Page 32 of Unstoppable You

“We’ve got your towel ready!” Larison called.

“How long do I have to be in for it to qualify as skinny-dipping?” I asked, clutching my arms to my chest as I tried to conserve any body heat. My teeth clacked against each other loudly. How did people do this on a regular basis? It was awful. All I wanted was to be warm again.

“The dictionary defines it as ‘swim in the nude’ so I think you gotta swim,” Jo called out, her face lit up by the glow of her phone.

Fuck, I had to swim too? Fine. I unclamped my arms from my chest and sloshed forward, doing a few jerky doggy paddles. I could swim, like a lot of kids raised on the coast, but I wasn’t winning any Olympic medals.

“Okay, I swam!”

“We saw. It’s been documented,” Larison said, giving me a thumbs up.

Great, now I could be done. My body had stopped shaking and had gone mostly numb with a mild burning sensation. Just awful.

With stiff legs, I sloshed out of the water, the sand sticking to my feet. The minute the wind hit my wet skin, I started shaking again. Jo was there to fold a massive bath sheet around me.

“That was terrible,” I said as my teeth started to chatter again.

“But you did it!” Larison said, giving me a hug. I leaned into her warmth.

“We should have brought some tea or something with us,” Jo said as they guided me back toward my clothes. I’d brought a spare set of sweats to put on post-dip and pulled them out of the bag. Getting the clothes on over my damp skin wasn’t easy, but I managed and then slid some sandals on my feet.

Larison absolutely blasted the heat when we got into the car and Jo let me have the passenger side with the seat warmer. My friends were the best.

Shoving my hands in front of the air vents, I started giggling.

“I don’t know why I’m laughing,” I said, still laughing. Larison and Jo joined me, as if it was contagious and before I knew it, we were driving around on random roads blasting a playlist and singing at the top of our lungs.

This. This was what I’d missed out on. What I’d been wanting. I looked through the window and up at the stars and just…soaked in this moment. I wanted to save it forever.

While I couldn’t bottle this feeling, I could take pictures and video, so I did. That was something to document my first item checked off the Fuckit List.

We all threw ourselves into the hot tub when we got back and drank too many margaritas until we had to crawl our way to bed.

The next morning, I woke up with a hangover, but it was totally worth it. I dragged my ass into the kitchen and made a nice greasy breakfast for the three of us and we all perked up after eating and downing some coffee.

Before we went back to the city, we hit the downtown area and played tourists for the morning and afternoon. We took silly pictures in front of the lighthouse, ate massive sugar-drenched cookies from Sweet’s Sweets Bakery, and checked out the bookstore. Larison got deep in shop talk with the pretty blonde bookseller who said she owned the shop and we had to practically drag her away, but not before she exchanged info with the owner and promises of meeting up again.

Before we got on the road, we hit the bakery again, grabbing a box of assorted croissants and it made me think of James and the day she’d given me her apology.

“That’s a serious face,” Jo said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “What are you thinking about?”

I’d go naked into the ocean again in front of the entire world before I admitted that I was thinking about James.

“Monday,” I said, because that was a reasonable thing to be thinking about.

“Don’t remind me,” Jo said. “I have a presentation next week and I’m not looking forward to it.”

Mission: distracted.

I didn’t think about James (much) until later when I was scrolling through social media and had a notification pop up.

James had liked one of my pictures.

Stalker.

I opened up the messages and typed out a message before I could question myself.

Guess your weekend was pretty boring if you’re liking mine.

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