Like No Other

I watched her as she leaned back laughing. I loved her laugh. The sun was shining in on her face revealing small soft freckles around her nose, a detail I hadn’t noticed before about her. These past few hours I’d noticed a lot of things about her. Like how she bit her lip when she thought hard and her eyes looked directly at you when you talked to her. You know she was really listening to what you had to say.
I noticed the little things like how she had three freckles arranged in a triangle on her left thigh and a small scar shaped in a circle on her chest. When she blushed it was the most adorable thing, and when you mentioned that you had noticed it she’d just smile sheepishly and look away, her blush deepening.
My eyes wandered along her body when she thought I wasn’t looking. Her body was slim, curves in all the right places. Her skin looked so soft. I wondered what it would be like to hold her in my arms, to kiss her gently and…
The thought crept into my mind like a robber sneaking in a house. I sounded weird, I mean, I’d only known this girl for a day. Why did she have such a strong hold on me? I hadn’t even so much as noticed the girls around and all of a sudden this girl who spilled her coffee all over me yesterday night is making all these thoughts pop into my head.
She was still telling me the story of her friends back home. “They’re lucky to have a friend like you,” I gave her a smile.
For some reason my comment made her uncomfortable. She looked down biting her lip again, mumbling a quiet, “Yeah.”
I instantly wondered what I had said wrong. But it didn’t make any sense, I gave her a compliment. She clutched her stomach suddenly.

“What’s wrong?” I asked concerned.
She smiled, “Oh, my stomach just growled.”
“You hungry?” I asked looking at the time on my phone, surprised at how late it had gotten. How long had we been up here? It only felt like a couple minutes.
“A little,” she said and I stood up.

I helped her to her feet and we headed back down the stairs of the lighthouse. Whatever had bothered her before was long forgotten.
“Oh, I forgot my bag by the pier!” she said suddenly so we headed back that way. We found her purse, a big yellow and white striped bag which she slung over her shoulder, by the big black rocks we had sat on a few hours ago. But the tide had come in and her bag and everything inside of it was soaked.
“Shit,” she ran ahead grabbing it and ringing it out. She looked around inside to see everything was in place, then we walked back towards the crowd and the bright lights of the board walk.
I thought about grabbing her hand again but decided against it. I couldn’t tell if she thought of me the way I thought of her. I shook my head, trying to focus on something other than the beautiful girl walking next to me.

Jeremy dropped me off at Angie’s. Angie and Jack were on the couch, Ellie their calico cat sitting in between them. A movie was on the TV but it was on mute. They were in the middle of talking—or arguing considering the way Angie’s brow was furrowed. As soon as I walked in the door and Angie saw me, she smiled.
“Did you have fun?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I nodded.
She looked a little disappointed that I hadn’t given her more ‘juicy details’. I walked through the kitchen and upstairs. I changed out of my new shirt and bikini and into some shorts and an old tee that was paint splattered from two years ago when I had first attempted to paint my room.
I opened the window and climbed out. The whole street was quiet and dark but I could see the lights from the boardwalk and the sounds of the people there in the distance. I leaned back against the paneled wall behind me and thought back the events of the night.

**********

After we left the lighthouse we went to the Brick Oven, a pizza parlor near the end of the boardwalk. We sat on the outside patio, eating our pizza as we watched people walk up and down the boardwalk, kids riding their bikes, lovers holding hands on the beach. You never realize how romantic a beach can be until you live by one for a while.
“So, any guys waiting for you back home?” he raised his eyebrows up and down, biting into his pizza.
I laughed shaking my head back and forth.
“No? Oh, c’mon, why not?”
“Because I’m a lesbian,” I said wanting to laugh, but keeping my straight face.
He almost choked on his pizza. That I did laugh at. “Are you okay?”
He nodded his head and regaining his composure, took a sip of his Coke.
“Gosh Jeremy, I was kidding,” I said, still laughing at his reaction.
“Ha. Ha. Ha,” he laughed sarcastically. “You can’t do that to me Cass, you almost killed me.”
“Sorry,” I said slyly.
“Jeremy, my man!” Travis’s voice could be heard from halfway down the boardwalk. He started walking towards us. I guess strutting would be the more accurate word for what he was doing. He’d take a step, lean, and then take another step and lean into that one. I resisted the strong urge to laugh.
“What’s up brother from another mother?” he had reached us now. He grabbed Jeremy’s hand and did some weird, complicated handshake but Jeremy’s hand just went limp. Jeremy looked at his hand for a moment then wiped it on his jeans.
Travis turned to me, “Hey pretty lady,” he slid his sunglasses down just enough to where I could see him wink at me. I just stared at him blankly and then looked to Jeremy who just rolled his eyes.
Travis stole a chair from the table next to ours and pulled it in between the two of us. He slid his sunglasses back up on his nose, and reached over, stealing a piece of Jeremy’s pizza off his plate. He all but finished it in three bites, or chomps depending on how you looked at it, only stopping to check out chicks as they walked by.
“Do you want that?” he pointed to some pizza on my plate. I slid it over to him.
Jeremy and I just stared at him while he began to devour my pizza. He felt our eyes on him and stopped mid-bite, half a pepperoni hanging out of his mouth.
“Was I interrupting something?” he asked, his mouth full, looking between the both of us.
“No, of course not buddy.”
“Okay, good,” Travis said going back to the greasy pizza in front of him. He obviously didn’t hear the sarcasm in Jeremy’s voice.
Jeremy just sighed and pulled out his phone, his fingers moving quickly across the keypad. Seconds later, my phone chimed. I pulled it out of my bag which was on the ground and in the sun. Magically, it didn’t get messed up in the water.
Sorry about him. Wanna get out of here?? I looked up and grinned at him, nodding my head
. “Watch this,” I mouthed silently to him, Travis, as oblivious as always.
“Hey Travis,” I called out, “There’s a group of girls playing volleyball down there.”
“Where?” he asked looking in the direction in which I had pointed. He saw the girls and took off, without as much as a goodbye.
I laughed and Jeremy gave me a high-five as we stood up. Instead of putting his hand back down though, he just held it. I slung my bag over my shoulder and we walked to his mini-van hand-in-hand.

“So why does he do that?” I asked.
“Who? Travis?”
I nodded in response.
“Do what?” his hand felt so good in mine. I could feel his heartbeat through his fingers.
“Well, when I met him, he wasn’t acting like Snoop Dog’s sidekick.”
“I don’t know. Travis is the type of person that’s always changing up his ‘look’. One week he dressed like a cowboy, this week, a thug, the next, who knows?” Jeremy just shrugged. “It’s just a Travis-thing.”
“Mmmm…”

The van was parked facing a skate park, in the side lot. When we got in the car, we were in the front row of all the action. The skate park consisted of two rails and two half pipes facing each other. It was built next to an empty, in-ground swimming pool. There were kids on skateboards, bikes, and scooters, all of them doing tricks I didn’t know the names to.
We sat there watching them skate until the sky went dark outside and the lights above came on. We watched the fall outs, wincing, imagining the pain the fall must have caused. We laughed at a few and stared in amazement at this one guy in particular doing these complicated moves and tricks. I don’t think he fell all night.
After a while of this, Jeremy started the van and drove me back to Angie’s. We pulled up to the big, white house. I unbuckled my seatbelt and thanked him for spending the day with me. He thanked me in turn and wished me a goodnight before speeding off.

**********

I yawned, crawling back inside. My bed was warm and cozy and I drifted off thinking of how right I felt when his hand was in mine.