I Skinny Dip You
A short story by Madeline Bates
Our footsteps talk in the dark, on the gravel. We are too bundled and bleary-eyed to use our mouths, so I pretend I can read her mind. This is fine, Amelia is chanting to herself. More than fine, I think back. More than fine.
Down we go, down the gravel and past where the gravel meets the sand. Past the beachgrass that ripples and down the dune, a slide. We’re roped in by the waves, their stripes, like china smashing, as dishes dropped.
The dark beach air has a different taste to it, as if the stars have come closer to Earth. It’s damp. We breathe in half air and half salt; I don’t have to look to know that next to me, Amelia’s face has broken into a grin at the noise, at the cold, and at the space in front of us. Cold, ohh, cold. When the salt spray picks up it is like needles to the cheeks, like scissors pulling splinters, like tweezers plucking hairs. ‘Cause we can’t see much we let the sound of the wind whipping the beachgrass lead us toward the water.
At the final pitch of sand, we peel off our pants, shirts, and sweaters and leave them piled on the dimpled ground. We leap those last few meters, over shells and rocks and weeds. Into the water without thinking is the only way this can go, because even though it’s a handful of degrees warmer than the air, the body can’t make sense of numbers like that anyway—when cold is cold, it is cold. So the shock of it, still, like nothing else, like cold, like cold, like freezing—like scraping your knees and bleeding, like cactus, like bitter like sour like sweet, like a warm hug. Like scratching an itch and wiggling your fingers. Yup, still feel them, and my toes, can you?
I can feel them, but can’t see them, she giggles. Our arms are bright white like some wide seaweed waving and our nipples stare, wide-eyed, scared. The spray washes our faces of expression but she’s jittery, on top of normal shivers. The whites of her eyes reflect the choppy sea, even though we float in the calm past the sandbar. She’s asking me to see how deep it is where we’re treading.
I say, beat me to the bottom.
Up and out of the water we fly, instead of sinking down. The cliffs hang in the distance, mauvish, and we can see the yellow line of the horizon drawn chalkily between sea and sky. We do flips around each other, splashing and skating, fighting the pull of both gravity and the stars, until our legs and arms and hair get all tangled and braided into one.
And Amelia points at the sun crawling up in the dark as we fall. We’re huddled in the cool shallows behind that first sandbar, hiding in the pocket of each other for warmth. Her mouth hangs open. Her cheeks and nose and tongue are flushed in rosy pinks; I can’t see it, but I’m sure mine are the same.
I want to enter the body of some bystander-witness; I want to photograph this moment and make it mine. Us: vulnerable, unclothed, breathless—I want to put that picture in my wallet and carry it around like currency, unexchangeable and intangible, more symbolic than really real. The sun bursts up on the horizon in pink, red, and orange. We cry; it comes out in pants. Let there be light, she whispers. And the beach shifts to a shade of dark golden.
So we let the tide pull us in, relaxing everything, all our limbs sore from the cold and the flight. We float like penguins, with bellies and heads full of air.
The towels and clothes we left are in a semi-damp pile—can you see them? From on our stomachs like small children, taking saltwater in our mouths to spit, to when we stand up, our bodies are red and raw as cherries. Our cheeks, salt-bitten and splotchy—like tomatoes, like plums, like pomegranates, like wild berries.
You could peel our skin back and find fruitlike flesh within. You could cook us up and we’d get tender—almost melty!—as our juices seethed.
The dash to our towels: we saw movement up the peak of the dune. Tripping, dragging our sweaters behind us, half covered, half nude, we bolt to the cliffs, now, breathless, to a nook where the winds and boys won’t see or smell or hear us; the rock wall, our blanket, and fortress.
I unwrap the small thermos I stored in my kangaroo pocket to share. We sip the bitter coffee like cautious children and sniff the steam as the sun makes its way out of bed. There is nothing else like it: a hug from inside; like a teddy bear, like our knuckles interlocking, mine soft, yours square; I get notes of berry and cocoa and best friend.
The heads of boys are now bounding down the dune to where we were--we made it over and out just in time. The sky, still navy-ish, is barely fit for fishing, but they’re here, big long rods and rubber boots and bait buckets in tow. The tallest one raises his hand at us, a distant greeting. We wave back, seen.
I read Amelia’s mind. She is thinking, . I send her back a thought: Me too.