Summer's Last Breath

Part 6

Ally and I were taking advantage of our last Saturday of freedom before volleyball season kicked in. After this weekend, most of our weekends would be spent at tournaments, and our weekdays would be filled with school and practice and games. It was good I hadn't heard a peep from Jamie. I didn't have time for a guy. 


At least that's what I kept telling myself. 


"You're taking Noah to the party?" Ally asked with the rise of her perfectly waxed eyebrows over the rims of her sunglasses.


"It's not like that, Ally. We're just friends." I rummaged around in my beach bag for a can of sunscreen. My mom would always slip in a can of fifty plus UV protection, insisting I'd regret my time in sun when I was thirty-five if I didn't take care of my skin. I took out the can of fifteen UV I brought with me and lightly sprayed myself. 


"Have you kissed him yet?"

 
Kisses. I'd been trying not to think about kisses. Of course I'd failed. The movie I starred in popped into my mind: The slow, purposeful descent of Jamie's face; the feeling of his lips as they touched mine; and the warmth of his tongue.
I shook my head. That was it. No more. I wouldn't think about it again. It was over. He wasn't interested. 


"Who?" I lay back on my towel. The sun beat down hot and bright, but the breeze was strong today and skated over my skin, making the heat bearable.


"Noah." She flipped another page of her magazine. 


"No, I haven't kissed Noah. We're friends."


"So? I've kissed a lot of my friends."


I let my head loll to the side and looked at her. "What friends?"

 
"Jason and Alex," she mused. "I probably kissed Tyler once, too." 


"Tyler doesn't kiss he slobbers," I interjected. I'd had the unfortunate experience of kissing Tyler in the eighth grade behind the bleachers at a football game. I think that was when I decided I appreciated older guys, more experienced guys. I certainly didn't want to waste my kisses on some fumbling adolescent who had no idea what he was doing.

 
Ally laughed. "I know, right? Then there's Derrick and Adam."


I lifted my head. "Wait, you kissed Derrick?"


To put it in as nice as a way as possible, Derrick lacked good personal hygiene. To put it not so nicely: he smelled. Bad. The stench was like a cloud that followed him around, which was a shame because he wasn't bad looking and he could be funny at times. 


Ally pulled her sunglasses down her nose, her face a mask of total seriousness. "You got to kiss a lot of frogs to find that one prince."


Unless that prince found you and then ruined it for all the frogs.


"So is Jax a frog or a prince?" 


"I don't know yet. But I plan on finding out tonight." 


"He's kind of a douche." In that way some guys born into privilege, and with excessively good looks, tended to be. Like they were some gift to all the girls spinning in their orbits.


I rolled over on my stomach to watch the waves rolling onto the beach. The surf was rough today. A few people were out on their boogie boards, taking advantage of the waves, and a few surfers bobbed in the water farther down the beach.


"He's a guy." Ally sighed as if accepting the inevitable. "Aren't they all?" 


Maybe. Especially the ones who delivered that one life-altering kiss that was everything you'd dreamed a first kiss would be and more, and then disappeared from your life.