The Beach House
"FEEL IT, OH, YEAH, baby, right there. Wait for it. It's coming. Now. Go."
I gripped the front of the boogie board with all my strength, white-knuckling it, as Ryan pushed me into the wave. The ocean propelled me forward, like I was caught on a conveyor belt, and the current pushed me to the shore. I caught my first wave.
That was so much fun!
This morning, after we, um, got to know each other a little bit better, Ryan made me breakfast, and I learned why he was so good at cooking. Since he was awarded custody of his little sister, Jennifer, when she was eight, and he was an adult, for the past ten years he fed her, took her to school, got her home, and made her do her homework, along with all of the other parental tasks. All of this when he was barely an adult. He was used to it. No wonder he was so at-home in the kitchen. And no wonder he seemed more mature than me most of the time. That’s a lot of responsibility for a teenager. He had been through so much, and processed it, through surfing or whatever magic Ryan mojo he had going on, and now he was guiding me through it. Sun God therapy. His sister was away at college right now, but he said she was going to come home for Thanksgiving.
He cooked me fluffy scrambled eggs with gooey cheddar cheese, crisp bacon, buttered toast, and fresh fruit salad. We ate it leisurely, outside on his downstairs patio, watching the waves.
"Ryan, how did you get to be so, I don't know, accepting about your parents' deaths?"
"Truth?"
"Always."
"I wasn’t. I acted out, at first. Like I told you.” He shook his head “I was fucking everyone and doing a lot of unhealthy shit. I had to have therapy, too. There's no shame in it. A lot of people do it. Cleaned up my act fast, for my sister."
After breakfast, I gathered the dishes and brought them inside and felt completely out of place in his kitchen. It had appliances in it that I couldn’t identify. His coffee maker could probably serve as central command for a NASA expedition to another planet. He refused to let me do the dishes and argued with me when I tried to help. In addition to being bossy, apparently he had no problem with being domestic at all times.
Once it was done, he came over to me. "I want to show you something," he said. He walked me to a library, and pulled out a yearbook. Our yearbook, the one we were both in. Sitting side by side on the floor, we paged through it, pointing, laughing, looking at the pictures and reading the inscriptions.
When we got to the page with my photo on it, it was circled. Next to it, he had written, "Her."
"I told you," he said. "It was always you. You were the one." And he leaned over and bopped me on the nose with the tip of his finger.
Later, he asked me if I wanted to learn how to surf. Since I didn’t have a wetsuit, he let me borrow one of his sister's, which was a surprisingly good fit. Then we went out his back door to the beach.
The sand chilled our toes, but since it was October, the water was a little bit warmer than the usual year-round frigid Pacific Ocean temperatures, having been heated all summer long by currents from Mexico. Ryan informed me that since I was a "kook," meaning non-surfer, derogatory term, he was teasing me, he was going to teach me how to surf by first using boogie boards. He patiently helped me learn during the rest of the morning, and by the time we were done, I was regularly catching waves.
As we walked back to his home, hand in hand, boogie boards under our arms, we walked past the patio of his next door neighbor. He sat outside drinking a soda, and watching the goings-on. An older Hispanic man, wiry, tan, and leathery, with tattoos and a grey ponytail, he introduced himself to me as Rigo Montes. This, apparently, was Yoda.
The seaside community at Faria Beach was a mishmash of architecture. There were large modern homes, like Ryan's, and teeny-tiny weather-beaten shacks, all in the same stretch of beach. Yoda lived in one of these small beach cottages. Even though it was immediately adjacent to Ryan's mansion, the houses seemed like they belonged together and were friends. Yoda's home was just the thing for an old beach bum. I figured that he had lived there his entire life. I also liked that Ryan had someone looking out for him, since he had suffered such a huge loss.
Yoda smiled a huge smile at me, flashing a gold tooth, and immediately informed me, "I've known this guy here all his life. We've been neighbors all our lives. And I've never heard him talk about a woman the way he talks about you. It's nice to finally meet you, Amelia."
So, Ryan talked about me to his neighbor-guru. That made me feel warm in a way that tingled my fingers and toes. Sun God warmth. He steered me away before Yoda could say anything more. I got the idea that Yoda told it like it was, and wasn't afraid of potentially embarrassing anyone. We walked back into Ryan's home.
"Wanna get cleaned up?"
"I don't have any clean clothes here," I answered.
"You don't need clothes today."
I just looked at him.
He smiled, all faux-innocent, then relented. "I'll let you borrow something of mine. Okay? C'mon, let's go take a shower." Oh boy. The two-person shower. I was looking forward to that.
The thing about a shower with Ryan, was that it involved a wet, naked Ryan, and well, some things are best kept to yourself.
Just kidding. I'll give a few hints.
I gave him shit about having a double-headed shower in California, with all of our emergency drought restrictions and long-standing history of water law issues, due to our desert and quasi-desert environment. I included a detailed discussion of the controversy surrounding engineer William Mulholland's role in the 1928 St. Francis dam disaster, the legal wars over the Owens Valley water project, and the ecological damage of the Colorado River Storage Project.
See, I read more than just Harry Potter.
I asked him if he was listening, and he said, "Not in the slightest, keep talking though," because as I gave him this information, I sucked on his neck and stroked his cock until he came, moaning loudly, all over the window, which had steamed up.
I ran my finger through his cum and made a very pretty pattern.
In turn, after his body relaxed, and his eyes focused, he turned his attention to me, and gave me a detailed explanation as to exactly why his home was ultra-eco-friendly, including a dissertation on the finer points of some fancy system for his shower that I didn't pay any attention to. He told me this while lapping at my nipples, and fingering my pussy, so if there was going to be a test on it later, I didn’t think I’d pass. I didn't care.
Wet, naked Ryan.
Sigh.
Afterward, in Ryan's colossal walk-in-closet, he handed me a wife-beater tank and a pair of boxers to wear.
No, it wasn't obvious that he wanted to see my breasts or anything. Perv.
I humored him and put them on without a bra. I only had my strapless one from the dinner anyway. Late October in California was plenty warm enough, and if I got cold, I'd borrow a sweatshirt. He put on a pair of boxers himself, and then put on cut off sweatpants and a plain black t-shirt that was very tight, and potentially dangerous for my blood pressure. While I dressed, I fingered the flap in the boxer shorts and commented, "I don't have, you know, boy parts to put here."
He laughed and came over behind me, stroking down my bare arms. "Do we need an intervention on what you call my dick?"
"Probably."
"Say it."
"Dick. You're a dick."
He chuckled. "No. What do you call male genitalia?"
"Um, cock?"
"What else?"
"Member. Shaft. Willy. Pecker. Peter. Johnson. Schlong."
"Can you even say the word 'penis'?"
"Penis." I forced it out.
"You cringed. Why do you avoid the word?" He continued to stroke my arms up and down, giving me major goosebumps.
This was actually a good question. If I wasn't comfortable talking about his, uh, schlong, I wasn't comfortable getting up close and personal with it.
I just looked at him and said quietly, "I'm trying, Ryan."
He wrapped me up in his arms, one on my belly, one around my shoulders, and kissed the back of my hair, inhaling deeply. "You totally are." He paused. Then, "Have we broken all your rules yet?"
"Nope."
"Good. More to look forward to."
"Wait, bastard, you know full well we haven't broken all of my Rules."
"Yeah. I was just testing you. It's my mission in life to make sure that we do." This warmed me in some very special places. "So I have a question for you. You're a professional, intelligent woman. You've been on your own and taken care of yourself. And you're obviously a feminist. Do you think you can be a feminist if you suck a guy's cock? If you suck mine?"
I looked at him, startled. "That's actually a good question."
"Can you answer it?"
"I don't know. I've never thought about it. But that might be part of my problem. My Rules started as a way of me protecting myself. I mean, I'm a badass." He rubbed his nose back and forth in my hair. "I have this thing against demeaning myself."
"So sucking cock is demeaning yourself?"
"I don't know. I’ve never done it. But that's what I thought when I came up with my Rules."
"Are you not a feminist if you have sex with a guy?"
"I see what you're doing here. So what you're saying is that it's a logical fallacy. Being a feminist has nothing to do with having sex with a guy—at least not if you— " I almost said 'love the guy' "—do it on your own terms."
"What about if a guy takes control in the bedroom? Are you still a feminist?"
"I don't know."
"I'm just asking, Amelia. You know I respect you and I'll always respect you. We're equals. I just know what I like, and I take it if you're willing to give it to me. But this is a partnership. We both have a say here.
"And another thing. What happens in our bedroom? Or the hall, or the bathroom, or the car, or the beach, or the—"
"Yes, Ryan, I get your point."
"You don't have to tell anyone what happens between us. Be yourself. I'm not going to share. If you're a feminist here, fine. I just want you as you. But what would happen if you didn't care what other people thought when we're naked? What if you just cared about what you and I thought? And, more important, what you and I felt?"
Fucking enlightened sage again. He was right.
I turned in his arms. "So back to this idea of partnerships. We share profits and losses, eh?"
"That's right."
"Would you like me to talk to you about the Revised Uniform Partnership Act of 1994 and its successor?"
"Lecture me, counselor."
I laughed and followed him down to his living room, where we watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I.
Naked.
That night, after dinner, he handed me some sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and we walked hand in hand, in the moonlight, picking up sea glass and sea shells, feeling the sand on our bare feet, and watching and listening to the constant waves. This was the way I normally enjoyed the beach by myself. Sharing it with Ryan, though, was really fucking special. I wasn't alone anymore.
In the middle of the night.
"Ryan?"
"Yeah." His voice was sleep-sexy and he was groggy.
I leaned into him, my lips against his shoulder. "I'm an emotional virgin. Be gentle with me."
"Always."
And he then kissed me, completely, and cuddled me to sleep.
The next morning
"Show me."
He told me that it looked like there was a swell coming in. I wanted to watch him surf, to see him in action. It was such a part of his life. I wanted to see what he did.
After making love to me, yes, it was making love, slowly and thoroughly, he put on one of his million wetsuits, and I bundled up in borrowed sweats. I walked along the beach, carrying a mug of good Ryan coffee, and watched him paddle out to the waves. There were already a lot of people out on the water, and he joined some other surfers out there.
So. My impressions of surfing.
There’s an awful lot of sitting on the board with your feet dangling off to the sides, waiting for the sets of waves to come in. But once those sets came in, Ryan's surfing was a thing of beauty. I'd always thought that it's beautiful to watch anyone do anything well. This was why we liked watching the Olympics. Ordinarily I had no interest in the decathlon. But watching someone else do it well was magnificent and inspiring.
Ryan was magnificent and inspiring on his surfboard.
When it was time for a wave to come in, he would transition immediately from hanging-out-surfer-guy to active-surfer-guy by flattening himself down on his board and positioning it so that it was headed for the shore. As the wave built up, he would paddle, paddle, paddle like a crazy man with his arms, and then, all of a sudden, get up on his feet and simply ride the wave. Or at least he made it look simple. But he didn't just hang on for dear life like I imagined that I would do.
He dominated the wave. He caressed the wave. He got to know it in intricate detail. He cut back and forth, over the lip and back down again, curving his body every which way, forcing the board to do a zig-zag pattern on the water. It reminded me of the way he was with me. Totally present. Totally exploring. Totally open. But what a workout. No wonder he had such beautiful abs.
I felt like I could watch him, stay with him, and be with him forever.