12
Laney
This bikini issosmall it’s making me glad that I waxed last week. My stomach is a little poochy. My thighs are white enough that they’re practically translucent. I havecleavagecourtesy of the two postage-stamp-sized pieces of tropical flower fabric held together with dental floss. And I think my right ass cheek is a little bigger than the other because I can’t tug the bikini bottoms far enough over to cover it fully no matter how I shimmy or tighten my glute muscles.
“Nope, can’t do it,” I tell Sabrina through the stall door. I’m changing in a small bathroom near the pool so that I have less time to chicken out. Which is clearly workingso well. “Bikini, yes. But this one might be too much.”
“Okay,” Sabrina replies.
“Okay?”
“Your journey, your pace.”
“Please talk me into this.”
“You sure?”
“No.”
“Are you dressed?”
“Indecently so.”
“Open the door.”
She knows I won’t argue when she uses theyou will obey me or I will scale the stall door just like that gecko on the wall who’s watching you and judging you for putting your skin on display to tempt the men.
I sigh and open the door.
When I’m being judged by the geckos, it’s probably time to either cut back on the mai tais or have more. I’m not sure which.
Sabrina looks me up and down while I try to not look at myself in the mirror. “What don’t you like about it?”
I point to my rack. “It gives mecleavage.”
She points to her own cleavage artfully displayed beneath a white tank top. “Do you consider me a whore for showing my boob crack?”
“Sabrina.”
She grabs me by the cheeks and pulls my face down to hers. “You are smart, you are strong, you are beautiful, and you get to enjoy the body that you live in. If any single piece of shit out there at the pool tries to embarrass you for being a hot-ass goddess with confidence issues because of too many years of being told you have to live up to unrealistic puritanical ideals whose entire life would be destroyed if you touched a boy’s danger stick, I willdestroythem. So tell me what you want foryou. Do you want to wear this bikini and go out there and jump in the pool as a step in your journey of having fun? There is no incorrect answer except for the one you tell me because it’s what you think anyone else in this world would want to hear.”
Rule number one of being Sabrina’s friend: Don’t ask her opinion if you don’t want to hear it.
“Thank you for not mincing words.”
“This is what you pay me for.”
I stare at her for a second, and then I burst into laughter.
She grins.
I square my shoulders and look past her to my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I don’t know who that woman is. Her cheeks have a pink flush that’s creeping down her neck and over her chest. Shedoeshave a nice chest. Full boobs that are attention-getters without causing back problems. The bikini bottoms cover enough to almost make her hips cute. And her arms are toned and slender.
Maybe I’ll pretend I’m her with a little more confidence for an hour or so.
And if my parents see pictures… I flinch a little.
Easier to sayI’ll remind them that I’m a grown woman who can have responsible fun on vacationthan it is to fully believe I’m capable of such a sentence.
