Being a single mother is no day at the beach. Sandy finds an unexpected treasureon her trip to the shore.
My bare thighs peeled from the hot, sticky car seat, and my children tumbled out the passenger door. Clutched in their sweaty hands were pails stuffed with shovels, rakes, goggles, floaties, and nose plugs. A day at the beach: what a concept. I checked the contents of my bag, making sure I had everything a mother would possibly need in any given scenario-which, as it turned out, boiled down to fluorescent bandages, sunscreen, juice boxes, and peanut butter crackers. Fine.
Now I only needed Mommy’s bag. This one contained the latest wisecracking female detective novel, sunscreen that didn’t smell like bubblegum, a large blanket, and a few icy cold beers tucked into a miniature soft-sided cooler. Scoff if you will, but Mommy needed a break. And there wasn’t nearly enough alcohol in those three cans of brew to numb my super-refined Mommy senses; adrenaline can do wonders for a buzz.
I slung both bags over my shoulder, grabbed my boom box and bumped the car door shut with my hip. I could see the kids running headlong at the water, and prayed they already heard my voice in their heads screaming, Stop!
I chuckled when both screeched to a cartoonish halt at the water’s edge and peered over their shoulders, willing me to Hurry up, Mom! Good boys. I’ll be there when I get there.
I stumbled through the sand, trying to look languid and effortless like they do in the commercials. I saw a few heads turn my way. It’s fun to pretend they’re noticing me-for maybe a second.
My boys dumped a good deal of their belongings in a heap at the foot of the Life Guard…er…super-tall chair thingy. Not exactly the spot I would have chosen, but it was hot, and my back already hurt from leaning to the side to counterbalance the thousand pounds of beach paraphernalia. So I dumped my burdens in an equally unceremonious heap and began the preparation stage of relaxation.
As I snapped my blanket in the breeze and let it fall to the sand, my attention wandered toward the splintery, whitewashed ladder to my immediate left. My gaze hit the top of the ladder and kept going, and oh, my goodness. Some very tanned toes hung over the edge of the platform. Above those sprawled miles of very tanned shins, which led to knees that were resting so far apart I could see right up the leg of the baggy red swim shorts. Oh!
It was suddenly very loud inside my head, what with the blood rushing to my face and all, and I realized my attention had been fixed for an unnecessarily long time. I realized there was an entire person attached to ‘that very spot’, and my gaze snapped to a very tanned face and into very green eyes, which were looking directly at me. There was a bemused smile beneath. It made me feel ‘oogie’, as my eight-year-old would say.
In an attempt to save a tiny bit of dignity, I busied myself preparing my little oasis, wishing it wouldn’t be obvious if I were to pack up my stuff and lug it to another location far, far away. But it really would, so I grabbed my book, spread out on the blanket, and turned my music on, nice and low. My gaze flicked over the top of the book every so often, to see my boys obediently staying in the shallows, splashing and giggling and running. I smiled to myself. What good boys-and what a nice early bedtime it will be tonight!
The sun was so brilliant that for a moment I closed my eyes. Okay, it ended up being for a couple of moments. And while I was soaking the sun through my eyelids, a shadow loomed over me. Expecting it to be a passing fellow beach goer, I didn’t pay the shadow or the shooshing noise of the approaching footsteps much attention, aside from wishing the shadow’s owner would get the heck out of my sun. But the footsteps stopped right next to me, and the shadow loomed closer.
I cracked open my left eye and squinted attractively at the offending menace. Oh.
Directly in front of my face was a very tanned knee. And, again, from my angle, I could see right up the baggy red swim shorts. Oh, my. Again my gaze snapped to the face, and the very green eyes, and that damned bemused smile. What’s so funny? The fact that my eyes are the size of saucers? Or is it my flaming red cheeks that bear a startling resemblance to those baggy red swim shorts?
“Sandy, right?” the bemused smile said.
Wait. What?
“Do I know you?” I asked. I casually scrambled into an upright position, all the while averting my gaze from the ‘spot’.
He angled his bottom so that it landed on my blanket in front of me. A raised eyebrow capped one green eye. “I’m Seth. Sheryl’s brother? You know, from work?” I needed one of those icy cold beers. I rummaged around in the little cooler and pulled one out. I held it to my forehead for a second. That did it.
“Hey! You’re Seth! Sheryl-from-work’s brother! I know you!” Because I’m smooth,that’s why. Shut up.
The bemused smile turned into a chuckle, and he nodded his head in agreement. Yes, he was in fact Sheryl-from-work’s brother. And I had certainly noticed him before, but at the time, he’d had more clothes on, and was just Sheryl-from-work’s brother-you know what I mean.
“Yeah. So, how’s it going?”
Oh, good, small talk. What better way to make an uncomfortable situation unbearably mortifying?
“Oh, you know. The usual-neglect the children, work a bunch, get paid very little for my troubles and, um, go to the beach…” Best to just trail off before you swallow your tongue from all the smooth rolling off, I always say.
“Huh. Yeah. I hear ya. Those your kids?” He indicated with his head, since his arms were too busy being draped over his knees.
“Yup. Well, two of them are mine. The two that look like me.” He laughed again and shook his head.
“You’re kinda nuts, you know that?” Pfft! Kinda. Before I could dazzle him with any more brilliant conversation, he asked the most peculiar question. “So, did Sheryl talk to you?”
“Seth. Sheryl talks to me every day. We sit right next to each other.” He shook his head again. “No, I mean, about me.” Huh?
“Huh?” I felt the need to remove my sunglasses so he could see that my eyes were clear, perhaps dismiss the idea that I was in a drug-induced haze. Yes, I realized this might show him how clearly borderline I was, but I preferred him to think I was slightly erratic, rather than drugged up at the beach with my kids.
So, he was chuckling at me again, but looking right at my face-right into my eyes, actually. And he looked sort of…disturbed, himself. “So, I’ve been thinking…I mean, I was wondering-do you want to do something, sometime?” Did that just happen? Let’s rewind. Yadda, yadda, thinking…yadda, yadda, do something? Okay, I’m a divorced mother of two bouncing boys, and you’re a…well…a very tanned individual. And I’ve already seen your package-twice.
“Sure.” Hey! Had I just said that? “That’d be nice.” Wow! I was really thinking on the fly. Smooth. Yup. That’s me.
Seth seemed to be examining his fingernails really closely all of a sudden. Alarms went off in my head.
“Well, um…how soon can you get a babysitter?” He mumbled into his cuticles.
“How soon do I need one?” I have to admit, it had been a long time for me. Since the divorce. I hadn’t wanted to deal with anything else, and I hadn’t wanted my kids to either.
“Tonight? Say, sevenish?” He said the last part as he chewed on his nail and scanned the beach with Life Guard eyes.
“Okay, yeah! So…okay.” I am too smooth. Everything in me wanted to jump up, grab a boy under each arm and squeal the tires on my way out of the parking lot, just to make it seven sooner.
“Cool.” He pulled out his cell phone. “What’s your number?” I rattled it off, all the while amazed that he was actually saving it in his phone. “Okay, I gotta get back up there. Keep the beaches safe and stuff…”
He sniggered. I giggled like a schoolgirl. I settled back down on my blanket and didn’t read my book, though I was holding it in front of my face thinking, concentrate,darn it! Okay, she’s creeping into the building, even though her big, strong, handsomedetective ‘just friend’ warned her against it… But it was no use. I just couldn’t focus.
I won’t bore you with the details of my frantic afternoon trying to decide if I should buy something new to wear, or if that would be too ‘obvious’. I’ve embarrassed myself enough. Let’s skip ahead to the good part. And believe me, it’s good. Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, I opted for the casual look-jeans and a cashmere sweater my ex-mother-in-law bought me for Christmas just after the separation. Thanks, Janet. Knewit’d come in handy some day.
Blah, blah, blah, the boys got some quality time with Grandma. Overnight.
I’m not saying I was planning on anything, but I was open to possibilities. Go ahead.
Call me a floozy. It had been way too long for me to care about the first date rule. I didn’t intend on throwing myself at him, but if he offered, I sure as hell wasn’t going to refuse.
He picked me up at seven-ish-fully clothed this time, darn it. I can’t think of words delicious enough to describe how his butt looked in his jeans when he bent to move some books off the passenger seat of his car. Score one for the denim workers of the world. Oh, and points for the quick thinking lady who decided to wear jeans for her date.
Yikes! I was on a date!
We had a surprisingly relaxed dinner at my new all-time-favorite restaurant, a little hole-in-the-wall, family-owned Mexican joint. Maybe it was the Margaritas as big as my head, but I was really mellow and okay with everything. And it was nice to talk to an adult about adult things. Not XXX adult things, but just things: life, plans, ambitions-
stuff like that.
The evening progressed swimmingly, and before we knew it, we’d been sitting in the cracked red leatherette booth for three hours. Our knees touched under the table, and the heat radiating off of him just about melted me into a puddle of pheromones. It was chemistry, pure and simple. I was all tingly and breathing extra deep, because the air felt cold in my nostrils, but soft and warm in my lungs.
Which is why, when we scrapped the movie idea and opted for my house, we were holding hands like high-school sweethearts and smiling shyly at each other.
There was a brief awkward moment when we entered my house-foreign body on the premises and all that. But when I turned to offer him something to drink, he captured my face in his hands and kissed me. The floodgates crashed open.
Suddenly, we couldn’t get close enough to each other. We wrestled to get as much of our bodies touching as possible. I couldn’t stand up anymore because someone had unlocked my knees, and they trembled and wavered beneath me. I raised one leg and wrapped it around his hip to steady myself and draw him closer still.
His hand cupped the curve of my bottom, and shivers radiated through my body.
Gone were the cynic and the comedienne. I was all kinds of romance novel heroine: all heaving bosoms and ‘take me now or lose me forever’. He hooked my other knee over his arm and scooped me up, and my legs snaked around his hips and clasped at the ankles.
“Which…way…” he gasped at me. I could only fling my arm in the general direction of my bedroom.
I latched my lips onto his throat and nibbled, tasted and sucked as if I hadn’t eaten in days. This is good! I kept saying to myself.
We bounced off the walls a few times on the way, but we were oblivious. When we hit my bed, we hit it hard. I have a good, firm mattress, and the springs were just waiting for their chance to shine.
He ripped at my jeans, fumbling with impatient hands. I helped him a bit, but I was clawing at his clothing too, so I was of little use. I didn’t want him to be so far away from me, at my feet and tugging at the legs of my pants. He seemed to recognize this need in me because, just as I thought it, he leaned forward and set his mouth on my belly.
Oh, my goodness. Butterflies, times a thousand, fluttered all through me.
I rose from the bed and curled my middle around his head, while my jeans became mere memories. His clothes turned into a pile of fabric on the floor, and we pressed against each other, reveled in every possible inch of skin touching skin. He slithered slowly down my stomach, touching, kissing, squeezing, nuzzling.
A thousand thoughts rushed through my mind. My bikini area! Had I remembered? I did a speed-run through my shaving routine and relaxed, wrapped my legs around his shoulders. The agonizing sweetness chilled my extremities and burned my core.
This may sound crazy, but my first orgasm snuck right up on me. One second I was thinking about what a shame it was that I couldn’t go brag about this at work, and the next minute, I was gasping for breath and holding on for dear life. To my amazement, I was incredibly vocal.
Seth just smiled, and I laughed and floated back down to earth, my body relaxing back onto the mattress. The smell of latex hit me and I laughed even harder. This guy thought of everything! Which was a good thing, since any hopes of rational thinking on my part had long since deserted me. He pulled my bottom to the edge of the bed, and I felt the very tip of his shaft prodding my lower abdomen.
I wanted to take him between my hands, and I did, but he gently brushed my fingers away as his mouth found my collarbone. The second his body slid up and over me, my legs curled around him so that my knees were resting on my shoulders, and I clamped his torso between my feet.
He watched me intensely, as if he didn’t want to miss a single expression on my face or the tremors that vibrated through me. He eased himself into me, and I felt every muscle in my body contracting to hold him there.
Oh my goodness! It had been so long. My eyes rolled back and fluttered shut. The very act of drawing a breath became exquisite, swelling my chest with greedy draughts.
We eased into our liquid rhythm. Our pace slowed, and every second of friction was savored to its fullest. Our tongues were as if coated in honey; he tasted so sweet.
Delicious mewling escaped my center and bubbled out of me, pitiable, needy whines and gasps for breath.
Had it been this good with the ex? In the beginning, maybe. A wave of vulnerability overtook me, and tears began streaming down my temples into my hair.
He cupped his hand around my face and brushed at the dampness. “Sshh…it’s okay.” His tenderness soothed my frazzled thoughts, and I felt another orgasm rising from somewhere far, far away. His pace quickened, and he held me with all his strength while I bucked and convulsed beneath him, crying out, speaking in tongue. It was astounding, it was mind blowing, and it took almost everything out of me. He kissed me then, deep and demanding, and he inhaled every last ounce of energy from my body, even as he infused me with his own.
I don’t have many recollections of the hours that followed, save for snippets of sensation that overtook me during the most mundane of tasks for days after. One of my boys would invariably catch me standing at the sink, wiping the table or sitting on the couch with a soft, goofy smile and glazed eyes. They don’t get it. And I don’t explain it.
And when the phone rings and Mommy suddenly has to take the call in the other room, they keep on keepin’ on, without a second thought about it. Until someone hits someone, or sits too close, or is looking at meeeeeee…
Good boys. I’ll be there when I get there.