The Beach

"Wow..." I said as I turned around to find Chelsea dressed for the beach. She was wearing that red bikini. The one she was worried would be too revealing.

"Don't look at me like that," she said.

"Like what?" I asked, knowing full well what she meant. I probably looked like a cartoon wolf with his tongue sticking out and his foot tapping. I might as well have let out an exaggerated howl while my heart beat right out of my chest.

"Like that," Chelsea replied.

"If you're going to wear that, you're going to have to get used to these kinds of looks," I said. "Every guy that walks by the beach is going to look at you like a rabid coyote looking at an injured little bunny rabbit." Chelsea tried to fight back the smile of appreciation that was spreading across her lips. I was beginning to understand that getting Chris, Robert, and especially Liam, all revved up was her intention the whole time. She'd mentioned that she found the other guys attractive. Just like the other girls in our group, it wasn't any hidden secret that Robert and Chris were very good looking dudes in their own way. Chelsea, however, had never been so open about wanting them to find her attractive before.

Maybe it was Liam. She seemed to find him the hottest even out the entire lineup of hot guys that Lauren had dated and maybe that openness trickled down to admittance that the other guys were hot and that she wanted their approval among the other hot girls in our group. Whatever it was, it was something new and I was curious to see where it all ended up.

Listening to Lauren and Liam have sex, even with the doors open, was one thing, but was that all she was angling for? She certainly wanted Liam to get handsy with her yesterday while he was lotioning her up and she didn't seem to mind me getting handsy with Lauren. Maybe it was all just some innocent fun and games to spice things up a bit. The sex has been incredible so far, that's for sure.

But, then again, maybe not...

It was the same plan, different day. We packed a cooler and hit the beach. The guys sat in their chairs while the girls laid out on their towels. Chelsea got the reaction she was hoping for when she took off her coverup. The girls hooted and hollered their support and approval while the guys' eyes nearly bugged out of their heads and their jaws nearly hit the sand.

"Look at you, girl!" Lisa shouted, raising her beer bottle up to the sky. "You look HOT!"

"Flaunt that body, baby," Ariel cheered.

"Can I just have your ass, please?" Lauren asked.

Chelsea smiled. "I'll trade you for your boobs."

"Deal," Lauren replied. She walked over and stuck her chest out. Chelsea reached out and grabbed her breasts as if removing them from Lauren's chest.

Everyone seemed to have no problem applying their own sunscreen today (unfortunately). Liam continued to teach Lauren how to surf which seemed to make everyone jealous (the guys were jealous that Lauren was actually getting good at surfing and the girls were jealous that Liam was teaching Lauren and not them). Eventually, we suggested playing a game of touch football.

"Same teams as miniature golf," Lisa said, confident in our team. "Double or nothing."

"You're on!" we cheered. What proceeded to take place was some of the worst two-hand-touch beach football that's ever been played in the history of the sport. It got even uglier when Lauren caught a short pass and headed up the beach only for Robert to grab the string of her top and pull it loose.

"What the fuck!" Lauren shouted, grabbing the small triangles of her top just in time. "You fucking pervert!"

"It was an accident!" Robert pleaded. "I swear!"

"Oh sure," Lauren said. "If it were anyone else, I'd believe them. But not you. You've been giving me a hard time all week and now this?" Lauren dropped the ball and stormed up the steps back toward the house. Liam followed after her. Everyone stared at Robert, the women in disgust and the men in disbelief.

"I really didn't mean to do that," Robert said with a shrug. I actually believed him. We tried to go about our business but eventually Liam came back down shaking his head.

"She's really pissed," he said. "I don't know." All of a sudden, all eyes turned to me.

You see, we were a tight group. 99% of the time, we were drama free. But every group has their moments. And in those moments, I seemed to be the one that could resolve the situation. I'd had countless conversations with Lisa and Lauren about dumb ex-boyfriends, or relationship things in general. I'd resolved Lauren and Chelsea's first argument as roommates as well as a blow up that included Lauren, Chelsea, and Lisa when they all lived together. I was also the one to eventually tell Robert he needed to get his shit together and stop messing around because he was risking fucking things up with Ariel. It got to be known that I was the "resolver" of the group who could cut through the tension (or bullshit) and get everyone back on track, and so I put my beer down and headed back up to the house.

Knock knock

Silence.

Knock knock

"Go away, Liam," I heard from inside the room.

"It's me."

Silence again.

"OK," Lauren finally said. "You can come in."

I opened the door to find Lauren sitting cross-legged on the bed. She had put on her zip up sweatshirt to cover herself up as the window air conditioner was in overdrive, pumping chilled air into the already freezing room.

"Are you going to tell me I'm being crazy?"

In Lauren's defense, there was more than one occasion in which I had told her she was acting crazy. In my defense, she was acting crazy each time and it was affecting her relationships with us and other people.

"No," I said with a chuckle. "No, you're not acting crazy. At least not yet." She smiled. I sat down next to her on the bed.

"I've just always been so self-conscious about my chest," she said, looking down at her sweatshirt. "I thought that getting a boob job would fix that but now I'm self-conscious because I have a boob job and I feel like everyone thinks 'oh, there's this blonde bimbo with a boob job.' And now it's like the only thing that people notice about me. It hasn't made things easier, it's made things worse."

"First of all, it's definitely not the only thing that people notice about you. You were hot before the boob job. You know that, I know that, and everyone who's ever met you knows that. Second, who cares what people's first opinions of you are - if they think you're just some blonde bimbo with a boob job? All of us thought you were a blonde bimbo without a boob job when we first met you. It didn't take us long to realize that we were wrong. Our assumptions said a heck of a lot more about us than it did about you."

Lauren smiled again. "Robert can just be so..."

"Excessive?" I finished her sentence. She laughed and agreed. "I know. He can be a bit much, especially after a few beers, but he's got a heart of gold. He's another person that I judged too quickly. He stepped up and had my back in times I didn't expect him to, before we were even friends. And he's done the same for all of us, including you. He loves you. We all do. We loved you before the boobs and we love you after the boobs. This is all just going on because it's new. Robert, and the rest of us, honestly, needed to get it out of our systems and eventually, probably by the end of the week, we won't even be thinking of your boobs anymore."

"You think so?"

"No, probably not, actually. We're most likely going to keep thinking about your boobs. But can you blame us? You got them for a reason, didn't you?" I gave her a playful nudge with my elbow. She laughed and unzipped her sweatshirt, revealing her bikini clad breasts.

"You don't think they're too much do you?" Lauren asked. She took one in each hand. "Like, should I have gone smaller?"

"My first response is that, if you think they look good, then they are not too much at all."

"And your second response?"

"I'm going to need to keep inspecting to make my final decision in the future," I replied with a grin. Lauren shoved me.

"I think you got a pretty solid view last night..." she said. It caught me off guard.

"I, uhh, it was... dark," I mumbled, looking down as my face turned red.

"Maybe we'll have to turn the lights on tonight." I just laughed awkwardly and got up from the bed. "Thanks for talking to me."

"Of course."

"You always have a way of making me see things in a positive way. I appreciate that about you. It's a really sexy trait for a guy."

"Well, I guess Chelsea must see something sexy in me. That's probably it."

"Well, that and your abs," Lauren said looking at my stomach. Now I was the one who was self-conscious and wished he had a shirt on.

"I dunno, I was thinking of getting some ab augmentation. What do you think?" Lauren laughed and threw a wadded up sock at me. She got to her feet and stepped forward, stopping directly in front of me then wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me in for a tight squeeze of a hug. Her breasts pressed into my chest, cleavage spilling out past the confines of her tiny triangle top to create some serious skin-on-skin contact. I could feel her nipples pressing into my pecs. My mindset went from calm Lauren down and get her thinking positively to don't get a boner don't get a boner don't get a boner.

It wasn't the hug that got me. It was the light kiss on the cheek that flushed some of the blood from my brain down to my groin.

"I'm serious," Lauren said. "Thank you." I smiled, my willpower weakening by the moment as her blue eyes sparkled from the slight natural sunlight that spilled in through the cracked window shades.

Did she want me to?