“Maybe we should diversify our monsters. I’m gonna go with a kraken,” I tell the other dads.
“Is there really any other kind of sea monster?” one of them responds.
We all think.
“What’s a leviathan?” the other one asks semi-rhetorically.
“Is that pirate or biblical?” I ask.
“Does it matter?”
“I think that one’s more serpentine, so it could be harder to pull off,” Lina offers.
“I’ll be a siren,” one decides. “I’ll just sing Cannonball at the top of my lungs.”
“Is that a widely regarded pirate song?”
“It’s a Miley song.”
“Isn’t thatWrecking Ball?”
It’s clear we are all the fathers of little girls.
“Maybe you should stick to sea shanties,” Lina finally says, grinning at us, and it’s clear that she loves this shit, and I’ve gotta say it’s contagious. “Awesome. Showtime.” She strides back towards the group of kids and parents with another “Ahoy!”
I throw my shirt in the sand and wade into the water. It’s up to my thighs at most, so I think the kids will be okay without a lifeguard. There are more adults than kids who will be in the water anyway.
I get into position a few dozen feet from the shore, hearing Lina go over the adventure with the families. I feel the combined energy, the excitement of all those kids, especially when Lina starts leading them through a sea shanty I vaguely recognize. It travels through the water and lights me up with Big Tentacle Energy. I’m ready to take on these pirates.
Lina has each kid riding on a paddle board like it’s a ship and all the adults pushing them through the water. It’s a good strategy that forces parents to participate, to hang out with their kids rather than sitting on the shore on their phones. Lina’s paired herself up with Frankie, and they’re the first to approach my wrath. I try to focus all my energy and attention on my giggling daughter and not on the way Lina’s perfect tits are bouncing around in her bikini top.
I sit on the ocean floor and try my best to imitate one of those wacky inflatable tube men with the waving arms.
I don my most maniacal grin.
Frankie preemptively starts screaming.
I dive under the water.
I somehow crash into Lina’s legs. I wrap my arms around her thighs (not an excuse to touch her legs, thank you very much) and yank. She topples over, freeing me to flip Frankie off her board.
I surface to scream-laughing at unnatural decibels.
I take half a second to appreciate a soaking wet Lina in a clearly unlined bikini top and another half a second to appreciate a hysterical Frankie before I move onto my next target.
I can’t stop laughing.
* * *
“Thank you for that,” I tell our knees later. Mine and Lina’s are currently touching as we eat ice cream and sit and dry off on a towel. Neither of us makes any effort to move them. I have to tell our knees and not her face because she is currently eating a popsicle. I have a feeling she chose a popsicle on purpose.
To add to her magic today, Lina somehow got the teen to contact a local ice cream truck, and the ice cream man sped here with the promise of thirty hot and hungry people.
“For what?” she asks.
We watch Frankie as she splashes around with her new friends, regaling one another with fantastical pirate stories.
“For the whole day. Putting together a Pirate Plunder in under ten minutes. Getting so into it. Partnering with my daughter. Making her happy. Finding an ice cream truck in the middle of nowhere and getting it here.”Being gorgeous. Making me get drunk in the middle of a workday and have a blast. Still flirting with me even if a metaphorical line was drawn.
