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for your shenanigans and you will most certainly not be collecting my V-card. I’ve held onto it all this time, now I feel like I don’t want to waste it on just anyone. I kind of want it to be special.”
    She lifted up the towel to see me again. “Special?” she mocked. “Like how? Losing your virginity isn’t exactly a special experience. It hurts. You bleed all over the place. It’s super awkward. And you’re sore the next day. How romantic.”
    “You make it sound awful,” I responded, disappointed. “It can’t be that bad.”
    “Says the person who’s never lost her virginity before,” she joked. “Trust me. It’s awful. There’s nothing romantic about your first time. You might as well just get it over with now so that when you actually are with someone you really want to be with, it can be a good experience. I’m just looking out for you.”
    “Well, hear me when I say this, Sloane Ashwell. I will not lose my virginity to just anyone. I will at least be in a relationship and care about the guy before I give that part of me away!”
    Sue seemed to accept her defeat when it came to this particular topic. For now. I don’t know why it even mattered to me at this point. I just wanted it to be special. Special-ish at the very least. I’d like to be comfortable with the guy that takes it away as opposed to some awful wham, bam, thank you, ma’am one night stand kind of experience. I’ll never get it back. There’s only one chance to get it right. I wanted to be in love and feel passion and heat, and I guess I wanted to feel cherished a little. In my mind, it’s a special gift. I didn’t want to waste it.
    I finished spraying myself down with sunscreen and decided to walk down to the water to feel the temperature with my feet. Since it was just the second week of April, the water might still be too cold to swim in. Just in the short walk down to the edge of the waves, I spotted two shark teeth and stopped to pick each up. I’ve always had some weird ability to spot shark teeth easily. I find at least ten each time I come to the beach. I have a huge jar of them at home and it’s one of my most prized possessions.
    As I approached the water, I took a moment to just stare out to the horizon. The beach was my happy place. It was the place where I always felt safe, content, and at peace. I stared out at it and felt so small. While not very religious, I’ve always considered myself a spiritual person, and at that very moment, I was overcome by a warm feeling of fuzzy tingles overtaking my body, mind, and soul. This. All of this was my church. The million and one colors of the water, the noises of nature singing in a perfect harmony, the beauty of the rays of sunlight peeking through slots in the cloud formations, the smells of the salty sea, the feel of the breeze over my skin like a comforting caress, the sea oats bending with the wind, their deep roots standing their ground in the sand. That was my higher power. I stared out into the beautiful, serene world before me and said a prayer for God to send me someone to love that would also love me.
    Sue and I hung out at the beach for a few hours, as planned. I was lulled to sleep at some point listening to Mumford and Sons on my iPod, succumbing to the peaceful little bubble I wrapped myself in. As the day went on and the Earth rotated, my entire body was no longer protected by my beach umbrella and despite slathering on SPF 50 lotion and spraying a mist of SPF 30 over that, I still managed to get crispy fried from my mid-thighs down to my toes. I love my Irish heritage, but why couldn’t I have inherited my father’s complexion instead of my mother’s? Sue, as expected, was a gorgeous bronze by the time we were pulling away from the ocean.
    I drove us down Atlantic Avenue towards my house and listened to her ramble on and on about how she got bored just sitting there, essentially by herself since I was in my own little world, so she got up to walk