over on my belly and dove down to the bottom of the pond, well aware that my butt and my see-through underwear had just breached the water for anyone to see.
But no one was there to see it.
So I did it again. And again.
When I’d had enough I did long, slow breaststrokes back to the shore where my clothes lay in a heap.
But damn it. No towel.
Rookie, skinny-dipping mistake.
I stood on shore and gave myself a big, long shake, trying to get all the water off that I could before putting on my gross clothes.
“Well, well, look who’s naked,” a sly voice said, and I jumped sideways, surprised to see Joan sitting up kitty-corner from me in a little cleared area in the weeds I hadn’t noticed earlier.
“Oh my God, what…what are you doing?” I cried, throwing my arms into my shirt and slipping it over my head. I jerked my shorts up my legs and fumbled at the button.
“Calm down, honey, they’re just boobs—I’ll hardly faint.” Joan pulled an earbud from her ear and stood up. She wore that pink string bikini like it had been painted on. Honestly, Joan’s body had to be one of the most perfect things I had ever seen.
“What are you doing?” I asked again, trying not to stare at the sleek, round muscles in Joan’s legs or the indentations around her belly button. She looked strong and totally womanly.
What is wrong with me? Why am I staring?
“Working on my tan lines,” she answered, and while I watched, Joan pulled one of the strings holding her top on and the piece collapsed off her body. “I work down at The Velvet Touch and the better my tan lines, the better my tips. Guys like it when they think they’re seeing something forbidden. Even when they’re paying to see all of it. Go figure.”
The little lines bisecting her back and the small triangles around her breasts were white, like milk white, made all the whiter by the dark skin surrounding them.
Joan stepped into the water and when it was deep enough, dove under.
I shoved my feet into my socks and tried to put on my boots before Joan got back to the surface. I could guess what The Velvet Touch was; I could guess Joan was a stripper.
“Running away again?” Joan asked, and I whirled to face her.
“No.”
She smirked. “You sure? Because I think that’s what you do.”
Oh, fuck you, Joan, like you know a thing about me.
Just to prove the woman wrong, I sat down on one of the big boulders on the beach and crossed my legs.
Two could play this rude game.
“Why’d you get in between Phil and Tiffany?” I asked.
Joan leaned back, her white breasts bobbing up, and I watched them for a moment. And then I looked away, cheeks on fire.
Heatstroke. I have heatstroke. Only reason I’m here. Staring at her like a sixteen-year-old boy.
It was the truck-stop parking lot all over again and everything about Joan was carnal and I couldn’t look away.
“Someone should, don’t you think?” Joan asked. “He’s a son of a bitch and she thinks she needs him.”
“She does.”
“No one needs an asshole like that.”
“The kids—”
Joan stood up, her dirty-blond hair a slick down her back.
“Would be a whole lot better off if they didn’t watch their mom get beat up.”
“That’s true, but without money, what’s Tiffany supposed to do?”
“Stop looking for excuses to stay, I guess,” Joan said. “You forgot your scarf.”
I clapped a hand to my throat. The bruises were fading. Mostly blue and green smudges now, but someone who looked hard could tell they were fingerprints.
“Look, kid,” Joan said, walking out of the water like Venus on the waves. “Forget the damn scarf—it’s like a fat kid wearing a tee shirt to the swimming pool. All it does is make the kid look fatter.”
I dug into the heart of the bruise just under my chin until it throbbed.
“All it does is make you look more beat up.”
I swallowed hard.
“That’s what you are, right? Beat up?”
No. That’s not what I am. That’s not all I am. I have a hundred more things about myself that I’m figuring out. I like skinny-dipping. I don’t like cake for breakfast. I like grinding my pussy against my hand until I come.
But what I said was, “I guess so.”
“And you ran?”
“I’m running.”
“Good for you.”
Joan walked back over to the weeds she’d stomped down to make herself a little cove along the shore.