The Temporary Virginity of the American Player

18. I Am the Fort Master.

We had sat on the beach and talked…talked and talked and talked and talked some more. I didn’t think we were ever going to stop talking, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to stop. We’d covered everything from family to friends to why the ocean smelled the way it does. We had even gone wading, though I’d been apprehensive about going too far out. It was a good Jaws scenario, to be honest, and I didn’t want to disappear in a sexy bloody mess. I know, I know; call me a wimp, but sharks were constantly on the brain. Lena could have cared less…the idea of sharks didn’t bother her at the slightest, probably because she could probably make one cry if she wanted to. I wasn’t as brave, and I openly told her if she were attacked by a shark, she was on her own.

“If you worry about sharks then you’ll never get in the water,” she’d called to me as I walked along the shallows.

“No problem!”

“Come on, Nick. It’s fun! Come out just a little farther; you won’t get bit, I promise!”

“Fun? Giving a big Tiger shark the opportunity to go om-nom on your leg is fun? No thanks; I’m good on the fun. I’m fine right where I’m at. No sharks in the sand, right?”

“Oh, don’t be such a baby, dear Nicholas,” she’d mocked, coming back towards me. “I love the beach. I’d spend every day here if I could. Live here…swim here…do everything here. It’s impossible, of course, but I love being here now.”

“How come you like it here so much?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just like how peaceful it is. I mean…it’s pretty and calm. It’s kind of mysterious too. I like that about it. You don’t know what’s under the water; you just have to take a chance and jump in. Maybe you’ll be fine and maybe you won’t.”

“Maybe you’re just weird,” I had offered, and she’d laughed.

“Yeah, maybe that too.”

I’d expected a worse ending to the night, but everything turned out to be alright…well, for the most part. When I’d dropped Lena back off at the café and went back to the apartment, Johnny was nowhere to be found and neither was Joe. I was alone for the night, open to thinking and dissecting the situation at hand and possibly putting all my worries to rest.

Instead, I did the unthinkable.

I built a fort.

I know, I know. Call me crazy, but I just felt the need to do it. It’d been fun when I’d done it with Lena, and I needed a laid-back feeling. Although neither Lena, Lane, Joe, nor Johnny were here to accompany me on this mission, I did it all by myself, throwing a blanket across both sofas and dragging in all the pillows I could to make my little fort the best of the best. And it was. It was an epic fort; the best one I'd ever seen. It was big and fluffy and a little unorthodox, but it was mine.

I popped a big bowl of extra-buttery popcorn and collapsed in a heap of blankets underneath the canopy of a big quilt, renting the old Scream movie off of the television.