Bralex - The Beach

Our ladies go to the beach...this is the third scene written, not necessarily sequential.

Alex stood on the beach, digging her toes into the sand. Her brown flip-flops lay discarded some ways away. The waves crashed against the sand and the water crept up to lightly cover her toes. She had barely been here five minutes and already she loved the way the sound of the waves would crescendo and decrescendo.

            Behind her, Bryce and Smurf—Jake, Alex corrected herself with a smile—were bustling about, laying out blankets, finding lotions, and flinging sand. Alex turned around to see what all of the giggling was about and saw a vicious-looking Bryce straddling Jake and threatening him with a raised bottle of sunscreen.

            Seeing Alex turn, Jake appealed to her—‘Make it stop! Save me!’ Bryce turned with a devilish grin and raised the bottle, offering Alex a choice—Help me, or help him. But there will be consequences. Alex shivered under the other girl’s gaze.

            ‘I think I’m going to let you guys handle this one on your own,’ Alex said, and she let herself collapse on the blanket next to Jake.

            Bryce sighed dramatically at Alex’s neutrality and slid off of Jake’s stomach to sit between him and Alex. She held the bottle of sunscreen out to Alex again, another offer: ‘Lotion me?’ she asked, gesturing to her pale shoulders underneath the straps of her bikini.

            Alex swallowed, but managed a sly smirk. ‘Yeah, I guess.’ She grabbed the bottle and their fingers brushed. Bryce twitched her eyebrow up and down before letting it go and clambering haphazardly over Alex’s legs to sit in front of her.

            ‘You may begin,’ the blonde said imperiously, tilting her head up and closing her eyes.

            ‘Yeah…whatever,’ Alex rolled her eyes with Jake and squeezed the recommended ‘quarter-sized amount’ into her hand. Then she squeezed again. The sunscreen was blessedly cool, a sharp contrast to the heat of the sun. Rubbing it so that there was a goodly amount on each hand, she smirked and shared a knowing glance with Jake, and then grabbed Bryce around her naked waist.

            ‘HELL!’ she screamed, flinching violently as the cold cream slid across her skin.

Alex had about a half second’s warning before Bryce twisted around and tackled her, sunscreen smearing over Alex’s tee-shirt as they wrestled in the sand.

Alex didn’t think she had ever been this physically close to Bryce as this, and it made her stomach roil in a sort of okay way. Bryce was above her, their hands locked as they scrambled for dominance on the shifting sand.

Bryce put up quite a fight, Alex had to admit, and she had her size advantage, but it wasn’t that hard for Alex to roll Bryce over as they giggled. Grabbing Bryce’s wrists in one hand and using her other hand to hold down Bryce’s shoulder, Alex grinned.

‘Pinned ya,’ she said, breathing heavier from the exertion.

For a moment, Bryce’s mock glare softened, and for a moment, Alex didn’t really want to move.

‘Do you guys need anything?’ Jake interrupted. ‘Champaign, maybe?’ Ugh! Alex could have killed him then with a clear conscience. And with the intrusion, the moment fled. Alex rolled off of Bryce quickly, hating herself for the heat she felt rising to her face. Bryce just giggled.

‘Guess not tonight. Try again later,’ Alex heard her say softly to Jake.

Alex’s eyebrows rose slightly. She swallowed. Did she really...? She wondered for a moment how serious Bryce had been. Alex knew Bryce was into girls at least a little bit. Jake had mentioned a few of her ‘lezcapades’ in passing while they had talked about him. It was hard to believe sometimes, but then, there were all of Bryce’s insinuations around Alex. Like just now. And Alex could believe it then. But a lot of girls did that with their best friends.

And she and Bryce had been best friends once, back at the orphanage. Alex smiled, remembering snippets of trouble and plotting under Ms Agnes’s nose. Suddenly, Alex felt a lot less nervous.

‘So no cham, then, dolls. What about a dip?’ Jake asked.

With a last thoughtful look at Bryce, Alex nodded and stripped off her tee, leaving her blue and white flower board shorts on.

‘So...’ Alex said, feeling more comfortable with Bryce, and a little more comfortable with her bikinied body. ‘Who’s gonna teach me how to surf?’ Alex already knew how to swim; they’d learned by fieldtrips to the pool with the orphanage. Surfing was another matter entirely.

‘Mm. No,’ Bryce said. ‘But I do know how to boogie board. Just ask that guy for a few of the little ones.’ She pointed to a stall with a man renting out small square baby surfboards.

After the board renter stopped winking at them (courtesy of Jake, who was the only one to wink back), Bryce lead Alex to the water.

‘Come on in,’ Bryce beckoned as Alex held to the outer edge of the surf. ‘You’ll be fine; this is the easy part.’ Alex balked for a moment, narrowing her eyes, and then tossed a handful of water at Bryce’s face before following her out into the deeper water. The water wasn’t as warm as Alex would have expected, but it was a far cry better than a pool. She hated getting to a cold pool, shivering at the thought of that first icy jump in; you couldn’t walk, of course, or just slide in, because then the cold would shock too much. But no. This water was cool, but in a tepid bathwater kind of way; it wasn’t so bad.

When Alex was on a level with Bryce, she was standing on sifting sand and some unidentifiable something—maybe rocks? They were sharp enough—and the water came up to her waist. It only came up to Bryce’s belly button.

‘Alright,’ Bryce said, while Jake flirted on the beach with some tan and muscle looking guys. They all looked...kinda the same. Whatever. If Jake was occupied, at least Alex had Bryce to herself.

 ‘Take the board in your hand. Now put the board underneath your chest. Got it?’

Alex raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not stupid, Bryce.’

‘Fine, I won’t teach you. Just get on the board and kick your feet.’ And with that, Bryce hopped onto her board and kicked, making a frothy mess in Alex’s face. She was wiping her eyes when she heard a faraway, ‘Look out, Lex!’ Alex looked up with one eye opened and the other closed and stinging.

She swore. The wave hit her in the head, tumbling her under the water and shoving her face into the sand and out of the water.

It hurt.

Her nose felt weird.

And the water tasted so much worse than pool water.

Before she could recoup, another wave knocked her in the rear, scraping her face down farther up the beach and scrunching her like an accordion. Through the haze of disorientation and the draining water from her ears, Alex heard laughing. Lots of it. She swore again and tried to push herself up before another wave decided to knock the crap out of her.

‘Are you alright?!’ Bryce was saying frantically. Through her one salt- and sand-free eye, Alex watched Bryce slide effortlessly off the wave she had ridden back to shore. Any hope of being able to do that had now fled Alex entirely.

‘Lex, are you okay?’ she asked again, this time grabbing Alex’s arm with one hand and placing her other hand across Alex’s shoulders to guide her back to the towels while she was still half-blind.

Alex turned to her, squinting with her bad eye and glaring with her good one. ‘My face. Is on. Fire. And I’m BLIND.’

 

Alex noticed Bryce looked slightly abashed. Good.

‘But no permanent harm done, hey?’ Smurf sidled over to them and helped escort Alex back. Then Alex saw the silver something dangling from his arm.

‘Like hell did you take pictures of that!’ Alex lunged for the camera and Bryce only barely held Alex back as Jake hopped nimbly away with a Loki-an grin.

‘Uh-uh, girlfriend. One day, you’ll treasure them as much as I do now.’ He met Alex’s glare-squint with a shameless smile.

Oh he’s so lucky I can’t see him right now. But she would get him. And those pictures.

Bryce’s hand tightened gently around Alex’s arm as the brunette seethed. A warning and a comfort. The hand was oddly soothing; Alex flashed a less intimidating half-squint as Bryce helped her sit down on a towel. Bryce smiled back, but as she sat down, she maintained her hold on Alex’s arm.

‘Let’s take a look at you,’ she murmured.

For a second, she reminded Alex of one of her foster mothers, the first one from right after she and Bryce left the orphanage. Every time Alex had fallen and scraped a knee or an elbow, that’s what her foster mother had said. Come here, dearie, let’s take a look at that. Alex had liked her. It was rotten luck having to leave her. She had been soft-spoken and kind. She always made cookies or something after Alex had a particularly bad scrape.

Bryce’s hands were gentle as they moved Alex’s chin around to better account for every scratch.

Alex finally had rubbed the last grit from her eye and could look at Bryce full on. Mostly. The eye was still being strange, wanting to close no matter what ideas Alex had to the contrary. Alex grimaced at how she knew she had to look: ridiculous.

‘What a trooper,’ Bryce murmured so only Alex could hear. One hand still on Alex’s cheek, the other still on her arm. Alex liked how Bryce’s pale skin looked on her own bronzy hue.

Alex smirked at the recollection. Their favourite helper at the orphanage used to tell that to them when they hurt themselves. It was like a tiny intimacy, this shared memory. So was Bryce’s touch, tender and lingering. God, it was lingering. If it stayed any longer, Alex wasn’t sure she’d be able to help herself.

She turned her cheek slightly, glancing at the ground and hoping that Bryce would get the hint. Whether she did or didn’t, Bryce let her hand fall from Alex’s cheek. Her other hand stayed a moment longer before it followed suit.

‘You’re all good,’ she muttered. She was frowning slightly, and Alex cursed herself for an idiot. Bryce scooted over slightly, crossing her legs at her ankles and resting her arms on her knees, and then looked up at Jake.

‘Are you done sunbathing, you beautiful f*g?’ she called. The boy in question had sauntered off to ‘tan’ next to a good-looking guy who looked really too asleep to pay any attention to Jake.

He rolled over onto his side and struck a pose, tossing his head back and swishing the luxurious locks he didn’t have, pretending his short spiky blonde hair was about six inches longer.

‘Come on, you bum. I’m hungry,’ she yelled.

Alex could make out his exaggerated grimace and eye-roll, but he picked up his towel and trotted over.

‘You guys done already?’

From the corner of her eye, Alex saw Bryce glance at her before she said, ‘Yeah, I think we are. I’m hungry and Alex’s pride is in pain.’

‘Fine,’ he sighed. He tossed a glance back at the snoozing kid in the sand, sighed dramatically again, and then led them to the car.