Stranded
Kathryn M. Burke
The Outer Banks of North Carolina! What a wonderful spot for a summer vacation, especially if you've spent most of your life in a landlocked area like Columbus, Ohio.
I'm Jimmy Gardner, and my parents decided to treat me to this vacation as a way of celebrating both my eighteenth birthday and my acceptance to Ohio State (sure, it's mostly just a dopey football school—but hey, it's close by and won't cost too much). My high school career wasn't all that stellar, but was just good enough to get into OSU. The downside of the vacation was that my annoying older sister, Janice, who was twenty and would be starting her junior year at the same eminent institution of higher learning, would be tagging along. She and I didn't exactly get along so great. She'd become one of these feminists who thought all guys were criminals-in-the-making who didn't "respect" women the way women deserved to be respected. I guess her only virtue, in my opinion, was that she was quite a looker—but more on that later.
The vacation got off on the wrong foot, as my dad was delayed by urgent work at his office and wouldn't be able to join us for a day or two. So the three of us bundled into the car ourselves and headed out. We figured that, with all three of us sharing the driving, we would get there in pretty good time—and we did.
It was damn hot in the Outer Banks that August, but that's what we wanted. We were all good swimmers, and we packed various bathing suits to take advantage of the kinds of sandy beaches that people in Ohio can only dream about. And I have to say that having not one but two nice-looking females, both of whom would be dressed only in swimwear for long periods of time, was one of the things I was most looking forward to on this trip. I'm referring, of course, to my sister—and my mom.
My mother (she had the old-fashioned name of Mabel—which she hated all the time she was growing up until Dad came along and said it was "charming") had had Janice when she was only twenty, so right now she was forty—and looked a lot younger. She was petite (no more than five foot four) and slender, but really curvy here and there, especially where it mattered. All my guy friends said she was just the cutest mother they'd ever seen; in fact, they'd started using another term about her—an acronym, I think it's called—which, when I finally understood what it meant, made me want to punch them in the face. But on reflection, I couldn't say they were wrong.
She had this delicate, oval face that was somehow tinged with melancholy—not that my mom was sad a lot, or at all. In fact, a lot of the time she seemed
spooked.
She was one of these people (and I'm sorry to say there are more women like this than men—no disrespect toward females intended!) who seem scared of everything. She was a wonderful mom, and I loved her—but when I got to be bigger and stronger and taller than her, I think she began to be afraid even of
me.
That's silly, isn't it?
That first day of the vacation, we were just tired from all the driving we'd done, and we managed to get to our cabin on the Outer Banks pretty late in the day, so we did nothing but go right to sleep. Luckily, the place had three bedrooms, so I wouldn't have to shack up with my annoying sister—something she would have hit the ceiling about anyway. The next day we just loafed around, not really knowing what to do. Dad was usually the one to organize our vacation schedules, and he wouldn't be showing up until the next day.
After dinner, I saw a place near the shore where you could rent little speedboats and go on your own self-guided tours of the area. That sounded like a good idea to me, but both Janice and my mom were hesitant. I managed to persuade Mom to go with me, but Janice drew the line, giving me this look that said,
There's no way I'm stepping into a boat with
you
driving it!
Okay, I'd never driven a speedboat before, but how hard could it be?
So Mom and I took off while Janice went back to the cabin for some peace and quiet. I made a joke about what she might be doing all by herself, and she swung her little fist at me—but I dodged it with ease.
Mom and I got into the boat, which really was pretty small. There was still a lot of daylight, since sun set pretty late at this time of year. After getting some elementary instructions about how to run the vehicle, we set off on our journey.
Did I mention that Mom had changed into a strapless one-piece swimsuit that clung to her body—from breasts to butt—in a way I'd never seen before? I could tell she was hugely self-conscious about showing off her "assets" to her own son, and she tried to avoid my gaze as much as she could. I myself was wearing only swimming trunks: it was still pretty warm, and I figured we might land on some remote beach and have a swim.
The boat was pretty easy to manage, and we were exhilarated by having the wind strike our faces, the spray from the water coming up and giving us a nice little bath, and of course the spectacular view of the overall terrain. I decided to head for a spot where no one else was: maybe I could pretend I was on that stupid old
Gilligan's Island
show and land on a "deserted island." Of course, there were no islands here, just this long peninsula; but you could dream, couldn't you?
I guess I went a little too fast. It was easy to do with this boat, which had a lot more power than you expected. As I was heading toward the coast—which really looked pretty damn deserted—she got up from the back of the boat and said: "Jimmy, please be careful!"
Her words had the opposite effect, because when I turned my head to look at her and say, "We'll be fine, Mom," I kind of lost track of where I was. With a little scream, she tried to wrestle the steering wheel of the boat out of my hands—and the end result is that we bumped hard against something in the water (apparently a submerged rock) that caused a loud crash. The boat's motor immediately died, and we came almost to a standstill.
And then I noticed that there was this big hole in the side of the boat, and water was flowing in.
"Omigod, we're gonna drown!" my mother cried out in a tiny little high-pitched voice, as she looked at the hole in the boat with both hands plastered to her cheeks.
"Mom, we're not going to drown," I said.
But Mom was so agitated that she just jumped overboard, even though we were no more than about twenty feet from the shore. I felt the need to follow her, just to make sure her freaking out didn't result in the very thing she was afraid of. But she was a good swimmer, and her strong, powerful strokes got her to shore pretty fast. I won't deny that I liked looking at her butt as she swam ahead of me, with her shapely legs propelling her along.
When we got onto the beach, we turned around and looked at our poor little boat. It didn't actually sink; it was already in fairly shallow water. But it fell pathetically on its side, like some animal that's been shot with an arrow, and just lay there, useless. There would be no way we could get back to the rental place with it.
So at this point my mom began running around like a chicken with its head cut off, crying, "Omigod! Omigod! We're stranded here!"
"Mom, calm down," I said sharply.
My tone of voice must have taken her by surprise, because she stopped dead in her tracks and just gaped at me.
"Look, Mom," I said with as much confidence as I could summon, "someone will come and rescue us. Eventually they'll figure out that we haven't returned the boat, and so they'll come and look for us. We haven't gone to the ends of the earth, you know."
Mom had managed to take her smartphone with her, just carrying it in her hand. She tried punching in some number—any number—but of course there was no service. There are still places on this earth where your phone just won't work, and we were in one of these places.
"What are we going to do, Jimmy?" she cried—and I thought she was going to burst into tears.
I figured I had to settle her down. So what I did was to come up to her, kind of like the way I'd seen Dad do, and take her in my arms.
She resisted for a while—I guess she thought it wasn't right for a son to do what I was doing—but I held her tight. She only came up to about my chin, and all of a sudden she threw her hands around my neck and hugged me back. She was raised with this idea that men are supposed to be in charge of situations like this—and I was the only man around, so she had to rely on me.
I have to say, holding my mom this way was really, really nice. Her wet swimsuit was like a second skin, slick and glistening, and didn't do anything to prevent her jutting breasts from pressing up against my bare chest. And in spite of her little dip in the salt water, she smelled nice—smelled like a girl. You know what I mean?
She was trembling a little—whether from the chill of having been in the water, or from nerves, I couldn't tell. I stroked her back to try to get her to calm down, and maybe my hand went down a little too far and brushed up against her butt, making her squeal a bit. Then, for no reason that I could tell, I lifted up her face and kissed her on the mouth.
She tried to resist that too, making little sounds in her throat as she tried to pull her face away. But I wouldn't let her, and eventually she just gave way. That's the kind of person she was: she just yielded to superior force, especially when that force was brought on by a man. I'd seen Dad do this lots of times when she was supposedly mad at him: it was his way of making up.
That kiss must have lasted, like, maybe half a minute or even a full minute. Finally she managed to pull away from me, and I could see that her face had gotten all red from blushing. She first gave me this appalled look, then buried her face in my chest again, muttering, "Jimmy, you shouldn't kiss your mother like that."