Tales from The Tide — My Relationship with (and by) the Sea
…and my fantasy of an older man on a California beach.
Inspired by March’s Week-Two Prompt from Reciprocal
I was fifteen years old, shy, and infatuated. He was a dark-skinned man, five years older than me, who lived in the apartments across from ours. He was my friend’s cousin and the coolest dude I’d ever met — full of bravado and self-confidence — and he had a lowered truck with the loudest-sounding bass around. So cool.
When summer started, and he had weekends off, he regularly drove to the beach just to sleep on the sand, soak in the humid salt breeze, get lulled by the in-and-out roar of the waves, and brown in the sun. He drove to Long Beach, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach... Ah, Laguna Beach.
The first time I learned of his outings, I asked if I could join him. My young-girl hormones swelled at the secret thought of a stolen kiss from him. He agreed to let me tag along. The drive was a thirty-mile, winding trek with the windows rolled down, the music booming, my hair whipping in the wind, and me, leaning my elbow out the door sill, too shy to know what to say, until he’d find a place on the side of the road to park.
With his radio, our towels, and a small cooler in hand, we climbed down from the cliffs to the sand, to a…
