Lie Until You Laugh

18- Beaches

I want to lurch forward and push her off of him, because dunking somebody just seems terrible to me, but then I remember that not everybody is post traumatic like me, and that dunking somebody is just another form of fun to most people.

When we’re all out of breath and our throats are scratchy due to the salt water that we’ve swallowed, we all agree to go back to shore and start building our castle. I’m tasked with building the moat while Mason goes around the shore to find shells. Stella and Brian start filling the buckets with damp sand and pack it down in.

“So, do you think we have a real shot at winning the competition?” Stella asks randomly.

I shrug. “I have no idea.”

“I think you guys won,” Brian says confidently. “Your dance was really good and like, seriously hot. I mean, that second one probably doesn’t matter to the judges but yeah, it was still hot.”

“I bet one of the judges cared,” Stella grins, sending me a wink.

“I bet they didn’t,” I assure her with an embarrassed sigh.

“Are you kidding?” She wonders. “When he was yelling at you for the thing with Gianna- which was totally shit by the way, because you didn’t do anything at all- he was definitely not looking you in the eye, if you know what I mean.”

“Are you talking about Penn?” Mason wonders, returning to us with a bucket of shells.

All three of us nod at her.

“He really likes your boobs,” She giggles. “But giving him the benefit of the doubt, he’s rarely seen you without a sports bra on except for at the bonfire. He probably didn’t think that you had boobs until last night.”

“My boobs aren’t anything special,” I assure them. “And he definitely wasn’t looking at my boobs anyway. He was yelling at me.”

“That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t looking at your chest,” Stella says with a grin as she tips over one of the buckets and then starts pounding the bottom of it to shake all of the packed sand.

“She’s right,” Mason nods. “Like, say Brian is you and then I’m pen. He was all ‘Rawr, why are you two always fighting? Rawr!” She imitates Penn in a very deep voice and then throws her face into Brian’s bare chest, causing them both to topple over.

“I think I’d remember if that happened,” I laugh, throwing sand out of the moat that I’m digging. I don’t make it very deep so that I can make it bigger faster and then later, we can make it deeper if necessary.

“I think you’re in denial,” Stella tells me. “And I think that he likes you. Which is stupid considering what he did to you last week. And not to sound selfish, but he totally ruined our first beach trip of the summer.”

“That really did sound selfish, Stell,” Mason laughs with a teasing eye roll.

“I’m sorry but he’s just such a dick,” Stella continues to rant. “And then he has the nerve to yell at you like that? Who does he think he even is?!”

“Our instructor?” I remind her. “They’re supposed to yell at their students.”

“Yeah, but not over stupid stuff like dealing with Gianna. You weren’t going to fight her. You were actually really nice to her considering everything that’s happened. He had no right to snap at you like that. I mean, at least he didn’t like, give you a legit punishment or anything like that.”

“He did,” I say quickly. “I have to go in an hour early on Monday before practice.”

“Are you shitting me?” Stella wails. “That is the stupidest crap ever. Do you want Brian to beat him up? Because I’ll totally make Brian beat him up for you.”