Finding Him

Chapter Twenty

As soon as my feet hit the skin-searing sand, Al's arms are around me.

"Look, everyone! Nikki is alive! She's finally left her house!" Allison booms to a few bystanders and tourists clutching their beach towels and jugs of sunscreen. One woman chuckles a bit as she bends down to pick up a plastic yellow shovel that her young son had chucked into the sand only a second before.

Blushing, I smack her thin arms that are wrapped around like a vice. "Get off, Al. I don't love you." I shout in mock seriousness.

She pouts weakly, and slides down onto her knees. "Oh, I've hurt your oh-so-fragile feelings. Forgive me, great one. Spare my life! I have dogs to take care of at home! Yours included!"

She bends over my feet and pretends to kiss them. I dig my toes into the sand and flick some on her face. "You're such a nerd, Al!" I chuckle.

Spluttering, Allison nods her head. "Oh wise one, I accept your punishment of sand in the eye. If I go blind it's all your fault, but I won't press charges."

Laughing, I help her up. "You won't go blind, stupid."

Suddenly, I hear a deep male voice yell, "Group hug!"

The next thing I know, I'm lying in a heap on the hot sand with Allison and a huge male figure on top of us.

"Shit, Tom. Now I'll be blind and crippled! You could've broken my spine, fat ass. What are you two, three hundred pounds?!" Allison shrieks.

Tom rolls of us, simultaneously pulling up his pair of hot pink swim trunks with Hello Kitty in the corner that Jen bought him for his birthday as a joke, but that he secretly loves wearing because of all the attention he gets.

"Oh, Allison, how I love your profane tongue!" Tom jokes, patting Allison's sand-coated head. "Oh, and I'm two hundred pounds, Mrs. Rexi. Thanks for asking!"

Tom always called Allison Mrs. Rexi. Rexi was short for anorexic. I don't know how the term came to be, but I don't think Tom appreciated the seriousness of the accusation. Jen is always so confident with herself, sometimes I think he forgets that a lot of girls are sensitive to common societal pressures. Tom used the nickname for Allison despite its controversy, and seeing how skinny and bony Al is, it doesn't appear to be a far stretch. It ticked her off to the extreme because after her sister died, her parents sent Allison to a camp for eating disorders since Al refused to eat after the tragedy. She still insists to this day that she was just having trouble coping with the death of her baby sister, but I think maybe Al was trying to be skinnier. Maybe it was because she never thought she was good enough. Or maybe because she thought that if she was good enough, her sister would've lived.

"Shut up, steroid Sally." Allison hisses as she stands and angrily wipes sand off of her blue lace strapless bikini. That bikini was my favorite of Al's. I had a matching white one at home.

Toms chiseled face contorts into a mock hurt expression. Allison was always playfully accusing Tom of using steroids for football, since he was the most muscular of the group. We all knew it wasn't true, though. Tom's dad worked as a personal trainer at the local gym. He and Tom had a pretty serious workout regimen, hence the famous eight-pack of abs Tom loves to flaunt. He was such the little attention whore. He knew it too.

"That's hurtful, shrimp. Very hurtful," he mutters.

"Come on, guys. Play nice," I tease. I stand up and wrap Tom in the biggest hug I can possibly give him since my arms are a good two inches too short to fully wrap around him.

"I missed you, Tommy ole pal. I haven't talked to you in what seems like forever!" I say.

Tom returns the hug, "Yeah, I know, Nikki! You've been too busy in boy-world. Didn't even notice that I knocked-up Jen!"