Chapter 16: The Beach, Part One

Ren: The Beach, Sacramento: 10:17am: 15 June

"Tawny, please take that off." I groaned.

"I won't." She said firmly before sitting down in her chair underneath a huge umbrella. She was pretty much wearing a parka, along with a huge hat and sunglasses. She always did this when we came to the beach.

Monique, and I spread our blankets out on the sand next to her. Lizzie, and Miranda were coming with the boys caring the cooler with our drinks, and the volleyball net, and all of the fun stuff. Ruby was late for undisclosed reasons.

"Tawny, will you please take off your clothes." Monique begged, "You're drawing attention to us and making us look weird."

"Stop hitting on me."

I sat on my towel, and looked at her sitting there, looking very odd indeed, "Are you even wearing your bathing suit?"

"Yes."

"Why if you're just going to wear that all day?"

She sneered, and didn't answer. I couldn't tell if she was even looking at me because she had on huge completely black sunglasses that made it impossible to see her eyes. It was a complete waste, she had such pretty eyes.

"Fine." I gave up, and took my own shirt off. I heard her snicker to my right, and I looked, "What?"

"Let me guess…did Ruby make you get that?"

I looked down at my bathing suit, "Yes."

"I think you will be the one drawing attention to us, you skank."

"I am not a skank."

"And I don't think you're hot."

Did she think I was hot? I looked at Monique, who had already stripped and sprawled out to tan. I'm not completely sure why considering she was naturally way more dark than the rest of us, "Am I a skank?"

"No, honey, your bathing suit is cute, and I'm sure the boys will like it."

"But I don't want any boys…"

Tawny chuckled again, "I'm sure it'll attract girls too, Ren."

"Leave me alone." It was just a pink bikini. I'll admit it did display a little more than my usual one, but it wasn't like it was a thong and I had glued quarters to my nipples and that was it. I slipped my shorts off, and tossed them aside with my shirt. Before the other half of my party at the club we were all going to have a little intermission to get cleaned up and changed. Tawny would certainly make fun of me for what I was going to change into.

Looking over at Monique again, I saw that she had quite efficiently fallen asleep. She wasn't used to getting up even close to this early, apparently. I saw Louis and everyone else a little way down the beach setting up the volleyball net. Ruby was with them, along with Bobby, Larry, and a bunch of other people I'd invited. I sighed, and began applying generous amounts of sunscreen to myself. I never felt more alone than when a lot of people were gathered together for me. "Tawny?"

"Yes, Ren?"

"Come put sunscreen on my back."

"Ooh, you trust me."

"I've known you for six years. You won't rape me in public."

"Fine. I hate getting that stuff on my hands though, so you better appreciate this."

"I will because I will not get sunburnt."

"Ah, but the skin cancer," She said taking the bottle, "The cancer is what will kill you." She began rubbing the cold cream on my back, and we sat in silence for a moment or two before she said, "You're really tense."

"Massage."

"You're asking me to be exposed to the sun for an awfully long time…"

"Oh, shut up, your entire body is covered."

"My hands aren't." She began to rub my shoulders gently like I knew she would, though she put up a huge fuss about it.

"Why don't you take that stuff off?"

"I'll melt."

"Bullshit. I bet you have an awesome body."

"Stop hitting on me in order make me conform to you pathetic…conformists."

"Stop being a nonconformist."

"But-"

"It's my birthday, Tawny…do it for my birthday…" I whined.

She stopped massaging, moved over next to me, and sat down, "You want me to take my clothes off for you for your birthday? I should get paid for this. Are you going to want sex later?"

"Depends on how hot you look in your bathing suit." I winked. I loved messing with her like this. I couldn't be flirty with boys. I always ended up all awkward and like a horrible, big oaf, but with Tawny I could be silly and cute. I guess it was because I didn't really mean it or something. I snatched the hat off of her head before she could do anything, and held it away from her.

"Hey…that was mean…"

"You're mean to me." I laughed, and took her sunglasses with my other hand.

She looked at me pathetically and pouted as I sat her hat and glasses down by Monique, who had started to snore lightly.

"You have really pretty eyes, and shouldn't wear glasses like that." I stuck out my tongue.

"You really should stop hitting on me, Ren." She said with a serious tone.

I laughed. She did, indeed, use her acting skills for evil, and not just for that stupid bet she made with Louis. She pulled her knees up to her chest and put her arms around them, staring off toward everyone else. It looked like Ruby, Miranda, and Lizzie were making their way toward us finally with all of the other stuff. On a whim of impulsiveness, I reached over and tickled Tawny's sides. She squealed, and flopped around. I straddled her as she lay half on my blanket and half on the sand. I pulled off her weird black cloak thing, and threw it toward her bag by her chair. She had a plain t-shirt on under that, and I latched onto the hem. She tried to fight me off, and squirmed a great deal.

She crossed her arms, and made it impossible for me to remove it, "No! Bad Ren!"

I moved down and sat on her thighs, and went for the button of her pants. The thought never occurring to me how it looked to other people.

As I struggled with the button while she tried to worm herself away, I heard a very recognizable voice from behind me say, "Oh…my…God…"

Tawny sat up quickly, while I jumped off of her and said, "That was not what it looked like."

"It was hot." Lizzie grinned, and winked at Tawny.

"It looked like you were trying to take off her pants…" Miranda blinked, looking very shocked.

"I was-"

"Ren!" Ruby shouted.

Monique sat up slowly, and looked around, "What'd I miss?"

"Ren was taking off Tawny's pants!" Ruby blabbed quickly.

"Why in the world did Ren have Tawny's pants on?"

"No-" She started to say, but I cut her off.

"I was trying to take Tawny's pants off of Tawny."

She looked at me blankly, then it seemed to hit her, and she ended up with the same shocked look as Miranda, "I knew it…"

"Knew what?" I was confused, "Oh…no. Not like that! Jease! I was trying to get her to not be fully clothed at the beach…so I was taking her clothes off."

"Uh huh." Lizzie laughed.

Tawny took her shirt off and threw it toward her bag, then stood and took her pants off. She put her hands on her hips, and rolled her eyes, "There. Happy? She was really trying to just get me to be normal, that is all."

She seemed a little sad, and was wearing a dark purple bikini, similar to mine, but all bikinis are similar, I guess. Her body was unexpectedly toned. She sighed and put her hair up before saying, "Hey, let's go play volleyball with the boys."

Miranda seemed really enthusiastic to do so, threw her stuff down, took her clothes off, and started back over without her. Lizzie waited, and spread out her towel on the other side of Tawny. Ruby flopped down in front of her, and sat the cooler down under Tawny's umbrella, "Louis and Twitty have the bigger one with the drinks in it down there with them," She said, "They said they'd bring it down here in a second with their stuff. It was too heavy for us ladies and all."

"Ok." I thought for a moment as Tawny and Lizzie walked off. It was as if she'd intended for that to happen somehow, and she planned on taking all of those clothes off, obviously, "I'll come down and play with you guys in a minute."

"Me too." Monique said, then laid back down.

"I'll wait. I need to tell you something anyway." Ruby pulled out a bag of potato chips from the smaller cooler she had carried.

"What?"

"Ya know last night how I mentioned my parents had left? Well…I think it would be cool if after going to the club and dancing, we could all head back to my place, and just chill there. I'm sure your parents would let you and everyone spend the night, and it would be so awesome."

"It sounds cool. Your parents ok with it?"

"Pfft. Yeah. I called them this morning, they made me late."

I laughed. It would be cool to just sort of chill around at her house with everyone and watch movies. It would probably be the last time the bunch of us were all together. I looked back down the beach toward everyone else. Louis and Donnie were heading over with what looked like everyone else's stuff, and well as the big cooler. Each of them were holding one side of it, and they were being followed by Kate and Claire.

"None of those asses would come over and say hi to the birthday girl." My older brother mumbled.

"It's fine, I'm going over there in a minute anyway."

"Oh. Cool." He dropped his side of the cooler, as well as all of the towels and clothes he was carrying, and ran back off in the direction he had come from. Claire watched him leave, and was obviously checking him out. Louis rolled his eyes, and pulled the cooler over so it was underneath Tawny's umbrella as well, then dropped all of his things next to Ruby's. He was being abnormally quiet.

"Hey…" Kate said, shyly, moving all of the things Donnie dropped abruptly, to sit down in the sand by Monique, who was dozing off in the sun again.

"Happy birthday, Ren." Claire took over the conversation, "Ethan ran off to go play Frisbee with a fine looking guy named Larry."

"Larry is fine." I agreed. My old academic enemy had become subdued once we reached high school, and accepted the place of salutatorian when we graduated.

"I'm going to go over there and watch because he has his shirt off, and oh yeah…I met this girl named Mandy, who said she would come at some point. Is that cool?"

"Mandy?" I asked, and Ruby looked at her suspiciously too. Monique even opened an eye and glared with it.

"Yeah. Mandy Sanchez."