Blame It On the Beach

Chapter Ten

I can think of few things that are as funny as Milo's scream when he goes down the slide. I've just climbed out of the tube, and am wringing water out of my hair and adjusting my bikini bottom, which has gotten wedged between my cheeks as a result of the force from the slide, when Milo comes down from the top, with a high-pitched scream.

I'm still laughing as he climbs out of the slide, his cheeks slightly pink and his hair sticking up in different directions.

"Man, I love that ride," I say.

"Yeah, it's alright," Milo replies, as we start to jog back to find the group.

"Nice hair, by the way," I say, and he pats it back in place, chuckling. But the rest of the group isn't there when we get back to the sign for Dragon's Den, and we look around, still not seeing them. The wind picks up, and with my wet hair, my head aches with the cold.

"Let's just go back towards the lockers?" Milo says, grabbing my hand, and we start to run, the gravel of the road digging into my heels as I hear a voice announcing that the park will be closing in five minutes.

"Em!" "Milo!" I hear multiple voices shouting our names, and we stop short.

"Where'd you guys go?" Alex asks, once they've all caught up to us.

"Yeah, thanks for ditching us," Annabel says, her tone slightly ticked off, and I notice her eyes on our joined hands. I let go of Milo's hand and take a subtle step away.

"I just really wanted to go on Cliff Diver," I say, shrugging.

"We thought you got kidnapped or something," Quinn says, smiling, and we continue walking to the lockers to get our stuff.

Once we're out in the parking lot, we hold up towels for each other to change into dry clothes. I put on a sparkly gold string bikini, and over it I put on a simple sheer black coverup. Reunited with my phone, I open Snapchat to check my reflection, and groan a little. My eyes are slightly red from the chlorine, my long hair is sticking to my face, and my eyebrows have seen better days. The bright side is that I scored some more color from being in the sun all day.

"Wait, guys, let's take pics!" Audrey says. I try to fix my eyebrows and hair, and for a few minutes we take pictures, before getting back in Annabel's car.

Once I sit down on the soft leather seats, exhaustion creeps into my muscles and I lean my head back on the headrest, shutting my eyes.

Some time passes, when suddenly my phone goes off, alerting me of a message in our group chat. It's from Sawyer, telling us that we can go to his roof to hang out for a while. Noah adds that his brother can get us beers and weed.

"Yay!" Annabel says from the front seat. She turns back to us. "You guys are coming, right?"

Quinn and I exchange looks. I'm pretty tired, and frankly would rather go home and take a warm bath and just eat ice cream and watch Friends all night, but my FOMO is pretty strong and I don't want to be a buzzkill to Quinn.

So I just shrug. "I'm down if you're down," I tell her, and she nods.

"Sure, let's go." I send a quick text to my mom, telling her that we're going to Sawyer's roof, and will be home around 10. Before we take the exit for Quogue, we stop at a Chick-fil-A drive-through and quickly scarf down our chicken nuggets.

We finally pull up to Sawyer's house, and Annabel parks her car in the driveway. Getting out of the car, I stretch my sore legs and put on my sunglasses, the sun still beating down on us.

"Hey ladies," I hear a voice call from above me. We all look up, and see Noah grinning at us from the roof with a beer bottle in his hand, his dirty blonde hair falling in front of his face as he looks down at us. "Come on up!"