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VACATION::
life is good when you're staying in paradise

o1. sunrise
it's a surprise-----
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“Okay,” says Jon, coming to a halt, “open your eyes.” He has been leading me all around the resort all morning, having called me on my cell at six thirty, to tell me that he has a surprise. I am highly aware, as we walk, that he holds my hand in his, and has been for the last fifteen minutes.

I open my eyes. He has led me across the boardwalk and onto the beach, and we are the only ones out here. To our left, the sun is rising, swallowing the horizon and the very farthest sand in its early morning rays.

“Oh, wow,” I gasp, clapping my hands to my open mouth. “This is awesome.”

He grins at me, running a and through his sandy blonde hair. “Yeah,” he says, “I came here early yesterday and thought it would really be something you’d enjoy.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other self conciously. “Its, uh…”

“Gorgeous,” I supply, laughing. I’m suddenly glad I wore my flipflops; I slip out of them and dance off in the sand, twirling in circles with my arms outstretched. “I feel like, if I jumped high enough, I could hit the horizon and sit on that dark line.” There is a dark line on the horizon, as thick, when I hold my hand out, as my pinky finger. “Wanna run that way?”

Jon slides his hands into this pockets. “Why don’t you?”

I grin at him playfullty, sizing him up. “Was that a challenge?”

“No, I—“

But I take off before he has a chance to finish. There is a moment when I’m unsure whether he’s actually following me, but then he’s right there beside me, his feet churning up tracks in the sand beside mine.

The early morning sea breeze tugs at my hair as we fly along the sand, our feet pounding in unison. I laugh out loud and slow, mostly because I know that there really is an end to the beach. At the risk of sounding cliché, it’s almost metaphoric. The end to the beach, the end to our time together. I don’t want either of us to acknowledge it. We tumble to the sand together.

I rest my head on his shoulder.

“So was this worth waking up to your cell’s ring?” he asks, separating strands of my hair absently. I grin up at the sky.

“Yeah,” I say, closing my eyes. We lie together beneath the lilac colored sky, the silver sea pounding next to us, our breaths in time with the waves.

A seagull wings overhead.

“I think I’ll be a pirate when I grow up,” I muse, watching its flight. I can feel Jon laugh even before it leaves his mouth.

“What?”

I prop myself up on my elbows in the sand, turning to face him. “You know, yar har, fiddle dee dee? We’ve got us a map?”

He laughs again. “Why, exactly, do you want to be a pirate?”

I cover one eye with my hand and glare ferociously at him. “So I can say ‘yo ho ho’ and ‘drink up me hearties’ and wear an eyepatch and keep a monkey on my shouder.”

”What about a parrot? Aren’t those all the rage with pirates these days?”

I shake my head in mock seriousness. “No, of course not,” I say, “Parrots are so overrated.”

Jon snakes an arm around my waist and pulls me close, which creates a little pile of built up sand between us. “I think,” he says, “that you’d make a wonderful pirate.”

”Aw,” I say, slapping him lightly on the arm, “You’re just saying that so I’ll bring you some treasure when I’m a fearsome, world renowned pirate.”

“You caught me,” Jon says, but he doesn’t sound upset. He lifts a finger to brush a bit of sand off of my nose. Grinning at me, he pulls me closer. “Emily, if I kissed you right now, what would you do?”

I stare at him, but he only grins back at me. “Well,” I say, swallowing, “I, uh, wouldn’t buy you a pet monkey. For pirating.”

“Were you going to get me one anyway?”

I think about this for a moment. “No.”

He laughs. “Okay then. I’ll take my chances with a parrot.”

And then Jon leans down and kisses me, our noses brushing. I inhale sharply in surprise— I thought he was joking. Now that he has, though, I realize that it’s so much better than I’d expected; sweeter, more satisfying, and dizzying. When he pulls away, I find myself reaching to pull him back down again.

My cell phone rings, jolting us both out of our hazy state. We jump apart, our faces flushed, my heart pounding. I’m a little out of breath, so I try to regain my stature as I fish the cell phone a little angrily out of my pocket.

It’s my dad. “Where are you?” he demands, as soon as I flip open the cell. He sounds angry, so I do my best to smooth things over before we hit rough seas and he makes me come back to the condo.

“I’m at the beach, Dad,” I tell him, standing up and dusting sand off my jeans. “Me and Jon are trying to find sand dollars.” Jon looks at me, narrowing his eyes and tilting his head, clearly saying liar, liar, pants on fire. I stick my tongue out at him.

”You can’t keep them,” my dad reminds me, his voice considerably soothed. Like my English teacher once told me, if you don’t want to get caught doing something bad, think up something else that is bad, but not nearly as much. Then you won’t be suspected of doing the worse thing. It makes sense in practice.

“The law says its illegal to dig them up,” continues my dad, “it’s killing them.”

“Oh,” I say, “Should we throw them into the ocean, then? We found a couple. …Well, Jon did. I’m not very good at—“

“Yeah. Throw them into the ocean. When do you think you’ll get back?” My dad has never been one for small talk, especially on the phone.

“Um, we can be back whenever.”

I tilt the phone away from my mouth, enough so that I’m sure my dad can still hear me. “Jon— no, just, um, my dad says we should throw them back.”

He rolls his eyes. “Why?” His voice is loud enough, I notice, so that my dad can hear.

“It’s illegal. I forgot.” I turn the phone back down to my mouth. “Dad? When do you want me back?”

“Oh, fifteen, twenty minutes.”

“Okay, bye, Dad.”

I hang up the phone and grin at Jon, who shakes his head in my direction. “T’won’t do to lie to your parents,” he says in a horrible British accent.

“Would he have believed me if I said we went for a walk on the beach?” I protest, turning to face the sunrise, which is close to becoming just the early morning sun. More people are starting to migrate onto the beach. “He would have thought we were doing other things.”

Jon sneaks up behind me and blows on my ear, his arms sneaking around my waist. “We were doing other things,” he informs me, grinning.

I let him kiss me again. His tongue sweeps against my lower lip, begging for admission, and my lips slide open. By the time we pull away, I’m completely out of breath, and my heart’s pounding, and my stomach is burning.

“Okay,” I whisper, trailing a finger along his jaw, “Maybe I’ll get you a monkey.”

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aww.

i wanted to end it all metaphorically,
but then i thought it would be lame,
so i just stuck that in earlier.

was it lame?

i thought it was.

'yar har fiddle dee dee' & 'we've got us a map' is from the tinytown pirate song.
look for it on youtube;; it's practically amazing.

and also addicting.

also, that english teacher thing was from my english teacher.
in case any of you were actually wondering.

review, sil vous plait.