3: right hand meets left

ver⋅e⋅cund
bashful; modest.

I was seventeen the first time I saw the girl I loved nude. It must have been close to midnight; the moon shone pale on her slight shoulders and stiff nipples. When her swimsuit fell on the ground, there was a sort of breathlessness - prolonged by my mind perhaps - where the only sound was the waves lapping the rocks below. She wasn't elegant by magazine standards. But what the hell did I care if the five guys with us thought her contours weren't rounded enough? I was in love!

It's hard to describe what a gut full of bile feels like. There are experiences that I imagine I could compare it to, but I haven't had any of them, so I don't know whether they would fit. There was the immediate feeling of one-to-the-gut shock and amazement. But after that? Blackness. Horror. A hollow pit in my abdomen sucking everything inward. I'd never known something so fully beautiful and so fully wrong than in that moment. Not to mention the guilt - who was I to judge? What say did I have in her life? And why couldn't I just treat it like nothing, treat her like one of the guys, like they all did?

I retreated back to the car without a word, my wet trunks sticking to my thighs, while they all dove in. All the sentiments I'd planned slipped away. It was hard to look her in the eye after that.