. He had barely any body hair and his face was clean-shaven. He looked like a hundred other twenty-year-olds on the beach today.
His eye caught a movement by one of the men he was monitoring. One of the readers had collected himself into a sitting position on his beach towel. He was chatting with his partner, a good-looking woman of about forty. He himself was probably about the same age, Hunter guessed. Observing the subject sitting up, he had a better view of the man's paunch. It was noticeable, partially hair-covered compared to the proliferation of cover on his chest. The hair was a dark-brown or possibly black. It was hard to tell with sunglasses on and at this distance.
The missus, or whoever she was to him, gave the Dad Bod instructions and he nodded and smiled back as he clambered to his feet with little grace. She reached into a small purse and pulled out a small bill for him. He crunched it in his hand and, putting his feet in flip-flops, began to pound the sand toward the structures at the edge of the beach.
Hunter saw opportunity here. He put down the book he hadn't even been looking at. It was just a prop which he used to cover his observation of others. He let the man take ten steps toward the washrooms and snack bar, before he stood up and followed him on a parallel vector.
The man's gait was confident and lacked urgency. Not headed to the washroom then, Hunter assumed. The snack bar.
Hunter looked ahead. There were about ten people in line at the snack bar, each quickly provided hot dogs or ice cream or their non-alcoholic beverage of choice at sky-high prices. Hunter's own refreshment was his only consideration as he watched the Dad Bod take his place in line.
Off the beach, the snack bar was built beside the public restrooms and both buildings backed on a tall hedge that made a barrier against sound from the public road, the parking lot and the midway. There was grass around the buildings and a few trees. Hunter leaned against one of trees as he watched his subject with rising interest.
The man had left his sunglasses with his wife for some reason, but he retained his ball cap. Hunter wondered if Dad Bod was balding. It didn't matter to him. It was just curiosity. He liked being able to see the man's eyes. He wanted those eyes to see him when the time was right. He would see those eyes seeing him.
For now, Hunter was unobserved by his quarry. He looked around to ensure nobody else was paying him much attention. He reached into the pocket of his trunks and pulled out his cellphone. He'd noticed that nobody ever paid attention to anyone who was looking into their phone. After a minute or so, he looked up and surreptitiously surveyed his surroundings. Nobody was watching him as he leveled his phone's camera eye and took a few shots of Dad Bod. He liked to keep a trophy of his conquests.
But this conquest was not in the bag yet.
It wouldn't pay to be overconfident. A lot could easily go wrong. It wasn't just as easy as finding a mark.
Hunter watched as Dad Bod reached the front of the line and placed his order. He settled just past the counter, and when the man was handed two soft-serve, chocolate dipped ice cream cones, one for each hand, Hunter thought his chances might be reduced, but in a what-the-hell moment, whistled to the man anyway.
Dad Bod cleared the counter and looked around for the source of the sound.
Hunter, standing a few feet away now, at the front corner of the building, adopted a shallow, vacuous tone and spoke to the man.
