The Beach, the Beer, and the Cowboy Hat
The sun shone brightly through Nick’s bedroom window as he decided that a day at the beach was in order. He slipped on his gear, jumped into his Mustang, and headed over to Tanner’s place to pick him up. On the way, he picked up a twelve-pack of beer, bottled water, and a bag of pork rinds from a convenience store.
Soon the two friends were cruising along the highway heading south towards Siesta Key with songs of escape by Jimmy Buffett blaring from the radio. It was just after 2 p.m. when they arrived and positioned themselves in a central location on the beach near a popular drinking establishment.
The restaurant provided ample opportunities for female interactions. “Bonus,” Nick thought. He’d been dating at State, but with no one in particular. The only girl he was interested in was Piper, but she’d shown no interest in him. So why couldn’t he stop thinking about her? Maybe he should try to put her out of his mind.
Tanner used to be on the hunt with Nick, but he’d recently reignited his high school relationship with Marlis, one of Piper’s friends. Marlis was a sweet and petite Asian girl whom Tanner adored.
They plopped their chairs down and took their seats, popping their first beer as they enjoyed their little escape from reality.
“Check out the blonde in the hot pink bikini,” Nick said.
“Yeah, she’s gorgeous, like a Swedish supermodel.”
As Nick watched the blonde walk by him and head into the water, he spotted something familiar. The cowboy hat. And under the cowboy hat was the skinny body of his friend Bob. Bob spotted him at about the same time and waved. Nick watched him as he walked over to his chair, which was in front of theirs around four hundred feet away. The chair was propped next to another chair, which was seating a male with olive-colored skin. The male stood up and turned towards Nick and Tanner.
“Hey, it’s Gonzalez! Sweet.” Nick was thrilled to see Juan Gonzalez, also known as “Flypaper” for his effect on the ladies. Juan and Bob grabbed their chairs and each side of a large cooler and headed towards them.
“The day’s just about to get ugly,” he said to Tanner.
“Yup.”
“Hey there. What’s the good word? I’ve got a ton of beer in the cooler,” Bob said as he walked up and set the cooler down. He’d already gotten too much sun as his chest, shoulders, and nose appeared to be fried. “Sun’s hot today, but the beer’s cold.”
“Boiling hot,” Tanner said. “We have beers in our cooler too.”
Bob and Juan positioned their chairs next to the cooler and sat down.
“It’s a good beach day,” Nick said. “Plenty of lovely ladies on this beach.”
“Cheers to that amigo. Check her out,” Juan said as he pointed to the same blonde that Nick had been admiring. She was now coming out of the ocean.
A few minutes later the band started playing in the restaurant behind them. Sounds of steel drums and reggae singers dominated the air as Nick swigged down his beer and grabbed another one, along with a handful of pork rinds. While crunching on a pork rind, he surmised that the day was better than he’d expected. Relaxing. Glassy water. And not a cloud in the sky.
But it was hot. The sun was baking their bodies to a crisp, and encouraging them to keep hydrating. With beer. They’d already run out of water.
At some point, Juan struck up a conversation with the Swedish-looking blonde in the hot pink swimsuit. She was now sitting next to him on a towel in the sand. Her name was Emsley and she looked like she enjoyed Juan’s company, staring at him intently from behind her gold-rimmed sunglasses. She was slowly sipping on the beer he’d given her as they chatted.
“I’m here with a few friends,” Nick heard her say. “I’ll get them.” She got up and walked over to a small group of girls sitting on beach chairs about a football field away. They stood up and gathered their things and walked over to join them.
“These are my friends: Kelly, Jenna, and Kirsten.”
“Welcome,” Juan said with a slight Hispanic accent as the girls plopped their chairs onto the beach in front of them. He pointed to Nick and said, “That’s Nick and he’s Tanner. They play football at State University. And this is Bob.”
“Hi all,” Kelly said.
Juan flipped open the cooler and said, “Anyone want a beer?”
“Sure,” Kirsten said as Juan distributed beers to each.
Once they were all established in their seats, Bob piped up with a story.
“You guys will remember this one,” he said as he looked at Nick and Tanner. “We were drinking on my back porch when buckets of water started crashing down from the sky. So I said, ‘Let’s hit the bay on skis.’ Cuz that’s what you do in the rain at night when you’ve got a boat and live near the water. So we loaded up the boat with some beers and gear and hit the boat docks.”
He looked at Nick. “Nick offered to be first. He got out there under the shining moon and ripped across the ocean, making waves and spraying mountains. Then came the lightning. That’s when he really did his magic. Swear he walked on water as he dashed back and heaved himself into the boat. He wasn’t afraid. No sir. He battled that lightning like that Norse god Zeus.”
Tanner laughed and piped in, “Nice finish, but Zeus is a Greek god.”
“Yeah, but does it really matter?” Bob replied.
“Good one Bob,” Nick said, “Could’ve killed me. But good story.”
The girls laughed. They were cute, but not as cute as Emsley. Nick watched Bob as he shifted his attention to the petite brunette in the yellow bikini named Jenna. She was the only one shorter than he was and she seemed interested in him too.
As he glanced over at the other two girls, Kirsten, the six-foot tall, full-figured girl with coffee-colored eyes and bushy brown eyebrows, caught his attention. Her long dark eyelashes contrasted her short, spiky bleached blonde hair. Not his type really, but maybe that didn’t matter. He watched her guzzle down the last of her beer with a sense of ferociousness unfamiliar to most girls.
“Want a beer?” He said to her as he reached into his cooler.
“Sure,” Kirsten said, so he handed it to her. Without missing a beat, she used her other hand to crush the first can and shove it into the sand by her side. Her hands were larger than most women’s hands and could probably comfortably grip a football.
“What an animal,” Nick thought. “I guess I’ll play along, as long as she’s playing on the other team.”
Tanner made small talk with everyone. He didn’t seem interested in pursuing the last girl available, probably staying faithful to his girlfriend. The last girl was called Kelly and she was Irish-looking with a weak chin, freckles and a pair of tortoise-shell sunglasses.
***
Two cases of beer later, the group made their way into the beachside restaurant where they ordered rum punches, which were served up in enormous fish-bowl types of glasses. Bob ordered floaters for everyone, which he generously dumped into each of their glasses. No complaints there.
The singers were rocking on the stage, so they all decided to dance to the reggae music with their punches in hand. The rum punches were good. A little too good.
Feeling buzzed and blurry, Nick soon realized that he needed to sit down so he walked over to the bar and grabbed an open seat. That’s when he noticed that the sky was swirling, and that Tanner was seated two seats away at the bar, staring blankly out into the ocean. Juan was dancing with Emsley and looked like a salsa dancer with perfect gyrations to the music. And Bob was dancing with the petite brunette with the moves of a drunken cowboy. The tall animal with the bushy brows and the Irish-looking girl were now dancing with each other. Nick couldn’t remember any of the girls’ names aside from Emsley’s. She was the hot one, but flypaper had dibs on her. He always had dibs.
Nick looked over at Tanner and mumbled something about being hammered, but found he couldn’t string a full sentence together. His drink fell out of his hand in front of him and crashed and shattered on the floor.
“Let’s get outa here,” Nick slurred as he got out of his chair to pick up the pieces of glass. A server came over with a broom to help him. “You ready?” Nick asked Tanner.
“Yeah.”
They signaled to Bob and Juan that they were leaving.
“Rookies,” Bob called out shaking his head, “Hey, when’s the party at the McMansion?”
“Soon,” Nick mumbled.
They walked onto the beach and scooped up their belongings and headed over to the parking lot. After tossing their empty beer cans into a trash bin, they packed up their car and hopped in. Nick wasn’t concerned about driving under the influence; he was too buzzed to think about that.
As he drove down the road along the beach listening to country music, his buzz became more intense; his head was spinning and he traveled in and out of coherence. It was 8 p.m. and the sun was setting, though Nick didn’t realize it as he was still wearing his sunglasses. Toby Keith was blasting on the radio, and Tanner was passed out in the passenger seat. He didn’t see the girl crossing the street, the eight year old trailing her parents to the beach. Swerving by, he barely missed her. Barely. Somehow they made it back to Orange Bay. Somehow. He dropped his friend off and drove to his house. After parking in the driveway, he made his way into the house, up the stairs, and into his bedroom where he passed out.