Page 30 of Chasing Lynda

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Lynda

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THE MORNING—OR MORE exactly the early afternoon, as I realize when I look outside “my cabana,”—finds me in one of the saddest moods I’ve been in since I had to leave Shell Cove last summer.

But I know I have to go, there’s no way I can get away with sleeping here now that Carter and Zane know me.

I want to go before they call the cops on me for squatting here; that’s a sure way to end up in my husband’s clutches again.

A little voice in my head tells me that Zane and Carter wouldn’t call the police if I explained my situation, but I can’t be sure of that and I can’t take any risks. Not after that close call at the soup kitchen.

I’m glad to have gotten back my backpack and after using the bathroom and eating my day old, squashed croissants, I head toward the end of the beach. I saw some water fountains there and I can fill my bottle of water before I leave. I don’t know this town very well and I don’t have a definite plan just yet. I’m going to keep walking along the beach and see what there is beyond the Pleasure Beach resort.

A line of girls in bikinis shouldn’t look odd on a beach but they’re all queuing by a big marquee by the high perimeter wall that separates the private resort from the public beach. There’s a stage several yards away and there’s a group of men working on lining up plastic chairs in rows for whatever show is going to be performed on it.

That’s where the girls seem to be headed when they get to the front of the line.

The stage wasn’t here when I arrived a couple of days ago, so my curiosity is piqued. “What’s going on?” I ask the last girl in line.

She smiles. “You have to wait here for your free t-shirt.”

“Cool!” I respond, thinking that a free t-shirt could be extremely useful, since I don’t have money to wash the few items of clothing I own and washing clothes in gas station bathrooms isn’t fun at all.

I should go but I decide to stick around for the t-shirt and then be on my way.

An older guy with a russet brown mullet and a nose ring approaches us holding a tape measure in his tattooed fingers.

He’s skinny and his tanned arms stand out against the stark white of the wife beater he’s wearing, paired with bright orange board shorts.

He’s followed by a much younger man who’s carrying a shopping bag full of white t-shirts.

I observe as the older guy talks to two girls a few spots ahead of me in the line. “Arms up,” he instructs and when one of the girls complies he wraps the tape around her chest. “Thirty-six. Cup size?”

The girl replies, “C.”

“Fine, you’re number nineteen.” He slaps a yellow sticker with the number on one side of the girl’s upper thigh and grins at her, showing a gold tooth that glimmers in the sun. “Here’s your t-shirt, love.”

I’m about to ask the girl in front of me what’s going on when the guy moves down the line.

“Not you. Go,” he says with a sneer.

The skinny girl he just spoke to doesn’t look happy. “But you haven’t even measured me!”

The man lifts his shades on top of his head to look at the girl. There’s a mean smirk on his thin lips. “I don’t fucking need to. This is a ‘Miss Wet T-shirt contest,’ and anyone with eyes can see that you’re flatter than a surf board. To win something like this, you need tits.” He then raises his voice, to make sure that he’s heard by everyone in the line that in the meantime has grown with several more girls behind me. “Anything under a thirty-two C, you can save your time and leave the cordoned off area.”

I don’t have the time to even compute what I just walked into, that the man is standing in front of me and the girl I just spoke to a second ago.

His smile widens. “Ah, this is what I’m fucking talking about!” He slaps a number twenty sticker on the girl right before me. He then comes near me with another yellow sticker but I instinctively back off, stopping only when my back meets something hard and warm.

Huge but gentle hands steady my hips and I turn to look at the really tall man who’s stopped me from falling backward in my attempt at a hasty retreat.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

His eyes are a light, intense ice blue, he has honey brown hair cut in a fashionable faux-hawk; his high cheekbones and square jaw make his face so perfect that he could almost look too pretty. But pretty isn’t exactly the word that comes to my mind once I manage to break free from those mesmerizing blue eyes and take in the sculpted perfection of muscles that would be too buff if the guy wasn’t so tall and in such perfect physical shape.

“I—yeah. No, I—”

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