State of Grace | ONGOING

Chapter 9

The football team had played a rare Friday game, which meant that they were taking full advantage of the beautiful mid-September weather in order to make Saturday a beach day. This meant the whole team was driving out to Pacific City to spend the entire day splashing around in the ocean and drinking beer while their girlfriends and various groupies tanned on the beach. Of course it also meant that my roommates were suddenly the biggest fans of the team and had insisted on coming with me. Simi was staying home to take care of CJ post-op, but Anna, Billie, Sunny and I piled into my car with towels, snacks, and alcohol enough to last us the day.

I rolled the windows down slightly even though we were on the highway and Anna had called shotgun, and by extension the aux cord, which no one complained about. 3 nights by Dominic Fike blasted through my car's speakers as we sang along, carefree and having more fun than we had all week. School was already kicking my ass. I had a lab report due on Tuesday, weekly quizzes in all of my biology classes, and Theo had sat next to me in Business Strategy every class this week. I was sure she would be at the beach, but at least we'd have the space to situate ourselves as far from each other as possible.

I pulled into the parking lot that the team had taken over, though we clearly weren't the only ones who'd thought that a beach day was a good idea. It took ten minutes to find an empty spot and I slipped into a narrow strip of concrete, nearly banging my door against the car next to mine as I slipped out and pushed my sunglasses up my nose.

"I've missed this," I declared, inhaling the tangy sea air as my friends started unloading chairs and a cooler from my trunk.

"I'm already sweating," Billie grunted, pulling out the beach umbrella after a wild struggle accompanied by flailing limbs. I laughed and rushed to help my friends, grabbing a bag full of towels and another one full of snacks.

"You can just run into the ocean to cool off," Sunny pointed out, gesturing towards the shoreline with her free hand, two folding beach chairs under the other. Anna had the other chairs and the cooler, since she was the strongest out of all of us and usually the most determined to make it in only one trip.

We hauled our belongings towards the sandy beach and the growing crowd of large, mostly shirtless, men. The boys had snagged a massive chunk of the beach, setting up a cornhole game and massive Jenga made out of pieces of 2x4 wood. Chairs and towels were spread around with a few scattered umbrellas and sun tents to keep the food from getting sandy and the coolers from getting too hot.

Bo jogged over to us and grabbed the cooler from Anna, who smiled at him in relief. He turned to me and grinned, taking the massive bag of snacks from me. "My hero," I teased as he tossed the bag casually over one dark shoulder like it weighed absolutely nothing. And after carrying it for a few minutes across hot sand, believe me it was not light.

Tucker tried to take the chairs from Sunny, but she shook her head and kept walking past him until she found a spot large enough for the four of us to set up. After four years of beach trips and vacations together, we were pros as Billie and Sunny shoved the beach umbrella deep into the sand and snapped it up while Anna and I set up our chairs in the shade and laid out towels in the sun. I stripped off my t-shirt and the girls followed suit, revealing our bathing suits. I'd made sure to pick one I knew Bo liked, a baby blue bikini.

Bo put the cooler down in the shade after kicking some sand around so it wouldn't go right onto the already hot sand, and placed the snacks next to it before turning to me. "Is your phone on you?" He asked, and I looked at him, brows furrowed in confusion.

"No," I pointed to my bag which had my phone, car keys and a book in it. It perched on the seat of one of the beach chairs I'd just set up.

"Good."