Summer is the absolute best time of year. That’s called sarcasm. In reality, I hate how hot it gets and I hate that I burn too easily.
But if you get to spend one of the hottest summers of the decade with your boyfriend, it really isn’t that bad.
And if you get to spend it with said boyfriend’s entire family in a rented cabin on a private beach, it’s even better. Especially when his sister is always complaining about being even hotter than the rest of us because she’s pregnant.
Because Will’s dad is a doctor, he makes mega bucks, which means he’s able to afford renting a cabin on the beach for two weeks.
The cabin itself wasn’t that big, but it fit the ten of us inside comfortably. There was even central air conditioning; Dawn sat in front of the vents for most of the day, complaining even then about the heat.
The rest of us hung out by the water’s edge. The guys were playing some sort of game in the water and Will’s mom and other two sisters were elsewhere getting something to eat. I was lying on a beach towel in the sun, attempting to tan without burning after I dumped almost the whole bottle of sunscreen on me.
“Morgan!”
I turned my head in the direction of my boyfriend’s shout.
That was a bad idea. He was running at me as fast as he could with a wicked glint in his eyes.
I didn’t even have time to scream before he had me in his arms and was getting ready to catapult me into the water.
“WILL! PUT ME DOWN!” I screamed. He kept going at full speed towards the ocean. “DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!”
Too late.
The next thing I knew, I was airborne for a few short seconds before I crashed into the waves.
I decided to play with him a bit and stayed underwater for as long as my lung capacity would let me. I let myself fall for a few seconds. Before I ran out of breath, though, Will was pulling me to the surface. When I opened my eyes in the bright sunlight, he was frantic.
“Morgan! Are you okay?” he asked, freaking out.
I smiled slowly, then started laughing my head off at the look on his face.
“Tha-that should tea-teach you not to throw me into the wa-water,” I managed to get out, laughing even harder at the newest look of fake outrage shaping his features.
“That wasn’t funny,” he said with a pout on his lips.
I kissed him quickly and the pout disappeared.
“Yes it was,” I disagreed. “Catch me!”
I started swimming towards the shore before he could react. I could hear him right behind me, but I managed to get to dry sand before he got me from behind and we fell into the sand, making a poof of it around us as we screamed with breathless laughter.
It took us a few minutes to calm down and catch our breath again.
“Okay, so maybe it was a tiny bit funny,” he said reluctantly when our breathing was almost back to normal.
“Yeah but now I’m covered in sand and so are you,” I complained.
That was one thing I hated about the beach. Once you got in the water for the first time, you were doomed to being a magnet for sand.
“Sand is evil, isn’t it?” Will asked, laughing softly as he stood up and tried to get as much as he could off of him.
I gasped and stood up too, glad someone else saw my point.
“Sand is evil!” I cried. “No one believes me, but it is!”
We started a march into the cabin for showers, chanting that sand was evil and laughing a lot while receiving funny looks from the guys who were still in the water. When we walked through the door, still chanting, Dawn looked at us like we were nuts.
Later, after we had taken showers to get the rest of the sand off and we were eating lunch at the table, Kirsten got us all laughing again.
“So, what’s this I hear that sand is evil?” she asked with a small smile on her face, looking from me to Will and back again.
“It is,” we both said nonchalantly and at the same time.
We looked at each other and started laughing yet again, the rest of the family joining in shortly after.
And to this day, I still maintain that sand is evil.