Free Life's a Beach by Claire Cook

“Uh, no,” I said. “What?”

    “A larper is someone who dresses up as his, or her, character. Think swords made from foam wrapped around PVC pipe with duct tape.”

    “Whew, I bet you got a lot of dates with that stuff.”

    “No kidding. Not a lot of prom action going on for me.”

    “What were you? I mean who was your character?”

    Noah rubbed his hands over his face. “Tassrigoth the Elf.”

    “Wow, that’s a lot to recover from. I only played princess for about a month in kindergarten, and then my mother started telling me things like if a princess has a college education she won’t need to be rescued and even princesses should have a prenup. It kind of took the fun right out of it.”

    Nobody said anything for a few seconds, which always makes me nervous, so I reached for something to fill the silence. “You’re not married or anything, are you?” slipped out before I thought it through.

    He shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “And apparently I never was.”

    I waited for the rest of the story, but it didn’t come. “Apparently?”

    “My in-laws pulled some strings and had it annulled. So, essentially, my marriage never existed. I’ve always been single. That’s a no. Not married. Or anything.” He rubbed his hands back and forth on his jeans, just above his knees, and looked out at the water.

    Eventually he asked, “So, what about you? Are you married or anything?”

“Nope. Almost a couple times, I think, but now I’m not even sure I’m remembering it right.”

    He nodded, and Sage rested her head on his knee. This was getting really depressing, so I thought I should try to lighten things up. I hunched over and sighed an exaggerated sigh. “So, anyway,” I said in an old lady voice, “I guess I’m just destined to end up as the crazy maiden aunt living with my cat in an apartment over the garage.”

    Noah sighed, too. “Yeah, I know. Sometimes I just pretend I’m a monk.”

    One of us had to move things along here, and clearly it wasn’t going to be Noah. I leaned back and turned toward him, eyes wide, going for kind of a flirty disbelief. “You’re celibate?”

    He laughed and I laughed. But I’d been around the block enough to know that early in a relationship with anyone, friend or lover, the other person reveals himself. It might take you a month or a few years before you believe it, but he’s already told you who he is and what you can expect from him.

    I didn’t expect a lot from Noah. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted much from him. If you were to graph our relationship over the two years we’d known each other, it wouldn’t have a lot of peaks and valleys. We saw each other fairly regularly, took long walks, went to the occasional movie or art show. We had great sex. I wasn’t sure if we knew much more about each other now than when we first met. Maybe we both just happened to be in the same place, and we were marking time together until one of us drifted away to something else. Or maybe I just couldn’t admit to either of us that I wanted more, because then I’d have to notice if I didn’t get it.

     

    9

    “SO, DID YOU SAY IT?” GERI ASKED FIRST THING SATURDAY morning.

    I held the phone in place with my chin so I could use both hands to move my father’s garbage bags out of my shower. “Yes, I said it. I said,
Did we have dinner plans?
Just the way you told me to.”

    “Then what happened? You didn’t let him in, I hope. And if you did, I certainly hope you didn’t
do
anything.”

    My older sister had a disturbing interest in my sex life. I shoved the garbage bag out into the main room and pulled the door closed. I looked in the mirror and, yes, I was glowing. “Of course not,” I lied. I reached into the shower stall and turned on the water.

    My sister blew some air through her lips and made a sound that horses make. “Don’t you know anything?” she asked. “From a strategic point of view, the worst thing you can do is sleep