- Sheri McGuinn
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Sometimes it's fun to write in a different style. The Furious Fiction challenge demands more description than I usually give. When the prompt placed the story on a beach (with specific words used), I took a scene from All for One - Love, War, & Ghosts, changed names, the point of view, some of the action, and my writing style to create Beach Party - First Kiss.
Teenagers gathered around the crackling driftwood fire in small groups, drinking, their chat punctuated by rolling belches followed by laughter. The fire’s smoke was sweetened by coconut-perfumed skin. The autumn day had been warm enough to sunbathe. Now Sue zipped her denim jacket, wishing she’d worn jeans instead of shorts, feeling out of place.
Trying to be less of a nerd, Sue had let Mary drag her along with her buddies to this, Sue’s first teenage party. Now Mary was nowhere to be seen and Andy and George were drinking with some other boys. And Mike? He was the driver, the popular one. Surely he hadn’t gone home.
The receding tide had left firm, flat sand between the rocky beach and the water. There she saw a circle around a bottle – most squatting, a shivering few sitting on jackets. Mike was there. Sue held her breath a moment, then dared to join them by sitting on her feet, letting the wet sand grind against her bare knees.
They took turns spinning the bottle, laughing at themselves for playing the old-fashioned game. Most of the matched couples exchanged awkward, closed-mouth pecks – sometimes not even on the mouth. When Mike spun the bottle, Sue curled her fingers out of sight and crossed the tips against the sand, but Melissa got his dramatic, screen-worthy kiss. When at last it was Sue’s turn she held the sandy glass of the bottle, gauging its weight, hoping to spin it just fast enough to stop as it pointed to Mike. Instead, a pimply-faced boy she barely knew gave her a slobbery smack on the lips. Sue pulled away as if bitten.
The boy laughed. “What, was that your first kiss?”
She wiped her hand across her mouth and shook it as if to get rid of excessive slobber. Sue gave the boy a withering look, got up, and brushed off her knees. She held herself like a queen as she strode away from the gathering. Inside, she worried the giggles behind her meant they knew it was her first kiss.
When all she could hear was the waves, Sue realized she was walking away from the car, into the dark, toward the point that reached out into the ocean, ending the beach. An almost-full moon gave enough light to walk, as long as she stayed on the flat sand. The whisper of the waves was soothing. If she walked to the point, maybe no one would notice her when she went back. She could stay by the fire, away from that silly game.
A warm hand slid across Sue’s palm and gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. She gasped and turned to lock eyes with Mike. He smiled and tilted his head toward the point. They walked hand in hand all the way to the end of the sand. There, he pulled her to face him. They stared into each other’s eyes for long moments, then he leaned forward to kiss her, gently exploring her lips and mouth with the tip of his tongue until Sue responded in kind – her first real kiss.
© Sheri McGuinn
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