Page 4 of Surfer Girl

They regarded each other again, Jessie still damp in her favorite bikini and Sophie wearing not much more ever since the sash of her kimono had given up completely to reveal the gently rolling curves nestled below, soft and smooth and distracting.

Sliding a hand atop each curvy hip, Sophie screwed up her face dramatically. “So you’re getting a brand-new employee and all I’m getting in the bargain is a chance to make you look good?”

Jessie eagerly played along, and not just for a few free showers all summer long. “Hey, it’s good money!”

Sophie laughed. “Still, I think I need one more thing to sweeten the deal if we’re going to work together all summer, Jessie.”

“What’s that?”

Sophie nodded toward the lemon-yellow surfboard still leaning next to the dripping shower head. “Surfing lessons, of course!”

Chapter Three

SOPHIE

“Sophie?”

Sophie stood in front of a clothes rack, holding a string bikini two sizes too small up against her chest. The voice was immediately familiar. She turned to see Colton Conners grinning back at her above a faded Foam Surf Shop employee T-shirt.

“Colton? The hell?” Her voice was saccharine sweet, even relaxed as, all the while, she cursed herself for leaving the house in her bed hair, not a stitch of makeup, and last night’s wrinkly ass track jacket and stretched out yoga pants.

He leaned in, all long, veiny arms and broad shoulders and big, goofy smile, as gangly and awkward and charming as ever. She returned his hug, shyly at first then, as the comfort of his reassuring arms encircled her waist the way they used to, more earnestly. By the time he finally let her up for air, her voice was taut with emotion.

“How the hell have you been?” They both asked at exactly the same time, collapsing into familiar giggles there in the middle of the town’s biggest surf shop.

As his laughter faded before hers, he toyed with the straps of the little yellow bikini she still clutched to her chest, as if it might mask her two-day-old outfit. “Uh, don’t take this the wrong way Sophie, but…you’re too stacked for that suit.”

She chuckled, replacing it coyly and grabbing a bigger size. “Now, how could I ever take that the wrong way, Colton?”

It was late morning, the store all but empty, instrumental steel drums vibing softly from some hidden speaker overhead. He looked good, as ever, sun-kissed skin, feathery brown curls, soft brown eyes, and full, kissable lips. She remembered those lips from prom night. The first, and last, boy’s lips she ever kissed.

Only once. But…it had been enough.

“You know what I mean, girl.” He gave her another appraising glance, smile growing crooked and eyes leering in a flattering way as he drank her in. Then he clucked his tongue. “Besides…nobody buys matching bikinis anymore anyway.”

She groaned, slipping it back on the circular display bar and slumping pathetically. “God, I suck at this.”

“You always did, Sophie,” he said, turning slightly to rifle through a nearby wall display, long fingers flying through a flurry of vibrant summer colors. Just the way he said her name, soft and familiar, sent her sprawling back through time to their brief, ill-fated courtship in senior year. Though doomed from the start, it remained one of her few fond memories from high school.

In moments, Colton turned back to her bearing a more appropriately sized bikini, orange on the bottom and green on the top. It wasn’t quite macrame, like Jessie’s, but it wasn’t one of the shimmering, glossy, sheer bikinis favored by the spring break crowd, either. For that much, at least, she was grateful.

“Good eye,” she murmured, holding it up against herself and imagining how it might feel against her wet, salty skin later that afternoon when Jessie taught her how to surf.

Would it be too much? Not enough? Should she wear a one-piece? Or maybe boy baggies and a tube top, like she’d seen in surfer magazines? She didn’t want to look like a fool, but she didn’t want to show up falling all out of her teeny tiny bikini, either. She’d been struggling with the same self-conscious thoughts ever since she left the house to buy a bikini twenty minutes ago.

“It better be,” he snorted, sounding world weary and tired. “I’ve been doing it for six years.”

She nodded, noticing the way the nametag on his T-shirt looked just as worn and faded. “I have to admit, when I came in here today, I figured you’d be long, long gone by now. What happened to your scholarship to State?”

He made a “pfft” sound, turning slightly to rifle through the same display rack. “I partied too hard my freshman year, couldn’t keep my grades up. My folks offered to pay to keep me there, but my heart wasn’t in it, you know?”

She nodded at his back, the story sounding far too familiar for her to admit. If only she’d had the balls to withdraw that first semester and come back home like Colton had, how different might her life have been by now. Four years seemed a long time to waste trying to make her parents happy. Suddenly, the thought of an afternoon with Jessie, salty and half-naked under the warm Florida sunlight, might just be the tonic she needed to erase the whole college episode, once and for all.

He turned back to her, a contrasting mismatched bikini of pink and purple extended in one of his big, veiny hands. “But I already like this one,” she said, pouting playfully. She certainly hadn’t expected to see Colton Conners after so many years but, now she had, she was starting to feel summery after all.

She admired the bikinis in either hand.Maybe this is what freedom feels like.

If so, she was here for it…

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