Down on the smooth gleaming sand reflecting the soft shimmerings of moonlight, the two figures of a boy and girl clad only in bathing suits lay stretched out on a long orange beach blanket. Behind them was the sound of booming surf, and up the dunes several yards away from them the girl could see the silhouettes of several couples dancing to loud music coming from a portable phonograph.
"No, Bob, you mustn't," the girl said, pulling away from the boy's hands that were moving down over the top of her bikini and gently fondling beneath the light nylon material that covered the girl's large firm breasts.
"Dammit, Ellen, it's not as if we've just met each other; we're practically engaged," Bob said, his voice rising in anger.
"I know, but something inside me says 'not yet'. As foolish as it may sound, I still believe in keeping myself for you until after we are married."
The youth lay back on the blanket and was silent for a minute. Ellen could hear his deep breathing come heavily, and she looked down at his face and smiled a deep warm smile.
"Listen, Bob, I love you," she said, grasping his hand for a moment, then moving away as she sensed his strongly aroused body push against the smooth tanned skin of her naked belly. "I want you to touch me, as much as you want to, but I know it will make a difference. Now, do you understand?"
"Yes, I guess I do," he said softly. "But there's no law that I can't give it a try once in awhile. We have been going together for more than a year, and a guy gets tired of waiting."
"I know it's hard, and maybe that will make what we have later on more worth while."
Ellen knew that these words only angered her boyfriend further, but she didn't know any other way to describe her strong feelings about it so that he would understand. Purity, honor, and virginity – these were words that she had been taught so thoroughly by her mother and father to cherish. The girl knew it would be difficult for any boy to understand her deeply rooted feelings, especially when her own parents had divorced recently, going against the ideals they had so carefully attempted to develop in their two children. She was excited by Bob's closeness to her, and it was obvious that he knew it, but she just couldn't give in to these emotions that were growing more and more intense with each time he touched her.
Bob moved closer, his hand running affectionately across her bare shoulder before slowly beginning to stroke her hair with comforting softness. He put his mouth close to her ear and said softly: "Darling, I will try. I think I understand how you feel. I-I don't know what got into me there for a minute."
Pleased, she turned and gently kissed him, and felt his warm mouth respond as he moved his hand from the soft silkiness of her hair and began to caress the smooth-tanned flesh of her shoulders and back. Again there was that urgent tingle of quickly suppressed pleasure. She pulled her mouth away from his and said, "I love you so much! I want you to know that. Sometimes I think you feel I don't love you because I won't go all the way."
The boy laughed and sat up from the blanket, running his hand down her tanned arm that shone a creamy gold color in the glow of the moonlight. Then, clasping her hand tightly, they sat silently for a moment in a warm affectionate embrace and gazed out beyond the surf into the silvery stillness of the Atlantic Ocean.
"I suppose I should be looking for Jennifer," she said, tapping her finger lightly against his chin. "I don't see her up there with the rest of the party."
"She's probably making out behind some sand dune with my brother, if I know Jennifer," Bob remarked and laughed sharply.
"What kind of comment was that? Your older brother is no angel. I hardly trust him with my sister, and the joke of it all is that they're supposed to be chaperoning us to this party!"
"Jennifer is a grown woman now," Bob said, a note of sarcasm entering his voice. "She knows what's good for her, after all her experiences with that fast college crowd she's been hanging out with."
"Now that is mean! How could you say a thing like that about my sister," she exclaimed. "But I am getting a bit concerned about her. Since Mom and Dad got divorced she just hasn't been the same person."
"I wouldn't worry too much about it," he comforted, holding her hand softly. "It's probably just as you say. She's having a little fling, and she'll come out of it fairly soon… I think."
"I wouldn't be so concerned if she were just staying out all night," she sighed. "But it's the pot smoking that I don't like."
"Now that's something we can't do anything about," Bob said slowly. "Your mother's me one who is at fault there."
"I-I don't know. It's so hard for Mom to control her, you know. If Dad were only living with us I think the whole problem would clear right up. As it is, she just laughs right in Mom's face and says that her life is her own business."
"Ellen, I really wish you wouldn't get so darn worked up about all this. Jennifer is twenty-two years old, and by all standards she is a mature adult. If she insists on carrying on and going to bed with every man she meets that's her own affair."
"Now, you stop that!" Ellen shouted at him in sudden anger. "You have no right to talk about my family that way."
"I do if I'm going to marry their daughter, the nice daughter that is," he said abruptly, pulling his hand from her tensed fingers.
"That's enough! There's no reason to condemn her just because of some idle rumors we've heard."
"From what Phil says," Bob replied, "they're more than rumors."
"Oh! You're not being fair! Jennifer has always been someone I looked up to, and if she's having some problems I think we should try to understand them rather than condemn her this way."
Ellen reached across the long beach blanket and picked up the jeans and tee shirt she had worn to the beach party over her bathing suit. "I think I'm going to take a little walk," she said, trying to hold back the flood of tears that was beginning to build in her eyes. "I just can't stand hearing all this talk about Jennifer. She's my sister, and we've always stood up for each other… and it's not going to be any other way."
The girl quickly rose from the blanket and drew her striped tee shirt over her head, pulling the light clinging material across the large full orbs of her young breasts and lifting her jeans up over the smooth curves of her firmly rounded thighs. Bob looked up at her voluptuous figure standing in the moonlight. An off-shore breeze blew gently through her long blonde hair and sent light ripples through her shirt that softly accented the full curves of her sensuously budding young body.
"Dammit, I wish you'd understand that I'm not criticizing you or your sister," he said, springing up from the blanket. "I just wish you wouldn't get so involved in her problems."
"I need time to think, Bob, really I do," she said, turning to him for a moment. "I think I'll go up to the party and get a can of beer and sit by myself for awhile."
The angry young girl walked barefooted across the beach and approached the far side of the bonfire. She looked back for a moment as she reached for two cans of beer in the cooler buried in the sand. Bob was still sitting on the blanket, probably sulking because of their argument, but there was nothing she could do about that! She was hurt and angry at his calloused attitude towards Jennifer's problems. She moved from the group of young people and walked down the sand towards a promontory of rock that rose up above the sand dunes. She would drink the beer and maybe she'd feel a little better. But now she felt so empty and sad inside, and she began to sob softly, letting the tears stream down her cheeks as she walked through patches of long grass that grew along the edge of the beach. Did Bob know how much he was hurting her, and could he comprehend that love meant more than trying to feel a girl's breasts beneath her bathing suit? Did he know that part of a relationship meant helping the other person with their problems and, most of all, showing understanding towards those problems?
She stopped for a moment and looked back towards the bonfire. The loud music was only a soft murmur now, and it seemed to merge with the rush of waves exploding only a few yards away from her down the beach. Bob was probably enjoying himself now with some of the fellows, she thought angrily to herself. He got over these spats they had so easily and, well, she just didn't have his capacity to forget things as quickly. In this respect she was her father's daughter, and funny as it might have seemed, she was proud of it. Yet it had been her father's stubbornness in the face of the one tragic indiscretion her mother had made during their twenty-five years of marriage that had sent him into a rage that had ended in the break-up of their marriage. Ellen didn't know exactly what had happened between her parents, and she had justly believed that it would be foolish for her to pry. But, somehow, she felt Jennifer's recent behavior was a kind of defense the older girl had developed against the true facts of their parents' divorce.
Ellen lowered herself down onto the soft grass and popped open the top of the beer can she held in her hand. She was no psychologist and she couldn't even try to understand all of her sister's present difficulties. She would just sit here and drink her beer, and maybe this would make her feel a bit better. The beer that she had drunk earlier that evening had calmed her nerves somewhat, but the argument with Bob had made her feel edgy again. Things had been piling up so fast in the past few months she could hardly stand it. First it had been her parents' divorce, then it had been Jennifer's problems, and now Bob was pushing her to give him more than she felt she really could safely offer at this stage of their relationship.
Ellen inched down over the grass, setting her beer can in a mound of white sand. She scooped her hands through the smooth grains and let them sift through her fingers, feeling them pour soothingly over her small delicately arched ankle. Then she reached for the beer again and took a long, deep gulp. Might as well get herself good and relaxed, she thought with a girlish giggle, taking another sip and running the cold bottom of the can down across the suntanned skin of one of her long, perfectly formed legs. She drained the beer can and tossed it down on the beach, watching it land a few feet from the pounding surf. A light-headed tingle seemed to ease the tense anxious feeling that she had grown uncomfortably accustomed to during the past hour. She lifted herself gracefully from the sand and looked down to the line of white frothy water splashing several yards away from her. There was nothing she would like more at this moment than a quick dip in the ocean, and she walked down towards the surf, the last full can of beer and her sandals still clenched in her hands.
Ellen felt the sand grow cool beneath her feet as she crossed the high-tide line and approached the water. The bonfire at the beach party was only a small flicker now and the sound of the crashing waves blotted out the loud music coming from the portable phonograph. She didn't want to go too deep into the water since she was all alone. She had heard so many terrible stories of moonlight dips ending in horrible tragedy for solitary swimmers, but she would be careful, she thought, as she settled down on the damp sand and pulled her jeans off her legs. She let the foamy water surge over her legs and splash onto her smooth flat belly, and then decided it wouldn't be wise for her to swim alone. If there was any trouble, she laughed to herself, there would be no one but a bunch of half-loaded college kids to fish her out, and they would probably sink!
Ellen smiled to herself, noting her cheerful change of mood, and popped open the last can of beer. God! She was getting a little loaded herself, but she enjoyed the giddy feeling and reasoned happily that she deserved her own private little fling after all she had been through during the past few months. As she lay back feeling the cool sand cup firmly around her buttocks, she thought she heard a voice break through the roar of surf. She sat up, cocking her head to catch the direction the voice had come from. If someone was out in the ocean she would be helpless to save them. She had taken junior lifesaving in high school, but she would be completely incapable of pulling a struggling body from the undertow which had been particularly strong this evening.
Ellen stood up and methodically put on her jeans and sandals. She could hear the voice, no they were voices now, coming from a sand dune behind her. One voice was obviously a girl's, and the girl sounded as though she were being hurt! Low muffled groans resounded through the rush of foaming water, and Ellen moved up the beach a few paces towards where she thought the sound was coming from. Now she made out clearly a man's low voice accompanied by what sounded like protesting whimpers from the girl.
There was another moan but it was longer this time and had a quivering almost pleading tone to it. The groan was followed by a harsh laugh from the man, and then the hard slap of flesh, as though the girl were being beaten.
Ellen turned from behind the sand dune and started to move away down the beach towards the party. "If I can just get to the other kids before the poor girl is hurt," Ellen said to herself. As she moved quietly away from the sloping dune she heard the shrill female voice rise up more loudly and high-pitched. Then the embarrassing thought struck her that perhaps the girl wasn't being beaten or molested, in fact she might be enjoying what was being done to her. Before jumping to conclusions, she should at least glimpse what was happening. If there was some trouble, she could inform one of the boys at the bonfire about what was going on.