Free Send Me A Lover by Carol Mason Page B

Jonathan was so vibrant and thoroughly able to take care of himself. Nonetheless, my eyes studied every head in that sea, worrying what if he does disappear? A freak wave? Then I saw him, and a smile broke out inside of me. I watched him swim all the way to shore, watched his lovely body as he walked up the sand, and then threw himself down on the towel beside me. He was dripping wet and kissed me with cool, salty lips.
    Jonathan sometimes had a way of looking at me, right into my eyes, deeper than you would think a gaze could go, as though he was thinking things that were too intense for him to communicate any other way. I noticed it the first time we made love. I’d had good sex before. But not quite this good. And I’d never had this feeling. As a kid I used to look at the parents of my best friend, Heather, who seemed to be in a permanent state of heat for each other. I wanted that. I wanted a marriage where the passion wouldn’t fizzle out. Maybe it was rare. It was non-existent in my own family. But I’d seen it wasn’t impossible. Was I on to something here with this guy?
    ‘My heart’s pounding,’ I remember telling him. ‘Here,’ I pointed to the jumping pulse just above my clavicle. He extracted his eyes from mine then stared at the spot with genuine fascination. He brought his head down, and instead of kissing it, just lay his lips there, as though his lips were feeling the beating of my heart.
    That day on the beach, when he came out of the water, he threw himself down on the sand and latched onto my eyes in that same way, gave me that same intense look that I could never quite read. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ I said.
    I doffed him with the book. ‘Stop it. It’s unnerving. Go creep somebody else out.’ I saw that slightly impish expression of his. Then slowly, undergoing an easy transference of concentration, he slid his index finger underneath one of my bra triangles, moving the material away from my skin so he could see my nipple. Then, with his eyes fixed there, he circled it until it stood up like a prune. I was mortified. ‘Stop! What if people see!’
    ‘Oh, here we go…’ He groaned and stopped. ‘Who cares who sees, Ange? It’s not like you know them, or are ever going to see them again.’ He flopped onto his back and left me alone now.
    I’d ruined the moment. Poor Jonathan. Sometimes I think I was so busy trying to prove to him that I was who I was, and he shouldn’t even bother trying to change me, that I sabotaged not just his good time, but my own too.
    The couple in the water are still wrapped in a floating embrace. For some reason I feel turned on now. Does he know that if he did send me somebody it would be fruitless? I couldn’t feel the same. I would always compare.
    I slide my hands behind my back, and without thinking too much about it, undo the strings of my bikini and whip the top off over my head. The breeze feels so refreshing against my skin. I lie back and enjoy this ticklish sensation, imagining Jonathan is here and the tingling feeling is of him circling my nipple with his tongue, in public; to hell with whoever might watch.
     
    ~ * * * ~
     
    When I come in the door, my mam quickly picks up the book that’s lying on her chest and pretends she hasn’t just been napping.
    ‘Hello blossom.’ She’s got ‘bed head’ down her left side. Her features look softened with sleep. ‘Is the beach nice?’ She’s wearing one of her full-length 1950s cream slips that she always wears for bed. I used to think it made her so glamorous. Sometimes, as a kid, when she went out shopping, I’d try one on, and lounge there on her bed feeling glamorous, pretending to be her.
    ‘Yeah. It’s nice.’ I flop onto my bed and suddenly feel quite wiped out.
    ‘Did you bare your little buzzums?’
    ‘My what? No! And less of the little!’ I stretch out my arms and legs like a starfish, depositing sand on the crisp white bedspread, and gaze at the high, white