We’ve been in Panama City Beach, Florida, for three days. It’s raining, again. Hatch is in the middle of throwing another party in our room attended by fifty of our not-so-closest friends. A medley of Guns N’ Roses, Def Leppard, and Mötley Crüe blares out of the condo’s blown speakers. I stand outside on our balcony, inhaling the ocean air. It took me a few days to get used to the smell, that blast of dead fish so shocking to the Midwestern nose, now just a pleasant salty scent. I lean over the railing. No one is on the beach.
Laura comes up behind me, taking my hand. She’s wearing a florescent-yellow bikini covered up by one of my white T-shirts. “Come on,” she says.
“Where we going?”
“Some place a little more private.”
When you’re sharing a three hundred-square-foot space with fifty people, privacy means locking yourself in the bathroom.
I shut the bathroom door behind me and turn to my girlfriend. She’s already taken off the T-shirt. I grab her by the waist, kiss her on the lips. We take off the rest of our clothes. I notice Laura’s tan lines, which appear as an upside down triangle below her waist and two milky-white crescent shapes rimming the bottom of each breast.
“You’re getting some sun.” I squeeze her breasts, more playful than sexual.
Laura pushes my hands away. “Stop it.”
She still has a complex about her breasts, thinking they’re saggy. Her low self-esteem is apparently drunk-proof.
“You should really show those things off more,” I say.
“Whatever, Hank.” She watches as I remove my shirt. “You’re the one with the nice boobies.”
I have a thing for calves. Laura has a thing for pectoral muscles. “Can you please not call them boobies?”
“What do you want me to call them?”
I step out of my swim trunks. “How about pecs?”
“Okay, you’re the one with the nice pecs.” Laura pulls back the shower curtain, stepping into the tub. She lies back and spreads her legs.
I step into the tub, but Laura raises her hand to stop me. “Wait a second,” she says.
“What?”
“Do you have protection?”
“Shit! Left them in the nightstand out in the bedroom.”
“That’s okay.”
“Really?” I ask. Knowing Laura’s near-manic fear of pregnancy and her new penchant for two-plying my Johnson during her more fertile times of the month, I don’t understand her insouciance. But hell, I’ll run with it.
“Easy, trigger. Not in the sense that you think it’s okay.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well…” Laura fiddles with the curls dangling down the side of her head. “We could always do other things.”
“Like what?”
“You could go down on me for a change.”
Oral sex. As much as guys enjoy receiving it, we’re reluctant to return the favor. Cunnilingus represents that tenuous line a heterosexual woman straddles (literally) between being bi-curious and full-blown lesbian—maybe even the one thing girls covet more than shoes. You would think we’d be a little less ambivalent about putting our tongues down there, and yet I’ve only done it a few times to Laura. Okay, maybe once if I’m being honest. And I think it was by accident.
“Sure.”
“Sure?” Laura acts surprised.
“Why not?” I say.
I crawl into the large whirlpool tub. We kiss for a few seconds, but the cold, hard porcelain of the tub diffuses the notion of any extended foreplay. I run my mouth down Laura’s neck, through her cleavage, then down over her navel and in between her legs.
I ask Laura what she likes. My voice is muffled, obviously. She puts her hands on the back of my head, encourages me higher rather than lower. “I like the sucking more than the licking.”
“It would help if I knew what the hell I was supposed to be sucking or not licking.”
“Feel that thing in your mouth right there?”
She pushes me deeper to where all I can do is nod. And suck of course. “Good, right there! Suck on that, but do it gently. And try to concentrate on keeping your tongue more to the top right. No, your right, not mine. Think of it as a clock, and you want your tongue to hover around one o’clock.”
After a few stops and starts, I find one o’clock. I get into a nice rhythm. Laura’s knees lock my head in a vice grip. Her back arches. There’s almost no circulation in the bathroom. We slip in the tub, coated in each other’s sweat.
“Oh my God,” Laura says.
My tongue is numb. My jaw a little sore. But I don’t let on. “I do what I can to please my woman.”
“Your woman?” Laura giggles.
“Well, yeah, of course.” She giggles again. There’s a knock at the door.
“Come on already!”
It’s a girl’s voice. Judging by her tone, she’s been waiting to get in here for a while.
Laura and I slide out of the tub. I throw some soap and cold water on my face, washing Laura’s scent off me as best I can. We get dressed.
I grab the doorknob. “You presentable?”
“Not really…” Laura looks at herself in the mirror. “But my face isn’t going to fucking glow any brighter than it is right now.”
We kiss one last time. I open the door. A petite blonde in a florescent-pink bikini bottom and a cut-off University of Illinois T-shirt stands in the doorway.
“Nice, guys,” Beth says. “Real classy.”
Laura takes three steps forward, nearly nose-to-nose with Beth. “What’s your problem, Beth?”
“Problem?” Beth says, pointing at herself. “I don’t have a problem.” She looks at me. “Should I have a problem, Hank?”
Laura pushes Beth in the chest, I’m hoping harder than she intended. Beth stumbles backwards. “Your problem is with me, not Hank. You need to let him go, you fucking slut.”
Out of the corner of my eye, a hand reaches for Laura’s ponytail. Enter the drunk whirlwind formerly known as Claire Sullivan. Everything seems like it’s in slow motion as Claire swings Laura across the room by her ponytail.
“Touch my best friend one more time, you fucking cunt,” Claire says, dragging my girlfriend by her head. “I dare you.”
I grab Claire’s wrist just hard enough to make her let go of Laura’s hair. With her free hand, Claire punches me in the groin. I fall to the ground.
“Hank!” Laura says, pushing Claire out of the way.
Beth grabs Claire just as she balls her right hand into a fist. “Easy, Sullivan.”
I stand up, wincing from the pain. I look at Beth. Bowing, I offer the bathroom door to Beth with a wave of my hand. “If you need to go, then go.”
Laura tugs on my elbow. “But what about me?”
“You should go get dressed,” I say. “I’ll take you out for some crab legs or something.”
Claire flips me off. “Fuck you and your chivalry, Fitzy!”
“That’s enough,” Beth says. She grabs Claire, pulls her into the bathroom. She shakes her head back and forth, her eyes more disappointed in me than anyone else.
I stand outside on the beachfront balcony of our condo. It’s almost sunset, and my stomach is bloated with crabmeat. Laura is inside sleeping off the three-way combination of too much booze, sex, and seafood. I look down and see a tiny figure walking along the beach by herself.
It’s Beth. She has on a tie-dyed tank top and denim cutoffs with a straw hat. She’s barefoot, dipping her toes in the cold Gulf water, pulling them back when a wave comes too close. Every now and again, she raises her hand to hold her hat in place against the breeze.
I have to admit, Beth and I have fun together. The great thing when I’m with her is that everything doesn’t have to be everything. With Laura, I count every second she and I aren’t together. I want every moment to be ideal, even the bad ones. I want to give Laura the postcard-perfect dawn and the postcard-perfect dusk, even if it makes me miserable doing it. With Beth, maybe that postcard might not even happen, but at least I don’t fool myself into believing a sunrise or sunset is any less beautiful without her in it.
Why doesn’t some guy see what I see in Beth? Why doesn’t someone come along and sweep her right off her feet? A decent guy. A guy who looks at Beth’s subterranean self-esteem and her limitless capacity to forgive and says, “Beth, you’re a fucking catch, now act like it. I love you!”
I love you.
I love you.
Wait, what?
I love Beth.
So there it is. Maybe it’s always been there. But that’s not the point. The point is I don’t deserve Beth. I’m flawed and broken and can only bring her heartache. Laura and I make sense together almost out of necessity. Two people that self-absorbed and self-destructive can only be trusted with each other.
I place my hands on the balcony railing. Beth sees me. She stops and waves up at me. I wave back.
Fuck me. The sunset is more beautiful with her in it.