Page 20 of Surfer Girl

“He’s a crisis counselor for Mercy General, so…always on the phone.”

Sophie watched Kendrick pace back and forth outside their window, gesticulating with his hands as if forgetting one held the phone. “Are we gonna talk about him, or just gloss over the giant ass, pretty boy elephant in the room?”

Colton chuckled. “Eventually, sure, I just… Let me get this off my chest first, okay? It’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for years now.”

Sophie nodded, licking her cone absently before it melted all over her favorite khaki crinkle skirt. “By all means, proceed. This shit is getting juicy.”

Colton rolled his eyes before proceeding. “It was the year after high school before I finally had the opportunity to do something about my feelings for guys. Like, everybody had gone away to school, or at least community college, and the place was a ghost town. Literally. Winter break had come and gone, and it was too early for kids to come back for the summer, so it was even emptier than usual. I was still working at Foam and surfing every day, just to fill the time, and it was late one session that I looked out from the swells and saw this guy kind of lingering on the beach near my towel. Not beside it, but near it. Like, inappropriately near it, you know? He basically had the whole beach to himself, and he had to chill two feet from my Bob Marley towel?

“Anyway, he looked like he could be a spring breaker cuz he had one of those foam boards you get at the cheap surf shops, but he never ended up using it. I thought then that he might be cruising me, because I was out there alone and he set his towel down just a few yards away from mine and sat there, still watching even when there was no good reason to be. But I’d never been cruised before, never done anything with a guy before, you know?”

Sophie murmured. “I don’t know anything anymore, Colton. My mind is officially blown and before I get to tell you, I’m so very happy for you. Like, honestly. I just… It kind of hurts that you never told me before just now.”

He nodded. “I wanted to tell you yesterday, but I was nervous seeing you again and I figured, if you were in town for the summer, I’d spill it eventually.”

She nudged his foot under the table. Hard. “So spill already? I’m literally on the edge of my seat.” She pointed with her free hand as if for emphasis.

He chuckled and did as he was told. “Anyway, I could tell he was cute even from a distance and when I finally gave up and rode my last wave in, he was even cuter up close. Small and slight, smooth all over, if you know what I mean.”

“Gross.”

He snorted. “Anyway, he watched me dry off, like…very obviously. It was late afternoon; the beach was deserted. I hadn’t gotten laid in months, so I wasn’t entirely opposed to being ogled by some pretty stranger, let me tell you. I wanted to say about a hundred cocky things to him, and it looked like he wanted to do the same, but neither of us really ended up saying anything. I just kind of trudged over to the boardwalk shower and, by the time I turned the water on, I saw that he'd followed me. Not close, but close enough, you know? He watched me shower and when I was done, I took a risk and held the nozzle for him.”

Sophie could picture the scene: Colton, long and limber and dripping wet in the sun. He must have looked all but irresistible. No wonder the pretty boy was ogling him. “How romantic,” she teased.

“I guess he thought so. He said he hadn’t done anything to get dirty yet, but I told him he looked hot and sweaty anyway. He smiled and got under the water anyway.”

Sophie crossed her legs at the implications. This was like hearing a smutty book read out loud by your favorite narrator, one dirty paragraph at a time. “Did you, like, bathe him?”

Colton snorted. “What? No? But I sure wanted to. He was so pretty, and I told him that as he dried off. I heard keys and saw one of those old-timey hotel keychains resting on his tank top as he was drying off. I knew it was for one of the older motels on the strip. Not too far. I figured I’d go with him, if he asked.”

“Did he?” Sophie blurted when Colton paused to sip the water by his milkshake glass.

“Not in so many ways, but as he was drying off, he told me I looked thirsty. I said I was. He asked if I was legal, but I don’t think it was about beer, you know? I said I was, but he looked too young to drink. He said he was, but not on his fake ID. I grabbed my board and followed him to the Sea Pines just up the street. He opened the door and let me in and handed me a beer. We drank on the little porch outside his room, watching the waves and each other.”

He paused again. This time it was Sophie’s turn to gulp audibly. “Jesus, Colton. This is pretty damn hot.”

“It got hotter, obviously. One thing led to another and, well…he was my first.”

She literally begged for more details. “First what? Kiss? Handy? BJ? What, dude? Spill already!”

“First…everything. Turns out he was on spring break after all, and I just stayed with him until he had to leave. Literally stayed with him. I mean, we barely left the room. We kept in touch for a little while after he got back to school in Alabama, but you know how it goes. Still, after that, I never looked back.”

Sophie nibbled the last of her cone, wondering when she’d actually finished the rest of it. She glanced out at Kendrick, still pacing between the picnic tables Colton had tried to banish her to. “When did lover boy out there enter the picture?”

Colton smiled the grin of a happy, satisfied man. A man in love. With another man. At long last. “Almost two years ago, actually.”

“Wow, Colt. Congrats.”

He waved away the compliment. “He’s right, though, when he says he owes you one.”

Sophie felt flattered, if confused. “Yeah, how’s that?”

“Soph, I would have never had the balls to follow that spring breaker back to his room and learn everything there was about pleasing another man if you hadn’t given me the inspiration to do so.”

She gave him a little “pshaw” snort, then waved her hands dismissively for good measure. “I just led by example, Colton. You would have given in to temptation eventually.”

“Eventually? Maybe, like…ten, twenty years in the future. But that night, prom night, everything you said, how lonely you sounded and how hard it was for you to come out in a small beach town, it really hit home. I knew, because of you, it was possible to live the life I wanted, and not just pretend forever. So…thank you. Honestly.”

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