thank you....

 “Hey, you are so beautiful, sorry if that sounded weird….” She continued to talk but I was looking at the spray of freckles across her face, her eyes were so many colors I was trying to figure out what one was winning, she had a faded bandana around her neck, sun kissed hair, truly the sun shone upon it and crochet bikini bottoms. I snapped out of it, my ears opened back up, “you have a really cool vibe and look, you could make money modeling if you aren’t already”…I just nodded, I was the weird part of this… “if you want to come over and sit with us, you are more than welcome to”, she turned effortlessly in the sand  and sort of skipped back. I had never seen anyone like her or use the word “vibe”.

I had been walking  past Surfrider Beach to and from work the last couple of months,  I was working at a restaurant behind the counter. I wasn’t old enough to wait tables but the waiter’s tipped me out and we got free dinner. (And a few forks and plates ) I had the day off on this particular day and the beach was my big plan, I knew exactly where she had skipped off to, I saw them looking in my direction earlier and assumed they were making fun of me. I had been staring into space for hours, occasionally sitting up and pretending to look around for the arrival of absolutely no one, I hadn’t made any friends yet. I decided to walk right over there.

I felt like a total moron and immediately filled with regret. I had a horrifying splatter paint bathing suit on, my stuff shoved into a Ralphs plastic shopping bag.  She smoothed out a place for me to sit  and introduced me, I must have told her my name in that exchange but I really couldn’t remember, I also had not eaten anything all day.  She opened a bag and casually handed me half of a sandwich, it was like we had been friends forever, I felt my shoulders go down from my ears.