Page 30 of Bad Reputation

A grin splits my face. I text her back that I’ll be at her place in fifteen minutes, and hurry to get my stuff together. After I find a towel and sunblock, I grab two boards. At the last minute, I fill a thermos with coffee and cream, then I head out to the car.

All the way over to her house in the gray light of morning, I’m in a ridiculously good mood. It’s funny how my shitty mood melts away in the face of seeing Emma in a bikini. Part of me thinks that it’s sad that I’m so hung up on this girl, but the other part of me is super happy that she’s…

Well, she hasn’t forgiven me, per se. And nothing has changed. But she’s agreed to hang out today, which is about as good as I’m going to get.

I just take those bad feelings and misgivings and stuff them deep down. As I pull up outside Emma’s house, I see her front door open.

Then there she is, gorgeous as she has ever fucking been. Her hair is thrown up in a ponytail, she’s wearing a jaw-droppingly small electric yellow crop top, and she wears a tantalizing pair of ridiculously tiny black shorts.

She jogs up to my Jeep, wrenching the door open and piling herself inside. She has a backpack too, probably to hold her wetsuit. She looks at me, a small smile on her lips.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi yourself,” I say mildly, throwing the car into drive.

“Can we drive through somewhere to get coffee?” she asks, yawning a little. I wait as she puts on her seatbelt, trying not to let my gaze linger for too long on those sun kissed bare legs. “It’s soooo early.”

“I’ve already got some, if you don’t mind sharing,” I say, jerking my thumb toward the back seat. “It’s in the thermos.”

“You think I’m going to turn down free coffee?” She fishes the thermos out of the backseat. When she unscrews the lid, the smell of dark roast permeates the air for a second. “Even if it does mean catching your cooties.”

I give her a look, teasing her right back. “Hey, you don’t have to drink it.”

She pours a little in the cap, then sips it. “Coffee is coffee.”

“I’ll have to remember that.” I pull up to the beachside parking area at the beach just as the sunrise really makes itself known. The beach looks amazing like this, the light reaching out warm fingers to touch a cold wave here, a dune of sand there.

“Wow, there’s like… no one here,” Emma marvels, gawking at the empty beach. And she’s right, there are only a couple of cars parked here this early.

I park the Jeep. “Getting up this early for anything is pretty foreign to a lot of people.”

“I see that. I mean, I’m usually one of those people.” She smiles as she recaps the thermos and climbs out of the car.

I avert my gaze again instead of staring at her ass, which I guarantee looks fantastic when she’s bent over in those shorts. I don’t need to be walking around with a big ass boner while we’re just carrying stuff from the Jeep onto the beach. I don’t want her to think I’m a total pervert.

Although, I am. And she knows that I am.

I groan as I pick up the boards and my backpack, heading straight down into the sand. Emma follows, shouldering her own little backpack. I pick a spot pretty close to where the surf comes running onto the beach, figuring with the waning tide that our stuff should be safe enough from the water there.

“Here okay?” I say, looking at Emma.

She drops her backpack, which I take as a sign that she’s satisfied with the spot.

“Looks good to me,” she says, shading her eyes against the rising sun. “I’m really hoping that I can stand up this time.”

“You can, for sure,” I say, dropping the boards. I unzip my backpack, pulling the sunblock and my wetsuit out. “You feel like sharing some of that coffee?”

She gives me a lopsided grin. “Yep.”

Emma pours a little bit of coffee into the thermos cap, and passes it over. I slurp the coffee down, trying not to stare as she takes off her tiny top and shorts. I set the thermos cap atop the boards as she wiggles her beautiful body inside her wetsuit.

Looking down at the sand, I strip off my t-shirt and pull off my shoes, then work my way into my wetsuit. I only pull my wetsuit halfway on, leaving my torso bare.

When I look up, I catch Emma watching me, her gaze heavy and heated. She blushes when she sees me notice her looking.

There’s an awkward moment where I’m grinning and she’s trying not to smile.

“We’re both still hot, in case you hadn’t noticed,” I say, trying to relieve the tension.

---