Free Walking Dunes by Sandra Scofield Page B

wide-cuffed navy linen shorts and a pink silk shirt open low at the throat. She smiled and gestured for him to sit. He sat beside Beth Ann, leaning toward the empty chair on the other side of him.
    The girl looked cool and regal in a white sundress. The material was soft and fine, like good handkerchief cotton. At the shoulders, her straps had wide epaulets flapping onto her upper arms. She sat slightly stretched out in her chair, her rear end scooted up toward the edge and her legs extended into the sun. Her body was turned away from him. She looked at him over her shoulder. Light struck the down on her neck. She had tugged her dress skirt up to the edge of her knees. Her legs were glossy with oil. “Hi,” she said, and David felt something close to shock.
    He had never really looked at her before. She was someone he knew slightly at school. They were on Student Council together. She was often elected to things; he saw announcements in the school paper. Y-Teen, Junior Board. She was part of the special, almost magical inner circle of students for whom school was a wonderful experience, girls whom Glee was dying to join. (If one of them spoke to her, she would say, So and so was really nice to me today. So and so said she liked my skirt. It was sickening.) Beth Ann had always seemed remote in meetings, as if she were there as a favor to her constituency.
    Now, at the sound of her greeting, a single syllable, it struck him that there was a wonderful shyness about her. Modesty. The word sprang to mind. Beauty and modesty, the stuff of medieval ladies, of women in old English novels, of saints. He tried to see the round flesh of her shoulder; the cloth that obscured it was maddening.
    â€œYou saved me from being humiliated today,” she said. Her whispery soft voice lacked Glee’s nasality, though their attitudes toward the words they spoke were a lot alike, gentle and breathy. She turned around and leaned her elbows on the glass table. She raised one hand to her head and spread her fingers in her hair, at the back of her neck.
    â€œI did?”
    â€œDaddy was going to make me play in that awful ole—tournament—or whatever it was. Me, and all those college boys!”
    â€œYou play well enough, you could have done it.” He remembered that she had an admirably steady, dependable style, the product, he was certain, of many years’ practice. She was athletic just the way a girl ought to be, lean, graceful, and quick. And beautiful.
    â€œOh sure ,” she said, dipping her chin, saying with her face, Yes, I know I could have, but I like it that you said so. She surprised him. What was his opinion to her? He was gawky, naive in the company, however removed, of college boys. She played with a long strand of her hair, pulling gently, sliding her finger down it, out at the end, and then, after holding the very tip between her thumb and finger, she let it go, and let her arm down onto the back of her chair. The pose opened her shoulders and exposed her throat.
    There was a long moment of silence. Beth Ann was still and almost solemn in her expression. David felt his ears redden as he searched for something clever to say. He swallowed, and was mortified when the swallow was an audible gulp.
    â€œI think Hayden would have had to sit it out,” Mrs. Kimbrough said, “if we had not thought of you.” She looked at her daughter indulgently. “He could not have made Beth Ann play tennis if she didn’t want to.” She spoke in a lazy but well-articulated drawl, more Southern than West Texas. She seemed amused.
    â€œâ€˜What a good idea,’ I told him,” Beth said. She looked to her mother. “I said, ‘He can play with Daddy, and then have lunch with Mommy and me.’”
    Her mother nodded. “So, here you are.”
    â€œIndeed he is.” Mr. Kimbrough set a tall glass of iced tea in front of David. It was garnished with a sprig of bright mint and a