Diary of a Bad Girl #1

What can I say? I was 19, he was 22, blond hair, eyes the color of country denim. Gorgeous.

Running around the beach with no shirt all day, I could tell he wasn’t a six-pack kind of guy, but he was damn close. Several times I watched him massage knots of sunscreen into the curves of his tanned biceps, down the hard lengths of his arms and into the toned musculature of his swimmer’s legs, imagining myself there beside him, lathering him in creamy lotion, feeling those muscles harden and flex under my thumbs, the eager, caressing fingers of my hands.

I spent almost three days watching him from the window of the timeshare bungalow a friend of mine had suggested I stay at when my first vacation from work came around. I spent a week there, afraid to really touch anything, staying in a lot and mostly watching the beach, watching him, justifying my reluctance to actually go out and talk to him by waffling between a stack of paperwork I’d been stupid enough to bring with me and a notepad full of scribblings I still haven’t turned into the trashy, bedside romance I believed I was writing at the time. Work was work, and I got tired of it pretty quickly, but the lines of the romance novel that flowed from my fingers to the page opened something in me, awoke urges, left a void somewhere deep within me that pulsed with need and begged to be filled. I remember rubbing my thighs together over and over again as I added to my notes, as I penned new lines and used ink to give life to situations which pulled at my heart strings as I wrote them. Time and time again, I felt my mind wandering back to him, to that handsome guy I’d watched every morning, glanced up to watch whenever my pen hesitated on the page, and even as I chastised myself for fantasizing, for putting words to those fantasies, to thoughts of what it would be like to have those bronzed arms around me, to feel his hot breath on my face, the caress of those big, sexy hands, I couldn’t help writing him into my story. Suddenly it was me who was involved in the passionate romance– the endless vistas of the ranch I’d originally envisioned for my story became the endless distances of the sea, and the hunk whose eyes I stared deeply into as his body moved against mine was that bronzed and blond man of the waves who left footprints as deeply in the sand as he left them on me, on some part of me that left me begging for more, wanting, needing.

I would smile as my pen etched those fantasies, as he took me in fields of prose and poetry again and again, now in an endless sea of wildflowers, now in the sand, the dawn breaking red at the distant line where purple waves met a lightening sky. On the page, I saw our lips touch, part on passionate words, caress skin that shivered and thrilled with feelings of love and pleasure as they sunk wet and heavy into the skin, washed cool light and sunset darkness into our tensing muscles. I felt my own lips parting as I wrote, and as I looked up, eyes unconsciously lifting from the page, I would see him, his own muscles surging as he ran. For almost three days, I wrote, and it was at the end of that third day, as the sun dropped lower and lower into the darkening sky that my pen slipped from my hand and went clattering to the floor, rolling across boards and disappearing into the darkness gathering between the far end of the table and the wall. All at once, I realized how little time I had left, saw the steady dwindling of my week into days, the inevitable shift of day into night that signaled the inevitable descent from the halfway point of my stay, and I froze. Three days, and now only a handful of minutes before the sun would touch the sky and the man on the beach would pack up the red case he carried with him and leave, maybe forever, or maybe just until tomorrow. Suddenly resolved, I licked my lips, tore open my suitcase, threw on the sexy top and bottom I’d been saving for tanning on the beach, and rushed out the door, leaving everything in a state of half open, half finished scatter.

I felt the cold wind tingling across my bare arms as I ran down the sandy dunes toward the whiter playa where the beach met the water and instinctively hugged myself. I saw him stop to stand half a dozen paces from the water, watched as he stuffed a few loose things into that same red case and stood again, staring out into the sea, watching the sun as completely as I was watching him, stumbling through the sand, trying to look graceful, trying not to shiver too much or break out into a full on run. As I got closer, my heart fluttered, leapt in my chest like a frightened bird. God, he was gorgeous. I swallowed as my feet hit the damp, smooth sand, fought against the racing tide of words fighting in my mind, desperate to find my lips, words like Hi, my name is Amanda, I... or Wow, do you work out a lot? Somewhere, somehow, something came together, but it didn’t last. The instant he turned, the instant his eyes met mine, whatever I had decided to say took flight and left my mind a barren plain. The only word that came, the only one that remained, was a simple “Hey.”

“Hey.” Came the response, and then a smile, the corner of a grin that made my eyes lose focus for an instant, so sexy, the embodiment of desire.

“You’re the girl from the window, aren’t you?” He gestured, and as I glanced dumbly back in the direction of the timeshare bungalow, I colored immediately. He knew, he’d seen me, and I was too embarrassed to do anything more than nod and smile sheepishly back in response. All at once, he reached out, touched my cheek, grinned wide enough to show his perfect teeth, and even as I almost pulled away, I felt my legs quiver, knees fighting to give way at any moment. His touch was warm, smooth, and in the moment, I lost myself in the sensation, leaned into it and savored the gentle caress with half-lidded eyes. In that moment, it was abundantly clear what we both wanted, what we both needed.

“Want to have a drink?” He asked, and I couldn’t stop myself from nodding, from saying: “There’s a bottle of Kahlua back at my place.” and coloring again instantly as I said it. I remember the way he grinned in that moment, and it’s a grin I haven’t forgotten even to this day, may never forget until I’m old and grey, if I manage to slow down enough to live that long.

We got about as far as pouring the drinks before the kissing started. Somewhere in the midst of the laughing and playful touching, I caught his name, something simple I can’t seem to remember anymore, something like John or Jack that you hear a lot in bars or moan into someone’s ear when you’re wild and young, but by the time the kissing got deeper, the movements more driven and serious, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the touch, the need, the way his breath caught in my throat and his skin pulsed against mine. Even today, I wonder at the suddenness of it, the need that came alive within both of us, refused to be restrained or denied. Thank god for the Mirena coil.

Neither of us slept that night. At some point in the morning, I remember kissing him and stumbling out of bed, making my way to the coffee machine and putting a pot on before settling down to pen a few spent lines near what I decided would be the end of my book, if it ever came together. They were happy lines, satisfied lines, and as I set the pen down again to let the last two days of my stay race by, I left the pad, the pen and the stack of papers where they sat, undisturbed except for the one or two times when our passions carried us into the kitchen, to the table, the counter, the throw rug on the hardwood floor. Even now, when my mind wanders back to those days, to that week on the beach, I can see the planes of his handsome face, his wild haystraw hair, eyes like country denim. I can feel his touch, his breath, and I quiver at the way he looked at me in those moments when we lost ourselves in one another and left for some other realm, shivering as one body, one soul. For two days, I lived within bliss, and even though I never saw him again, never knew much more about him than bits and pieces I’ve since almost totally forgotten, the memories we made together in those two days have stuck with me ever since, have stayed as vivid as any dream a woman could wish to come to her in the warm red light of a sunset on the beach.