List of Characters
Jack: Our point of view. Smart, corny, neurotic, Jack has few friends at school outside of his study group. White. Lifeguards in the summer and has a big dick.
Pri: Jack's ex(?). Brilliant and reserved, she plays varsity soccer with her best friend Liv. Indian-American. Short and athletic with ass for days, darkly tanned with thick black hair.
Liv: Pri's best friend and Jack's study buddy. Funny and dynamic, she plays varsity soccer and does what she feels. Jewish. Tall with a heart-shaped face. She has a deep tan, small breasts, and sprinter's legs.
Marco: Liv's boyfriend and long-time friend. Charming and almost offensively handsome, he teaches tennis and studies literature. Colombian-American. He's fashionable, with a lean, muscular body.
Sylvie: Liv's long-time frenemy and Marco's ex. Grim and sarcastic, she's pre-law at NYU. Pale, Jewish, and tiny, with a cute face and a bull ring septum piercing.
Kay: Sylvie's friend from NYU. Laconic and up for anything, they study film and play volleyball. White and non-binary, they're over six foot and covered with tattoos. Bleached pixie cut and dark eyelids.
Grace: Liv's friend from college. Perky and energetic, she's All-State softball and loves to party. Chinese-American. She's muscular but feminine, with thick legs, big breasts, and fun tattoos.
~
Kay leapt to meet the volleyball, their raised hand momentarily blocking the sun. The light formed a halo around their long, lanky body, and they looked every bit like a valkyrie descending to land the killing blow on some peasant Briton. They grunted as their palm smashed the ball, rocketing it into the sand beside me.
It didn't kill me, but it was close.
"You win," said Yara with a tired wave. She was, apparently, one of our new Dutch friends.
"Yo, that's sixteen," said Liv. "It's to twenty-one."
"No, that is too much." Yara looked at us, her teammates, for argument. We didn't offer any. She was angular and lean, with a blonde undercut and a serious mouth. "On behalf of my team, we surrender."
I hunched over and wiped my face into my shirt, taking some space from the others. They laughed and congratulated each other, reaching under the net for handshakes and low fives. The past week's heat had finally abated to something almost pleasant. The sand was soft, the sky was clear, and the beach was crowded. Physically, I was a bit winded. Psychically, I was total shit.
The other Dutch girl, Isa, made a silly, worshipful bow towards Kay. "She is too powerful. I look at the tattoos and I think we should have known." With her thick accent, the word "think" came out
tink
.
"They're non-binary," I said without thinking. A little louder I said, "Kay is non-binary, so say 'they' instead."
"Ah ha!" Marco hooted. "We finally broke him! Another cis white for the coalition. That's a two-vote swing, baby."
Liv laughed and clapped while Kay just shrugged.
"Ah, we don't have this in Nederland," said Simon, the last of the Dutch. The sturdy, sunburnt boy had scooped up the ball and was hugging it to his chest. He was Isa's boyfriend and not, I realized, her brother.
Isa gave him a dirty look and said some choice words in their language. "
No
," she clarified. "Of course we have it. This stupid boy is from the forest. He doesn't know anything."
Simon made a face and raised his hands, as if it meant nothing to him in the end.
We were all of us playing except for Sylvie. She was slouched in her folding chair, reading a book beneath a floppy sun hat, ignoring us.
We'd bumped into the Dutch in the parking lot and Liv had attached to them quickly. So quickly, in fact, that I'd worried we were stalking them until I found out we'd been invited along. It seemed like Liv had been waiting for them, or someone like them, to shake things up. Maybe it was because they knew English, or because they were the same age, or maybe it was just the fact that they were tall and attractive. Maybe Liv was on the hunt.
As the volleyball game dispersed, I thought that maybe she'd bitten off more than she could chew. There was a subtle scramble, the two teams intermingling, and when the obviously queer Yara approached Kay with a smile and a dirty joke, Kay smiled back. Liv closed quickly in defense. I'd known that Liv had become infatuated with Kay but when a rival entered the frame it became painfully obvious. Both girls crowded the volleyball star, dangling off Kay's arms like desperate ladies-in-waiting.
Marco watched Liv grimly, whether out of second-hand embarrassment for his girlfriend or something more, I didn't know
.
He looked like he was about to do something about it when Pri hip-checked him. Her energy had been weird all afternoon, almost bubbly, shouting and rump-slapping the entire match.
Grace sidled up to join them and immediately clocked what I had seen from a distance: Pri was flirting outrageously. She'd grabbed Marco's forearm, laughing too hard at a joke, and made ditzy, pouty faces when he flirted back. If she'd batted her eyelashes any harder I'd have thought she was having a seizure. Grace nodded along to the madness with a pinched smile.
At the opposite end of the net, Isa and Simon had stepped aside. In the way that Spanish was flowy and dramatic, Dutch was bouncy and almost fun, and it took me a moment to realize they were still arguing. They'd angled themselves away from the group, though that didn't do much to hide their body language.
When I glanced back, Grace was already making her escape. She joined me at the edge of the scrum and mimed an anime-style sweat drop down the side of her face. Her t-shirt was soaked and clinging to her body. On the front was Goku flying on his little cloud thing.
"Before you start," I said. "I don't know what's up with Pri. Smooth exit though."
She made a sliding motion with his hand. "That's me: fucking smooth." We watched the others milling about. "Yeah, but it's not just her. Liv is like a total simp right now."
"Well, Kay seems to be handling it, if 'handling it' is being an enby hoe-slaying pimp I mean." We both laughed at that. I hesitated. "I feel like we haven't talked in a bit. How are you doing?"
"Goood," she said. "Sweaty."
"I mean like... how are you feeling? You haven't said anything."
"About the thing?"
"About the thing."
The thing was, of course, the big reveal: Liv and Marco, Pri and I, fucking each other round-robin style for months. The word of the day was polyamory. Grace considered me for a moment.
"I would have said it was none of my business, but after what happened... You know, it's like we were all playing a game, except ya'll had secret rules the rest of us didn't know about. Mean, kinda nasty rules. I don't feel, like,
betrayed
, but it feels shitty."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I should have said that before. I'm sorry. It's been eating me up."
"Yeah, obviously. Your face is like a dog taking a shit." She pushed a sticky strand of hair off her cheek. "Sorry, that's one of my dad's weird sayings. It sounds better in Chinese. Everything's just kinda weird now. I'm thinking about moving my flight up either way."
She was leaving.
My stomach felt like a brick. I didn't realize how tightly I'd been holding on to the idea of Grace. Ten little daydreams a day where yes, Pri dumped me, but I found this beautiful girl at the same time, that I didn't actually have to feel sadness or loss because I'd already moved on.
"Whoa." She patted me on the back. "You gotta chill out, dude. I'm watching ulcers form in real time."
Despite everything, I laughed.
"Okay, enough holding your dicks!" yelled Liv, cutting through the noise. She pulled her sweaty t-shirt over her head. As usual, she wasn't wearing a suit top, and her little tits wobbled as she threw the shirt towards our stuff. "Everybody in the ocean!"
A silly cheer went up, and the group began to strip down to their suits. Hair was tied into ponytails and khaki bottoms were flung.
"What's up, Jacky?" yelled Liv, waving wildly. "Get your ass in the water."
