James Games

by Rose, L. A.

  I don’t recognize the girl in the photo. Her face is mine, but there’s no way my body could have such an utter lack of sex appeal. The bathing suit is a black hole for sex appeal. The bottom half is candy-striped spandex that goes all the way to my ankles, with a yellow-and-green polka-dotted skirty thing that seems meant to hide the butt, but mostly just makes it look like I replaced my butt with two pit bulls fighting in a potato sack. The top is similar in almost every aspect to a past-its-prime banana peel, dark yellow and discolored, saggy and dry.

  “You forgot the cap,” Iris announces, stuffing my poor hair into a swimming cap apparently made from dinosaur skin.

  “I forgot…my liver. Back in the room. I have to go back for it, I need that thing.” I try to dive back into the car, but she grabs my arms and frog-marches me down to the beach.

  There’s already a campfire going, spitting sparks into the sky. Near it, two guys are showing off their wilderness skills by arguing about whether or not to add more wood. It’s dark, but the moon is full, and everyone looks prettier in the soft silver light. Everyone except me.

  Bikinis. Girls in bikinis everywhere. White bikinis, bikinis with tassels, string bikinis, strapless bikinis. Girls in bikinis stretched out by the fire, making sand castles, splashing in the waves, chasing each other to make sure their boobs bounce as much as possible in their stupid cute bikinis.

  I am the only one here not in a bikini.

  I try to hide from Iris, but she propels me into the light of the fire. First one person notices what I’m wearing. Then two. I edge closer to the fire, preparing to throw myself into it, but then some drunk guy starts clapping.

  A few other people join in. It’s not long before there’s a solid wave of applause going. “Nice one, Fiona!” someone laughs. “You always know how to keep things interesting.”

  I pop my hip and jut my chin. “Right. I picked out this bathing suit totally independently and wore it of my own free will because I didn’t want anyone to be bored. That’s exactly right. Thank you for noticing.”

  Iris rolls her eyes and snatches a beer from the cooler.

  I spot Sigrid, lounging by the fire with her long tan legs stretched out. Her bikini is bright red, has strategic cutouts, and elevates her boobs to space-station heights. She sees me at the same time that I see her, her face cycling through disappointment that I managed to find out about the party anyway to elation that I showed up in a prehistoric swimsuit.

  “Fiona!” she calls, feigning delight. “Come over here a minute.”

  “If I haven’t come back in five, call the authorities,” I mutter to Iris, who ignores me. I gird my loins and march over to the ice princess.

  “You know what I love about you?” Sigrid smiles at me as I stand over her, digging my toes into the sand. “You always manage to pick out the one piece of clothing that suits you exactly right.”

  “You too,” I nod at her. “Red, from the depths of hell. Does it remind you where you came from?”

  Her smile freezes. “You know what would be great? If James came by. I don’t think he knew about this party. I’ll have to give him a call.”

  “No, don’t—” I splutter.

  “Why do you care? Do you have some reason why you wouldn’t want him to see you in your cute new bathing suit?” Her eyes narrow, and I backtrack.

  “No, invite him! I mean, I only didn’t want you to invite him because I hate him. A lot. I’m pretty much the exact opposite of interested in him. I just have no interest in seeing him, whether or not I’m wearing a bathing suit that happens to be made out of the devil’s foreskin.”

  “Great,” says Sigrid waspishly. “Then I’ll call him.”

  I don’t even want to know what witchery she had to perform to get ahold of James’s number. It probably involved eels and a number of sacrificed children, whose throats she slit with the long fingernails she now uses to tap out his number.

  “Hi, James! I just wasn’t sure if you knew we were having a fire down at Mission Beach tonight. The usual place. I know you don’t usually come, but I think there’s something here you’d really like to see.”

  I am immersed in a vivid daydream that involves plucking all of her hairs out, one by one, and then weaving them into a rope to strangle her with.

  “Does it have to do with Fiona? I don’t know. You’ll just have to come see for yourself,” she smirks before hanging up.

  I rush to Iris, who’s sitting by the fire by herself, steadily getting drunker and drunker. We’ve been here for five minutes and she’s already moved on to the hard stuff. She deserves a medal. “Iris. I need—”

  “No,” she says.

  “I need your bathing suit. James is coming. I didn’t anticipate this.”

  “Once again,” she says loudly enough that I have to shush her furiously, “you didn’t mind half this much when he saw you in the chicken costume. What’s the problem?”

  “I just, I mean, he told me once that he had a traumatic childhood incident featuring a hideous ancient bathing suit and I didn’t want to trigger any upsetting flashbacks—”

  “Oh my God.” Her eyes widen in the light of the fire. She leans forward, wrapping her arms around her pale spidery legs and spilling a little bit of her drink in the sand. “You’re in love with him.”

  “Shhhhh,” I squeak. “I am not. Love is for forty-year-olds who don’t get good sex anymore. I plan on taking advantage of my prime for at least another twenty years before I fall into a sandpit of boringness and doom—I mean love.”

  “But you’re Fiona Arlett! You’re sexy no matter what, whether you’re naked or in a chicken costume! You’ve never been self-conscious a day in your life!” she cackles bitterly. “You fell in love with James Reid. You fucking idiot.”

  I scowl. “Why do I feel like you’re insulting me?”

  “Probably because I’m insulting you.” She takes another swig. She’s drunker than I thought she was. “Of course you’d get the guy the entire campus wants. Of course. You get everything. How could I forget.”

  “Iris,” I say slowly. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she snaps, tossing herself back on the sand. “I’m just sick of the fucking parties, that’s all. So many goddamn parties.”

  I lay down beside her, surreptitiously knocking into her drink. The sand swallows it quickly. Iris doesn’t notice. “Then stop going to the parties.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “My sister went to the parties.” She feels for her drink and digs her fingers into the wet sand again. “My sister had the perfect college life, the one on the brochures and in the books, and that was the life I was supposed to have to, except I can’t. I’m not built that way. You’re like my sister, Fiona. I’m not.”

  She drapes an arm over her eyes, but I can see her looking over the edge of her own skin, watching the stars partially drowned by firelight.

  “That’s bullshit,” I say suddenly. “Obviously you’re not your sister. But that doesn’t mean you’re having a bad college life.”

  She grunts.

  “Maybe sitting in the corner and getting drunk and mocking everybody else doesn’t mean you’re failing at something. Maybe that’s just your own kind of fun. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “My life isn’t in the brochures.”

  I curl up around her, nosing her shoulder. “The brochures make acronyms out of words like SUPER and THRIVE. You don’t want to be in the brochures. You know what you’re in? You’re in the cool indie movies about college where everybody wishes they were the dark, witty main character, and a lot of people pretend to be but nobody actually is. Except you. That’s what you are.”

  She’s silent for a moment. “Now I feel a little bad about making you wear that bathing suit.”

  “Just a little?”

  She turns her head and hisses. “Okay, now I feel medium bad. Look who’s here.”

  I follow her gaze. It’s James. Of course it is. His ha
ir’s in his eyes and he’s wearing a black T-shirt. I expect to see suspicion or even exasperation in the sweeping gaze he throws over the crowd, but all I see is anxiety. His mouth is tight. He doesn’t spot me, lying on the sand behind Iris. He heads straight for Sigrid.

  “Where’s Fiona?” he demands, loud enough for the entire party to hear over the crackle of flames and wash of waves. “Did you do something to her?”

  Sigrid’s mouth forms an O. Mine follows. A few more and we’ll have a bowl of spaghetti-Os. I hop up, brushing sand off my terrifying bathing suit. “Over here!” I call, trying to sound normal and like James hasn’t just stormed onto the scene like a cop investigating a murder.

  He turns toward me. Instead of wrinkling his nose, or cracking up, his face visibly relaxes. He shoves his hands in his pockets and moves over.

  “Sorry,” he mutters once he’s close enough to talk quietly enough that only we can hear. “I know her reputation…I was worried she hurt you.”

  This time, the circle my mouth makes is more hula-hoop than spaghetti-O.

  Everyone’s watching the two of us. Most significantly, Sigrid stares at us through the fire, her eyebrows looking more and more like thunderclouds with lightning sure to ensue.

  Iris stands up and clears her throat. “All right, you goddamn nerds. Last one in the water has to suck my cock!”

  And with that, she sprints into the ocean.

  It’s the perfect distraction. A few people laugh as she howls with the cold. Even in California, the October water is pretty much the opposite of warm. But apparently the alcohol is providing internal warmth, because after she gets control of her howling, she yells, “It’s like bathwater! Get in here, you babies!”

  I look at James. He looks at me.

  “Oh no you don’t,” I growl, backing away.

  “I’m sorry in advance. I legitimately cannot resist,” he says before picking me up and tossing me over his shoulder. I shriek, pounding at his back as he runs toward the water, sloshing in over his knees before tossing me into the waves.

  The cold is brutal, like getting smashed in the chest over and over again with a sledgehammer. I pop up screaming, flailing my arms in a vain attempt to splash James. But he’s already gone. A second later, he bursts through the water beside me, takes a deep hard breath, and grins.

  “Refreshing.”

  His shirt’s on the beach. Hoo boy.

  Now that there’s a shirtless James in the water, the sharks gather. First a couple juniors run in together, clutching each other. Then some boys, refusing to be upstaged now that girls have braved the depths. Then half the sorority is in the water, shrieking their heads off at the cold.

  “Come on!” Amber calls to Sigrid. “It’s not so bad.”

  “I’ll stay right here, thanks.” Her voice is thinly veiled murder.

  There’s no wind, and the waves are light. The more I kick, the more the water stops feeling like a series of knives and becomes a series of needles. Iris, having done her job, has already hauled herself out of the water and is flopped on the beach. Someone produces a beach ball and there’s a moonlit battle for it. At least two girls, wanting to in on the fun but not in the water, have climbed on the shoulders of boys, and a game of chicken ensues.

  James and I circle each other, swimming a small distance away from the pack. The moonlight in his eyes is the purest form of art. I could stare at him forever.

  “I hate you for doing that,” I inform him.

  “This way we can talk.” He swims closer until his thigh is brushing mine. Electricity zips up my veins to the tip of my forehead. “She really did nothing to you?”

  “Nothing whatsoever, if you don’t count calling you so your image of me could be forever destroyed by this bathing suit.”

  He frowns. “What bathing suit?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “A little,” he admits. “But I’m not kidding at all when I tell you that you look so beautiful tonight, you could be wearing literally anything and it wouldn’t make a difference.”

  “What about Lady Gaga’s meat dress?”

  “Her what…?”

  “Nevermind.”

  We circle each other more. All around us, people are distracted by the cold and the beach ball. Under the water, his hand moves up my thigh. Even through the world’s shittiest bathing suit, it feels incredible. I nearly forget how to keep myself afloat.

  “You can’t,” I manage. “Everyone’s around…”

  “If it were darker,” he murmurs, “I would kiss you right now until you forgot about the cold.”

  I suddenly wish I could yank the full moon out of the sky and smash it to bits. “We could do another rain dance.”

  There are a few clouds in the sky, noticeable mainly by the way they obscure the stars. One is drifting thrillingly near the moon.

  “Come on,” I whisper at it, “come on, you shiny, tide-controlling bastard…”

  It inches closer, and closer, and then—boom. It slips over the moon, and the light, which had been glancing off the waves and illuminating everyone’s head, is largely extinguished. James loses his face and his form, becomes just a shape in the dark. And then he’s a shape that’s kissing me.

  Secret, salty night sea kisses.

  I let him drink me, then I drink him in return, thirstily. His arm loops around my back and draws me close. We sink low in the water together, unseen. His hand is around my thigh and I curse this bathing suit extra hard, because without it I’d be feeling his skin on mine.

  Then his thumb slips over the edge of my bottoms, underwater.

  “James,” I gasp. He kisses my neck, biting me while his hand explores lower, deeper. My blood competes with the freezing water for temperature control, but nothing can cool the ache between my thighs. He’s finally about to touch me, and then—

  Silvery light spills over us again. The moon’s back out in full force. We whip apart. Underwater, my bathing suit bottoms slip down to my knees, and I have to secretly yank them up. James wears a wicked grin. I run my tongue over my bottom lip and grin back.

  “James! Think fast!” someone yells, and the beach ball flies toward us. James bops it back in the direction of everyone else, easily, like he didn’t just have his hand down my swimsuit.

  I groan. This is totally inappropriate, but my body’s been left hanging on the edge of a cliff. I reach down past my waistband and toy with myself underwater, keeping my expression straight unless anyone looks my way—but I can’t help shuddering just a little.

  “You’re touching yourself right now, aren’t you?” James is a few feet away, just far enough to be above suspicion but still close enough to whisper to me. The idea of me doing that drives him wild. His eyes are burning and I know that if the moonlight was gone again, he wouldn’t waste an instant in shoving my hands away and finishing the job himself.

  “Whatever gave you that idea?” I tease, my breath quickening.

  I’m driving him mad. I can tell by the way that he moves. His every muscle is on fire for me. Which is just the way I like it.

  We both look upwards at the same time. A new cloud is drifting toward the moon, agonizingly slowly. He faces me, his grin disappearing, just as the light is cut off again.

  We’re silhouettes once more.

  He lunges forward, cutting through the water like some dark, dangerous thing. His hand finds my most sensitive place immediately and I have to bite down hard on my lip to stop from moaning. He notices and kisses me again, pulling my lower lip into his mouth to claim it as his own. Below the water, he claims a very different part of me in a very different way.

  I arch my back against the waves, ripples of pleasure following the sea’s motion and passing through me in swells. He grinds our hips together, using the motion of our bodies to unbearably increase the pressure of his hand. I’m about to moan so I let myself sink down until the water covers my mouth, floating in more ways than one—

  A breeze gusts over our heads, and light spi
lls down from the sky again. Seconds from exploding, I’m forced to drift back and the pulse between my thighs fades, but just barely. James’s breathing is sexy and hard.

  My fingers inch lower again.

  “Don’t you dare,” he warns quietly.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “I want to be the one to make you come.”

  The words are enough to nearly make me come then and there, but I pinch my thigh to stop it. “Oh yeah? Is that what you want?”

  “Fiona,” he says dangerously.

  I reach down, gently stroking the outside of my slit, not enough to finish the job but enough to keep the sensation buzzing. But I exaggerate how good it feels. I tilt my head back and let out a little moan, like I’m really enjoying myself.

  “Jesus Christ,” he mutters.

  “Is there a problem?” I say innocently. “I’m just swimming over here by myself, having a grand old time…mmmm.”

  He groans and stares pleadingly at the moon.

  “You think you could do this better than I can?” I whisper.

  “I don’t think. I know.”

  “I’d like to see you prove that.”

  Just then, the clouds sweep over the moon once again.

  He’s on me in an instant, like some sort of ocean god overtaking a maiden lost at sea. Except I’m no maiden. And he knows it. He grabs my wrist in a viselike grip, pulling it away while he yanks down my bathing suit bottoms with his other hand.

  Whatever I was expecting, it sure as hell wasn’t this. I melt in shock and delight as he plunges into me, our hips matched underwater, the heat combating the icy chill of the water. It’s delicious and strange and new. The water lends a strange weightlessness to our bodies, a flow to our movement. We’re not bound by gravity. He moves exactly when I need him to, exactly where I need him to.

  And then I’m coming, the rush of it and the craziness of what we’re doing making me feel like some wild thing. I lose myself to it, to the sensation of him inside me. My fingers spasm on his back. His breath is hot and sweet in my ear.

  He lets me go just as the moon pours light all over us again, exposing our secrets.