Like Tonight

The clink of the bottle as I slid it back into the sixer case indicated what I had been afraid of: we were out of beer. So he pulled over at the next convenience store and bought another six pack of our lifeblood. If it hadn't been for Shiner Bock, I'm sure we would have starved to death.

He got back in and off we went, into the hazy darkness. I was sitting in the bitch seat and his arm was around me. I looked over at Scott. His face was illuminated by the blue lights on the dash and I could see him squinting just a tad bit to make out the faded yellow lines of the road through the fog. We were headed to the beach, and it was just after midnight.

We drove south from Galveston, down the Blue Water Highway to 18-Mile Beach, almost to Christmas Bay. There was one last turn-off before the toll bridge, but you really had to know it was there. The unmarked road showed itself at the very last possible moment and we had to swing wide to make it, sand kicked up by the truck's tires as we fishtailed a bit.

The headlights played off the fog and the sand, causing the road to have a heavenly aura that seemed to undulate with the wind that swirled between the dunes. Fiddler crabs scattered wildly, dashing sideways left and right, some waving that one gigantic claw in the air.

And then, it seemed like we hit the edge of the world. In a sense, I suppose, we had. The closer we got to the exact line where ocean meets beach, we could begin to make out whitecaps and waves licking the edge of our little stretch of paradise. The sand became flatter, darker, and we turned right as we emerged from the dunes and drove south down the beach.

"How far down do you want to go?" he asked me.

"I don't care. About halfway between the access road and the end of the beach, I guess." I considered the amount of traffic we'd be likely to encounter, which would be next to nothing. It was a weeknight, it was late, and there were no other vehicles or tents on the beach. It was deserted.

"Okay. Then I'll go down here a ways and back up to the water."

The time passed slowly, the dunes creeping by on my right, everything pretty much looking the same to my left: dark. The headlights painted an eerie scene on the landscape as we went along the coast. And, finally, we found our favorite place: a secluded area far away from the last house on the island. We'd been here before.

I yanked off my shoes and immediately threw open the passenger door and jumped out of the truck. The air was a bit colder than I was expecting and I let out a yelp of surprise. It was also significantly more humid than further inland, where we got into the truck, and I knew my hair was beginning to frizz up in way that would rival Gilda Radner's 'do.

The best thing about Galveston Island sand is its texture. It's fine, and ground up into tiny, tiny pieces. When it's wet, it's smooth and hard. When it's dry, it's delicate, airy, and usually lightly-packed. The worst thing about Galveston Island sand (well, okay, the TWO worst things) is that it gets everywhere you can imagine, and, since vehicles are allowed to drive on almost all of our beaches, most of the shells are crushed up. Which also means many of them are merely broken, leaving pointy, sharp, and dangerous shards all over the beach for an unsuspecting, amorous girl to step on in the complete blackness of night.

But, I was lucky this time, because it didn't happen. I did, however, pull down the carefully-pinstriped tailgate of the truck, climb up into the bed, reach through the rear window and grab the old, faded comforter I'd yanked out of the closet as I ran out to meet him. I spread it as best I could, which is a mammoth task when you're fighting the wind, and sat down facing the ocean.

Scott came around the driver's side of the truck with the beer in one hand and his jacket in the other. He handed me the beer over the fender and walked around, vaulting himself up into the truckbed. He sat down beside me and we fell back in unison, faces turned towards the sky. And that's when I noticed it: the moon.

It was a light lemon yellow, full, and dangerously close to the horizon. It's bluish-white glow cast shadows where we could not have noticed until our eyes adjusted to the darkness. The stars were twinkly and bright, obscured only slightly by the low-hanging fog that was steady moving across the beach. I turned my head to face his, and was taken aback all over again by his handsome appearance. His profile was perfect in every way to suit my tastes. Instinctively, he reached over and put his hand on my thigh, turned his head, and opened his eyes.

"It's beautiful out here. Are you cold? I brought my jacket," he offered.

"I'm not cold. I'm perfectly fine." With that, I leaned in to him and gave him a long, deep kiss, as if to punctuate my last statement. And then, I did it again.

"You're getting me hard," he warned, as if that was something that wasn't supposed to happen.

"Good," I breathed, my voice almost a velvet whisper.

"We can't do that here. What if somebody drives by?"

"Who cares? Let them watch. Maybe they shouldn't be looking!"

The look on his face showed me he was considering my proposition. I knew he wasn't going to stop me when I pulled up my shirt, and I was right. He eyed my body hungrily as I began shedding my clothes. But, since he just sat there, he left it up to me to strip him down as well.

It wasn't particularly long, and the truth is that the ridges in the bed of the truck really didn't do much for my spine, but it was passionate and spontaneous and slightly risky; all the makings of a beloved memory. We laid there, hugged up together, cocooned in the comforter. Scott leaned over, burying his nose in my hair. He took a deep whiff and sighed.

"I love you," he whispered. "I love you so much. I want to feel this way forever."

"Me too," I whispered back. My reply may have been lost in the wind.

It would have been idyllic to lay there and fall asleep in each other's arms, naked and tangled in each other, but that wasn't what happened. The mosquitoes were stalking us, the beach patrol or beach people could have come up on us at any moment, so we put our clothes back on.

It was picture-perfect. We walked up and down the beach, hand in hand, beers in our free hands. We chased each other back to the truck for a refill, sat on the tailgate and made plans for the future. I thought life couldn't get any better than that.

Eventually, we drove back to town, went into my house and went to sleep, and tried to enjoy the 3 hours of sleep we got before we had to be at work.