August 1975
Josh took Lauren’s arm and helped her up over the crest of the dune. As they both paused to catch their breath, Lauren looked back down the steep slope to the bathers, now miniaturized by the distance, and the white, gentle billows of the lake as it hit the shore. The sound of the breaking waves was punctuated by the occasional sound of music from the loudspeakers that dotted the beach.
Josh looked off into the distance ahead. Their companions, three guys in blue jean shorts and white T-shirts, had reached the summit before them and had, in their excitement, left Josh and Lauren behind. They could barely be seen now, small black dots against the beige sand and the blue sky.
She paused, took a breath, and followed his gaze. The three figures were almost out of sight. “You know they're not going to find anything, right?” She handed Josh the tote bag she had carried, adjusted the thin strap of her gold bikini top, and tugged a little at her jeans, shaking some of the sand away.
“I know. And they wouldn’t know what to do if they found it.”
This was the summer that they had all turned 18, that few months between high school and college, that Josh and his friends went to the dunes along the southern tip of Lake Michigan at least twice weekly. On any given morning they would pile into his friend George’s car and make the hour-long trip to the opposite side of the lake, windows down and the Beach Boys’ Endless Summer 8-track pounding through the speakers for flavor.
Even though they were halfway through the 70s, George was still firmly embedded in the 60s. His car was a lovingly cared-for ' 65 Pontiac, which he insisted on taking every time they went to the dunes and continually fretted about the damage the sun, sand, and mileage would do to it.
George had also decided, the day Lauren and her mother came to stay with Josh and his mother, that he was in love with Lauren, which was why he had pushed Josh to bring her along. The night before, when the guys had been drinking beer on George’s garage - which was where they began and ended every night - he had punctuated the conversation more than a few times with: “Your cousin’s coming tomorrow, right?”
To which Josh would nod, sip his Old Style and say, “Yeah, George, she’ll be there.” Of course she would be there; there was no avoiding it. Her father, his Uncle Russ, had taken a serious fall at work and had to be helicoptered to St. Broderick’s for a series of surgeries and rehab. He was out of the woods now, cracking bad jokes like before and itching to get back to work, but for the next week or so she and her mother would be living with them, close to the hospital, always on call for emergencies.
Obviously he wasn’t going to be leaving her at home while he hung out with his friends. They were already as close, and had been all their lives, as if they were brother and sister, born in the same month. Neither of them had siblings of their own. Family gatherings, holidays, and picnics had always included his mother and her parents and the two of them as a unit.
As they started to move across the sand, Josh’s heart pounded against his ribs. He tried hard to look casual and not gasp frantically after the climb. He glanced into the bag. “What’s in here?”
Lauren reached and took it back. “Towels, lotion, water. My wallet. Should I have brought something for you?”
“No, I’m good.” He pitched his way through the hot sand. “I’m glad you came. Things were getting too stressful around the house.” His eyes fell on her with what he hoped would seem to be a casual look, but now that he was alone with her, the sun, the sand, the water in the distance below them, he took the time to appreciate her beauty - her dark blonde hair in braids halfway down her sides, her smooth, tanned skin, her bright blue eyes, breasts resting comfortably and teasingly inside her yellow bikini top. Cousins they may be, but he was a little in love with her, too.
She lifted the bag’s strap over her shoulder and took a step toward their disappearing companions. “I know. My mom’s been freaking out all week.”
“It could be worse.”
They made their way forward a few steps, and Lauren paused to slip out of her brown sandals and put them in the bag.
“Do you want me to take that?”
She shook her head and pulled her braids behind her shoulders. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”
He followed a few feet behind in the sand. “Why did you go along with them when George got this idea?”
Lauren made her way down a slight dip in the dune. She slipped a little in the sand, and Josh grabbed her arm. “I know there’s nothing here. The nude beach story is a myth. Anna and I were here a month ago looking for it. I just want to know why he’s a mile ahead of us if he thought there was a chance of seeing me naked at the beach.”
“Oh, hell, that’s because George is all talk, no action. And you called his bluff. Hey, wait a minute-“ He stopped and faced his cousin. “What do you mean you and Anna went looking for a nude beach?”
She kicked a little sand in his direction. “Of course, dummy! We have bodies, we like the sun, we want to see naked people. We heard the same stupid story and decided to check it out ourselves.”
She glanced sideways at Josh. Jean shorts, designer knockoff gym shoes, and a black Rolling Stones shirt with the open mouth and tongue that didn’t quite fit what she knew of her cousin’s musical tastes. He looked good in the shirt, though, with shoulders and arms that, although not exactly athletic, were muscular enough. “And you? What were you going to do? Protect me from your friend or ogle me?”
Unable to meet her gaze, Josh dropped his eyes. “Both,” he admitted.
# # # # #
Just over an hour before, they had pulled into the rapidly filling parking lot and made their way across the concrete onto the scorching sand and laid their towels out. From the long wooden refreshment stand, about fifty yards away from them, music from a Chicago AM rock station poured through the speakers until the sound was mercifully drowned out by the incoming waves.
As they sat watching the water rush against the shore, George had scanned the beach, taking in the sight of the scantily clad women that surrounded them, then letting his eyes not very discreetly fall on Lauren, already lying on her stomach, still in her jeans, her discarded T-shirt beside her. Josh couldn’t help staring at her himself, her head resting on her crossed arms, her arms and shoulders bare and tanned, her breasts pressed against the towel, her jeans low enough to expose the junction between her lower back and the rise of her ass.
George’s voice made him jump, embarrassed by his reverie, more embarrassed by his sudden, inexplicable hardness (inexplicable, hell, he realized. He had been caught in a lustful gaze at his cousin). “It’s hidden away,” he had said, “and only a few people know about it. My brother Kurt was telling me about it.” He glanced at all of them and let his eyes rest on Lauren. “Should we check it out?”
Lauren’s eyes were closed; she could feel the sun on her neck and shoulders, warm and comfortable. She felt George’s furtive glances at her and sensed Josh’s gaze, which, for some reason, was making her feel warm and comfortable, as well. She considered dismissing his idea right away but paused, took a breath, laughed, turned to Josh, and winked. “Sure, if you’re brave enough.”
Emboldened by the possibility of seeing Lauren naked, George began his ascent of the two-hundred-foot mountain of sand, followed by the other two, with Josh and Lauren bringing up the rear as Paul McCartney’s demand to listen to what the man said disappeared in the distance behind them.
# # # # #
“So, what did you do?”
Lauren began to veer off to the right, toward a slight dip between two ridges of sand about a hundred yards away. “What?”
Josh wiped the sweat off his forehead and followed. He might as well follow her; there was no way they were going to catch up to their companions. “When you didn’t find the nude beach. What did you and Anna do?”
“We found another spot, very isolated, and got some sun. Follow me.”
“You got some sun? Did you guys...” his voice trailed off.
Lauren turned to him and yanked part of her top down, flashing her left breast. Josh glimpsed a perfectly round brown areola surrounding a perfectly round nipple. Her eyes met his. “Do you see any tan lines?”
They moved silently toward the slight crease between the two ridges, Lauren amazed at her impulsive move (well, that happened, she reflected, but what was she really thinking when they had headed out here?) and Josh at a loss to know how he should react to his cousin’s exposure of herself.
Lauren got there first. The eastern side of the small valley was shaded, shielded from the sun by the western ridge, a little higher. A few pieces of brush and high grass had found their way through the sand. She dropped the bag on the ground and sat beside it. “This is it.” Josh sat beside her.
After a few moments, she reached into her bag and withdrew a bottle of water. She opened it, took a long sip, and handed it to Josh. “Wow. One flashed tit really shut you up, didn’t it?”
Josh broke the silence with a chuckle and brought the bottle to his lips. “Well, when the breast belongs to my cousin, yeah, maybe.”
“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it.” She pulled the rolled towel from the bag, set it on the sand, and lay back on it as if it were a pillow. She brushed a little sand from her stomach and breasts, feeling her nipples harden beneath the material. She glanced up at Josh just in time to see him turn his head away from her, embarrassed. In response, her nipples became harder. “I mean, what’s one boob between cousins?”
Somehow this was the icebreaker Josh needed. He laughed softly and turned to her, lying back in the sand, arms now crossed behind her head, her blonde hair, darker at the top, lighter at the ends, in half-braids on her shoulders, her stomach stretched and flat, her nipples showing dark and hard through the gold top, and let his eyes linger on her. She returned his gaze directly, her eyes lingering over him.
He lay back next to her, put his right arm under his head, and tried to subtly adjust his obvious erection. Lauren watched wordlessly as he tugged at the tent in his shorts and tried to lay his penis flat against his abdomen. She fought the urge to imitate his action, to find some way to gently rub herself, if only for a moment, to relieve the buzz she was feeling. Instead, she nonchalantly pretended to brush sand off her top, feeling her nipples tighten and harden.
“It must be tough to be a guy. You can’t hide it when you're excited. Sure, we get hard nipples, but that can be explained away by air conditioning, a cool breeze, a period.”
Josh looked over at her. If this was how the conversation was going to go, so be it. “So - are you cold, or on your period?”
After a moment’s consideration, she shook her head. “No.” She took a breath and slipped her hand into her top, caressing her breast as her cousin watched. “So - are we going to go chasing after those guys or ... just do the nude beach thing here?”
She couldn’t believe the words that had come out of her mouth. It was one thing to lie out here with Anna, as she had done before, but now? In front of a guy? In front of Josh, her cousin and emotional brother?
Of course, there was time to back out, to say she was joking, to suggest they go back to the beach. Instead, she sat up, untied the strings behind her neck and back, and set the top next to her. The breeze and Josh’s gaze caused her nipples, brown and in the perfect center of her small round breasts, to pucker and stiffen instantly.
“Laurie -“ Josh started. He looked from her breasts to her blue eyes and back to her breasts. For all of his half-hearted bragging to his friends, this was the first time he had actually seen naked breasts on a live human being.
“Hey,” she cut him off. “We climbed the dune to find a beach and get some sun. Right now it’s the two of us. George and Bill and what’s-his-name are miles ahead looking for a place that doesn’t exist. Let’s just relax here and get some sun.” She loosened her belt and unsnapped her denims, revealing the gold bottom of her bikini.
When Josh didn’t reply, she hooked her thumbs over her waistband and pulled her jeans down to her knees, revealing smooth tan thighs.
Before Josh could remind her that the “nude beach” talk didn’t apply because they were a long way from water, she had pulled her pants clear of her feet and had tossed them next to her.
“Whatever.” She leaned back on her rolled towel and let her blue eyes fall on him. In spite of her bravado about undressing, she felt jittery and nervous and exposed in more than the obvious way.
This had been spontaneous; she had no idea why she had suddenly decided to reveal herself like this to Josh. But the two of them had almost always been together; maybe this was just the natural progression of their closeness.
“Come on, Josh,” her voice once again surprised her. “I’m the one all exposed out here. Let’s get you out on this limb, too.”
Josh’s face broke into a smile, and he gave a short laugh. “Ok,” he said, pretending to be resigned to the situation. He stood up and made a show of removing his T-shirt, revealing his skinny chest but large shoulders. “That canoe trip last month,” he said shyly as he saw Laruen’s eyes rest on his torso. “They kind of built my back and shoulders.”
Lauren nodded approvingly.
“All right,” he went on, tugging at the waist of his shorts. “You’re going to be the first girl, other than, you know, my mom when I was a baby, to see my... to see me...” his voice trailed off. Before he continued, he took a long look at his cousin, propped up on her right arm, blonde braids against her shoulders, nipples round and hard, one leg crossed over the other below the bottom of her swimsuit. His cock begged for release, and in an instant he was out of his shorts. He stood for a minute as Lauren appraised him. He wondered if he should turn around for her and decided against it.
The sun and the breeze on these never-revealed portions of his body tickled him as he watched Lauren rise, take the towel, shake it open, and lay it flat on the sand. She stepped onto it, turned her back to Josh, peered back at him in a centerfold-like pose, and slipped her bottom over her ass and let it drop to her feet. “We’re in the same boat,” he heard her say. “I mean, maybe we’re both way too innocent for our ages, but I’ve never been naked in front of a guy either. Actually, I wasn’t even, well, privately, naked in front of a woman until last week with Anna.” She took a loud, deep breath and turned to him, revealing her body, bare and tanned, a little more white below her belly button, her thighs slightly apart, the shaved split “v” of her petite pussy clearly visible through the triangle of soft blond pubic hair. “What do you think?”
Josh instinctively moved his hands to cover his erection but realized the futility of it. He just hoped she didn’t notice the drop of viscous liquid at the tip.
He ran his hand through his hair. “So, what do we do now? Just... be naked?”
She smiled and knelt down on the blanket. “Pretty much. It feels different, doesn't it? Just out here, in the open? Feeling the wind and sand on your skin?” She brushed an area on the towel and gestured for Josh to sit.
“It does feel good. Different.” Josh sat down and stretched back on the cloth, the sunlight beaming down on his erect penis for the first time in eighteen years. He glanced over at Lauren, whose eyes were focused on it. “Well, I guess we got over that embarrassment pretty quickly.”
Lauren leaned back on her elbows and brought her knees up, her feet flat on the ground. Josh let his eyes run over her body as she continued. “It’s comfortable. And safe. Imagine if George was here.”
Josh laughed. “Nothing. As I said, George is all talk. I may be a virgin, but at least I know what goes where. George is in that 12-year-old sneaking looks at dirty words in the dictionary stage.”
Lauren laughed. “You did, too. I still remember when we found your dad’s old magazines in that box in the garage last year.”
“I remember. And some of those were vintage, too. If my mom hadn’t thrown them away after the funeral, they could have been my legacy. And, if I remember, you were more interested in looking at them than I was.”
He thought about the two of them, huddled away in the corner of the garage, pulling the magazines one, one after another, poring through the photos of women of...
