Every time Jake and I wanted some more Adderall back in college we’d go down to the old fishing pier that sat next to our apartment and order cod tacos. Do you want them fried, grilled, or blackened, old Betty would say in her southern twang. And what that meant was 10 mg, 20 mg, or 30 mg? And we would always say blackened because that was 30 and we would take them and soar like them F- whatever fighters. You know, the ones you’ve seen blazing overhead on Fleet Week? Yes, you must have.
So picture us, as high as those speed demons, hanging out in our rundown apartment, and in walks Constance, some chick Jake had been seeing. I told Jake early on to abort mission, but he liked her awkwardness and he said she was good in bed and I could tell he liked her. So she walked in, without knocking, and plopped down on the couch. She asked what we were doing and before either one of us could answer she immediately started talking about herself. I had to bite my tongue until it bled and then I started biting the sides of my mouth because I wanted to talk so bad but I couldn’t because she was talking about her roommate and her classes and her experience at Target earlier in the day. She wouldn’t stop talking.
Jesus, Jake, I said, did you give her one of our Adderall’s? He said no and laughed and she laughed and said no and then she kept talking about Target. So a couple hours after that Jake all of the sudden got really hammered—drunk. I’m not sure if he was really hammered or if it was the Adderall wearing off, but he started nodding his head and falling all over Constance. She would then laugh in that cutesy too-good-for-anyone laugh and push him off of her and onto the couch.
After that happened twice I told her I was going for a walk and, of course, she wanted to come so I said okay. When we got down to the sidewalk there was an old man walking his Jack Russell or maybe it was a Rat Terrier. But anyway, we started walking past the old man and Constance didn’t say a word and when I asked her if she thought the old man’s dog was a Jack Russell or a Rat Terrier she shrugged her shoulders so I didn’t push it any farther.
She walked next to me and kept up and after a while I started to notice that she was mimicking my foot movements. If I stepped with my right foot she would over-step to make sure her right foot would land on the pavement at the same time as mine. The same thing would happen with the left foot. I found myself starting to shuffle my feet more so she wouldn’t know when I would put my foot down and she would have to just land her foot on the ground because if she didn’t she would fall. We played this game for about five minutes before she asked me if I wanted to cross over the road and go sit on the beach and because I had nothing better to do I said okay.
The wind was honking from the northeast and it seemed like every place I turned my head the sand was swatting me in the face, but when I looked at Constance she seemed pretty content and she actually acted like the sand wasn’t hitting her at all so I figured I should act like it didn’t bother me either.
We sat down in the dry sand surrounded by the same silence that had been following us all the way from the apartments. For a minute I thought she tried to reach for my hand but then I realized that she was only reaching to her side to pull the edge of her skirt down. Her dark hair was being blown back by the wind and it seemed to wash away any kind of uncertainties she had. This made me want to kiss her. I didn’t want to kiss her for any other reason but for the fact that she looked so perfect in that moment with the wind and all. So anyway, I turned away and she turned the opposite way. I only knew this because I could feel the wind redirect itself as she turned her body. We just sat there. Sat there with our backs to one another and probably both thinking about the fact that our backs were up against the other’s.
I felt the sand between us move as she grabbed my right arm and squeezed it and asked me if I wanted to go swimming. Swimming? I asked, in this wind, I asked again, and she said yes so we went. We both walked slowly out into the water as the waves crashed just at our ankles at first but then we kept walking. Further and further. Before I knew it we were neck deep and she slid her arms around my shoulders and straddled her legs around my hips. This was the first time I felt like a woman had ever needed me. She couldn’t let go or she would slip away and I had to plant my feet firmly into the mud or I would let go of her. I was holding her and the friction between us was all we needed in that moment. I felt it was something that would only be able to happen there—in the ocean, and I think a part of me was trying to hold onto that moment for as long as I could make a moment last. We didn’t kiss. I knew she could tell I was getting turned on by her body straddling me because every couple of seconds she would look me dead in the eyes and laugh in her cutesy too-good-for-anyone laugh and then I guess she got tired of me not kissing her so she removed herself from my body and started walking back towards the beach.
I called her name and she turned around walking back towards me. We were only ankle deep now. She clasped both of my hands and stared into my eyes again. I freed my left hand from hers and lifted up her skirt. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. She had dark brown minge. Unlike mine, it looked perfect, like she never had to alter it at all. I just gazed at that, that thing of beauty for a few moments and cream started to ooze from between my legs. I reached out and placed my right hand gently on it. I looked back up into her eyes and she was staring into mine again. I let her skirt back down and peered behind her to the dunes on the beach, but didn’t look at her anymore. She turned away from me heading to the beach again. I called her name once more, she didn’t turn around and disappeared walking over the small dunes.
I walked, soaking wet, back to my apartment and took off all of my clothes except my bra and underwear. I sat down on my cold sheets. Through the loud plumbing and drunks upstairs I heard Constance and Jake having sex. The younger college kids were screaming fish names at the marina glass window because they had heard if they said a fish name they would get some Adderall. Constance’s silhouette on the beach was burnt into my eyelids as I closed them and drifted off to sleep.
Kelsey Goudie is a graduate of George Mason University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. She currently works as a proposal writer for a software company by day and a creative writer by night. Her work has been published in Gravel Magazine and she is a reader at Phoebe.
Photo by Spencer Selover