Alpha Heat (2 page)

We couldn’t accomplish our dream without professional help.

The Key Times had two employees now, and we were both more than full time. I didn’t have time to build a web-store when I’m was also the graphics department, the photographer, the one who keeps the site and the blog and the YouTube channel updated.

I Tweet for food.

“Please, Grace. We need to keep Pablo happy, but we also need to get some investment lined up.”

I’d known her all through college, where we’d become best friends after dorm-rooming together freshman year. Leslie had her, ‘I need you to do this for me,’ look on her face now.

“It’s one of his sales events. You know how I love those.”

She rolled her eyes at my attempt at sarcasm.

It’s not that I don’t like selling. Making money is a good thing. I was poor once. I still am, but back in high school and my first years of college I was ramen and fast food ketchup packets poor.

Now at least I can buy my own ketchup. Most of the time.

Leslie’s well-shaped brows drew together and her lips pressed together in a thin line.

“Come on, it’s not like we’re talking retail.”

“Pablo’s events are worse than retail. He’ll want me to put on a suit. He’ll want me to paddle around on his boards.”

I hunched in my chair, “He’ll want me to hand out drinks.”

Leslie puffed her lips like a parent making fun of a whiney child.

“His skinny sales girls will be wearing bikinis and looking much better than I can.”

“You got serious first world problems, girl.”

“Ha-ha,” I held my hands up to surrender.

Leslie Styles has her way with me again!

“OK, alright, I’ll go.

I looked at her through my half-full water glass. Covering the event would get me away from my computer, into the sunshine, and I’d have some free drinks.

Maybe even some exercise, though I didn’t plan to paddle very far.

five

“Grace, you have to help me get more people on the boards.”

When Pablo said that the words sounded like, “hafta hel’me.”

I swallowed and lowered the Pepsi bottle I’d been hiding behind like I was on the verge of drying up and blowing away. I could tell Pablo wanted me to ride a board up and down the beach and pretend like I was addicted to the sport.

A long time ago, I learned that Friday was named for the Norse love goddess. On Freja’s day, the beach at Sleepy Key starts getting crowded in the afternoon. People with weekly rental houses and condos would come out for one last Florida sunset and mix with the office workers and laborers starting their weekend early. It’s always five o’clock somewhere, might as well be written in the sand.

While the western Florida sun burned strong and the temperature reached the high seventies, murky cloud clusters also rolled in, casting the beach into a chilly shade.

Today, the crowds were thinner than usual. Skinnier in number, not in torso.

Pablo’s three sales girls were all talking to different groups on the beach, waving their hands and bursting into laugher.

“Hey, I’m just here to take photos of you telling people how this sport will do wonders for their mental and physical health.”

When he first started selling stand-up paddleboards at his shop, Sleepy Key Gear, Pablo had a hard time getting people who looked at his thousand-plus dollar products in the store to sign on the dotted line. Then, he started offering free rides on the beach, with free wine. This resulted in a lot more sales.

On good days.

On this day, his eyes darted back and forth, from the bodies walking by, to the very few people looking at the display beneath several colorful pavilions.

“You took some shots of the models and the beach already; I’ll give you a brochure you can write your article from. This’s not the hard part.”

He ran his hand through his dense black and gray hair.

“The hard part is getting people to try the boards and have some wine. One in ten buys a board if they take them out.” He frowned. “I’m lucky to get one sale for every hundred when they just look at them.”

Pablo has said the same thing to me many times, like he’s repeating a mantra.

“I spend two thousand dollars a month in advertising. More than half goes to your paper.”

He’d waved his hands at the boards sitting there on the beach like he was shooing them into the water. “That money comes from selling these.”

When Pablo talks about cash he looks at you from beneath his long lashes and grey eyebrows. He squints his eyes, making his crow’s feet pop out. He wags his finger in time with his words, like he’s a dollar guru or a professor of pennies.

I guess that’s what happens when you grow up like he did. Years ago, over tequila shots when Leslie and I had first met him, he’d regaled us with tales about Castro’s Cuba, and how he escaped with his mother on a boat with so many holes that he had to bail the entire way to Miami

With an empty soup can.

I kicked my foot in the sand. Having just consumed a cold soda while trying to avoid Pablo’s beseeching gaze, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the day wasn’t warm enough for me to get wet.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

He smiled and handed me a plastic cup. The ruby liquid wasn’t the dirt-cheap wine often found at free-drink events. This stuff was decent, as far as my untrained tongue could tell; something from a town in California called Jack West. However, this city doesn’t allow glass on the beach, so all the cups are plastic.

“Have a drink and get into your suit, Grace.” Pablo waved his hand at the sparse crowd shuffling up the beach. “If you get out there, these macho guys will go out too, and their girlfriends. Then they’ll buy.”

He smacked his lips when he said the word, “buy”.

I rolled my eyes at him. I could hear the comments already.

“Look, Billy, even a fat girl can ride those boards.” I didn’t really think of myself as huge, but when the gorgeous star of
The Hunger Games
could be called chubby, only the truly skeletal were immune to self-doubt.

I needed some more liquid courage. In the pint-sized northern town where I spent my childhood, we didn’t even roll our sleeves up until August, and then only on a good day.

When I applied to colleges, they were all in Florida and Southern California. USC and Miami U said my SAT scores weren’t good enough, but Tampa’s University of Southern Florida accepted me, so that is where I went.

After another cup of Pablo’s wine, I meandered to the pavilion to change.

Having consumed two more cups while changing and putting on sun block, I felt better. I still had some issues with my underarm skin folds and my thighs, and my belly bulged more than I’d prefer, but the suit gave me decent cleavage and being black, it was slimming.

Pablo set me up with a nice looking board, soft foam top and wood grained accents.

With care, I pushed off from the sand, my thigh muscles tightening as I got my balance. Cool water ran over my toes and bright drops caught the sun and sparkled as my paddle rose and fell.

With my arms glistening in the sun, and the long paddle beside me, I felt tall and even somewhat athletic.

“Hey, she’s dang good,” I heard a beer gutted stud say to the crowd of other hairy bellies he was walking with.

After half an hour or so, some of the studs decided to show they could paddle faster than me, and then some of their girlfriends tried the boards too, giggling.

Ahead of me, a group of forty-something’s splashed around like they were kids. I expected several of them would be pulling out their credit cards when they got back to shore.

Paddleboarding is a fine sport for exercise. Plus, you can cruise around and check out the opposite sex without being obvious.

On that day, all the men on the beach were fat and hirsute, not my style. I may be on chubby’s sexy side, but I like my men lean, with muscles.

Soon, Pablo was selling boards and leaving me alone to cruise the beach with occasional forays back to get more wine, which was fine with me.

six

A hairy guy from New Jersey bought the board I’d been riding on. The day was finally getting hot, so I grabbed my beach float and decided to get away from the crowd.

As I headed back for the water, Pablo yelled to me that he was leaving and Maria was in charge. Maria is one of the several college age blondes who work for him. He walked away with two men he’d told me earlier were buyers from a warehouse store that wanted him to supply boards in bulk. So, mamas and papas could waddle for home with their boxes packed with milk and cheese, and a ten-foot long foam board for only another nine hundred ninety-nine. Zero-down and no payments until after Christmas.

Yeah, I did the brochure.

My ‘pillow top’ air mattress inflatable is very stable and comfortable to lie on. It’s no thousand dollar foam cored surfboard, but my float has one huge advantage: cup-holders.

I nursed my fourth wine and enjoyed floating off the sandbar, tied to a light folding anchor from Pablo’s store.

When I went out, everyone on the sand was having fun and no one looked my way. The sky arched above me and if angels existed they were there spreading their feathered wings.

Gentle rollers from some unnamed storm miles away rocked me as I drifted and the late afternoon sun shone brightly down on me.

I had let myself get blown away from shore before dropping the miniature anchor. Out this far, the sound from the party at the pavilions died to a distant hum of shouts and laughs over the regular sigh of the waves on the sand.

As the sun started to set, rays penetrated my thin suit and I day-dreamed that Apollo caressed me there, between my legs. I helped him by spreading my knees.

I leaned on my elbow and looked around. I could see no boats beyond me, just smooth water all the way to Mexico on the other side of the Gulf. Since the sun was setting before my feet, anyone looking my way would be blinded by the glare.

The silent sun touched me like a lover’s hand and I pulled my suit aside. I slipped into a wine infused fantasy about a divine caress from a man with much more of everything than any boy I’d known. In my dream, I rubbed my slit with long, slow strokes. I added a circular motion at the top and my button stood erect as I touched it.

I put my fingertips on warp drive, working myself faster as I pictured a smooth and well-muscled body lying next to me. We were on a nude beach, well away from the crowd.

Then, he moved down and put his lips on my pussy, giving me slow, sweet kisses.

Imagining Apollo’s tanned fingers touching me, I rubbed faster. I used my special twist, sliding my middle fingertip around my pussy’s edge, and then drawing my thumb over my clit in an upward motion.

At this point, I was well past caring if anyone saw my show. It was a god touching me, and he wasn’t going to stop just because someone might be offended. With my left hand, I squeezed my nipple through my suit top, imagining soft lips kissing me and strong white teeth nibbling.

Being outside, the wine, the sun, the thrill that I might get caught, all pushed me close to the edge much faster than usual. My breath was rapid and I moaned.

My fingers thrashed on my sex, adding a light tapping motion to my up and down rub.

As if he were slapping me there, just hard enough to feel good.

“Yes…” I cried. I shut my eyes hard. My leg muscles tightened and I arched my back, rocking my float as pleasure waves exploded through my body.

After the explosion, I smoothed my suit into place and put my hands above my head. My board rocked on the sea surface. The noises from the shore hadn’t changed.

No one seemed to notice my display of personal affection.

Savoring the moment, I let the aftershocks of the orgasm rock through me like ripples rolling a pond after throwing a stone.

“The hour is getting late and you should be paddling back to shore.” That was the angel who sometimes appears on my shoulder to give me advice. Since I lay on my back, she sat on my right breast now, giving me a disapproving look.

I made a shooing motion with my hand.

“Just let me rest here for a second, dear. I’ll be right with you.”

“Humph!” She poofed away. I should have listened to her, but the Gulf can be so very peaceful in the late afternoon. I rested in perfect balance between the sun’s heat and the cooler water and I wanted to stay with Apollo a little longer.

I may have been a technical virgin, but I knew what a man should do to me — make me feel like I felt right then.

I wondered if I would ever find one worthy.

Dreaming of a golden man who touched me as well as I touched myself, I drifted off.

seven

Back to reality. In misery, exhausted, woozy from whatever my kidnappers had injected me with, I passed between unconsciousness to barely awake and then back to darkness. Again and again.

Then, the engine’s wheezy hum went silent and the cursing got louder. I heard a whining chug-a-chug sound, like the noise my car made one time when I ran out of gas. I kept cranking the key, hoping somehow a drop would fall from somewhere and get me to the pump. The sound was like that, only much louder. The boat’s motion got wilder as it stopped forward moving and turned sideways to the waves. The voices were arguing now, with more words that sounded like curses.