12.)

The afternoon brought with it a deep malaise. I didn't know what people usually did at beach houses. Swim? The water must be freezing in mid-October, and I didn't bring a swimsuit anyway. I sent my mom a text to let her know I didn't die, but that was about all I had planned. Luckily for me, Blossom was a bit more prompting.

"It's not that warm today, but the sun is high and the sky is clear and I wanna work on my tan. And you're going to work on yours too."

It was pretty on-brand for Blossom to be assertive like that, so it sounded natural. But tanning was definitely a part of her world and not Mia's. To say Mia was pale was to say that milk was pale; it was an absolute understatement. But Blossom thought she would look hot with a tan, and it might help her confidence a little as well. More than that, so far this trip had been all about Blossom stepping her toes into Mia's world, and it seemed fair to turn that around a little..

"I don't tan," I said. "I think I just burn?" My mom took me down to Florida once and that was a bad time. Well, the theme parks were great: it was the next two days that sucked. "And isn't tanning bad for your skin?" I should look it up...

Blossom shook her head. Mia might have known a lot about writing, but this was something from Blossom's life.

"Rocket Scientists and Kindergarteners, remember? This is something I'm really good at. It doesn't matter how pale you are, or how easily you burn, anyone can tan. I'm going to be in charge, so you can get some color on that skin."

This was a lesson that mousy little chestnut-haired middle school Blossom had to learn without a mentor to help. Mia was lucky!

"The FDA says tanning has no health benefits whatsoever and greatly increases the risk of skin cancer." I was reading off my phone. "It also ages you faster. So like, the opposite of our kink."

Honestly, I didn't know people actually did tanning in the real world. I thought it was just one of those things from TV shows that didn't translate well into modern life. But when I looked up from my phone, Blossom was pouting.

"It's not about health," she said. "It's about looking hot. Everyone is going to age anyway, so you might as well do the things that make you look hot while you're young."

And, Blossom kept this part to herself, tanning couldn't be any worse than sitting in front of a computer screen all day.

"Pleeeeeeeaaaaase? I wanna share a part of my world with you, Mia~"

She was really good at pouting.

I was already the charity case here; could I really afford to be a stick in the mud too? So I sighed and relented.

"If I get skin cancer, I'm blaming you."

"Deal!" Blossom said, and hurried off to the downstairs bathroom.

I looked up a few more facts about tanning on my phone, but none of them were making me feel any better, so I put my phone away. Then I remembered the reason I wasn't going swimming.

"I don't have a swimsuit," I called after Blossom. "Don't you need a swimsuit to tan?"

"You can tan in anything," Blossom called out from the other room, "but whatever's covered won't tan. So that's how you get sexy tan lines."

"I don't know what makes a sexy tanline..." Or who would even see them. Honestly, they sounded like a nuisance, and I'd managed to go the whole summer without getting burned. I really was a kindergartener and she was the rocket scientist in this matter. Why did that thought give me butterflies?

Blossom was much taller than Mia, and much more endowed in many of her areas, so her swimsuits weren't likely to fit her new friend and that was a major conundrum.

"A lot of my family members leave swimsuits here for when they come up, so give me a little bit and I'll see if any of them will fit you."

Eventually Blossom came back with some tanning oil and a set of swimsuits. They were mostly straps and bits of cloth, but there were a few pairs of swim trunks too. I took one of them - a boy's set of blue trunks - and held them up to my hips. They would probably fit.

"Usually you want skimpier to get really nice tan lines, but this is your first time and you'll probably get some color in like half an hour or an hour or so because you're pretty pale. So we can work with the trunks this time. and get you something sexier for next time."

Blossom was pretty giddy about this. She was getting to share some of her expertise with someone she looked up to; it felt like a privilege.

"Whatever you tan in is going to be pretty obvious," Blossom continued. "We used to make boys from the associate frat house tan in bikinis as part of their pledge hazing stuff, and they'd have these dainty little tanlines for weeks. It was super hot."

"So it's like a brand or something? A, uh... temporary tattoo. I guess I can see the appeal." That wasn't really in my strike zone, but a blushy baby tattoo could be sexy. Like a "change me" tramp stamp? Though I supposed tans didn't quite have the same finesse as a tattoo.

"Wear this for your top," Blossom said, tossing me a bikini. "T-shirt tans make you look like a farmer or something."

"Gotcha." I was more of a one-piece swimsuit kind of girl, but maybe a bikini top and trunks would be okay. That was a look, right? Not that anyone would see these tan lines anyway.

I left Blossom alone to change in the downstairs bathroom. The straps on the bikini took me a while to understand, but I figured out that if I tied them first and slipped it on afterward it was a lot easier. Finally I was dressed and standing in front of the bathroom mirror. My stomach hung out a few inches. I tried to suck it in, but I wasn't sure I could hold it like that all day. Ugh, I was so disgusting...

I grabbed a towel off the bathroom hook and wrapped it around myself, just over my boobs. It hid the top half of the swim trunks and a lot of my skin. I could take it off after I laid down outside, when gravity would pull my stomach in for me.

When Blossom returned from the downstairs bedroom, she was dressed in what might only be describable as an array of string and very little fabric. Her bikini top did its best to provide some coverage for her ample chest, but she wasn't far from a public indecency charge. Her bottoms did provide coverage in the front but disappeared in a string up between her butt cheeks. This was a woman who had every bit of confidence in her body. She had a few tubes of liquids in her hands and she set them down and began to explain.

"This is sunscreen, it's going to stop you burning. This is tanning oil, it's going to help keep you moisturized. And this is tanning accelerant; it helps filter the UV so your skin gets what it needs to tan at a higher rate."

She looked Mia up and down and smiled.

"Oh I can't wait to see you with a tan."

"Uh... sure..." I'd seen Blossom mostly naked before. Who hadn't, am I right? But she was the kind of girl who would suntan at the football field after school. I remember a lot of guys going there just to watch. At the time I thought it was just to get attention from boys, but I didn't think we would get much attention if we stayed on the deck.

That being said, though I had seen it before, Blossom's body was certainly something to be admired. Her skin was already lightly tanned and smooth as silk by the look of it. Her legs went on for days and her breasts were the kinds of things I would write about in stories. She couldn't quite challenge Mommy Moo from Academy A, but she was getting there. I didn't realize I wasn't listening until Blossom was done with her speech.

"Sound good?" she asked.

"Uh... alright...?" I had no idea what sounded good. Maybe I had agreed to let her diaper me and feed me on the deck. She'd untie the Gordian knot of her swimsuit and put her nipple to my lips. My face felt hot. Why did I let my mind run away with stuff like that?!

"Fantastic. Drop your towel so I can do you, okay?"

Mia stared at Blossom. Blossom tilted her head in curious expectation.

"I can't put your lotions on if you have that towel wrapped around you, and you don't wanna be in the sand when I rub stuff all over you cause that's no good for anyone. Once I've done you, you can do me, okay?"

Without waiting for an answer, Blossom set the other two bottles down and held the sunscreen in her hand, ready to rub her fingers all over Mia's body.

"Right..." I sucked in my stomach and unwrapped my towel. I must have looked like Picasso's Weeping Woman beside Canova's Psyche. It was one of those liminal moments where, if someone was looking in on the both of us, they might assume we weren't real. How could she and I be in the same space? What god would allow that?

Blossom rubbed her hands together and rested them on my shoulders. I looked down at my feet and held my breath, trying to think about something other than her oily fingers sliding down my bare arms. Sports. Red Sox. Red Wings. Red cheeks. Spankings. Stern words. Loving words. "I know what's best for you". Lathering me up. Tanning oil on my skin. Branding me, coloring in my cells. Darker, artificially. Sexiness in artificiality, a double standard. Sexy on a white woman, but what about a Black woman or a Latina? Isn't tanning just racial tourism? Isn't this kind of insensitive?

My moral compass spun so fast that the centripetal force knocked me square out of erotic fantasy. I was suddenly very thankful for my near-debilitating progressivism, because I really didn't want Blossom to know that she was turning me on.

Mia was predictably quiet as Blossom rubbed the sunscreen into her skin, and she stayed quiet as the much taller girl moved on to the tanning oil, and then to the accelerant. Despite her silence, Mia was trembling a little bit the entire time. Did Blossom scare her? No, that probably wasn't it. She probably just wasn't used to the feeling of the lotions on her skin.

"Mia? Mia Moore?" Blossom snapped her fingers to get her friend's attention. "I said it's your turn to do me now."

"R-right... sorry..." I was covered in oil from my face all the way down to my feet. I felt slimy, like Pad Thai noodles. My glasses kept sliding down my nose, and when I tried to push them back up I left a little smudge on the lens.

Blossom showed me what oils to use and how to use them. Then I lathered my hands in them and started on Blossom's shoulders. She was taller than me by a good degree, and I had to raise my hands a little higher than I expected to get the sides of her neck. When I got to her chest, I hesitated. There were straps going every which way, and I didn't really know how to get oil between all of them. Thankfully, Blossom seemed to notice.

"Just put your hands under them," she said. "The straps will stop me from tanning in those spots, so you want to put the oil everywhere."

"Right..." That made sense. But as I put my fingers under the straps, I realized it was a lot like groping under someone's shirt. Or, in this case, under their bra. I avoided her boobs the best I could, but the sides of her breasts and her cleavage still showed.

I'd never touched another girl's boobs before. I had touched my own, which was how I got a lot of the descriptions for my stories. Hers didn't really feel any different, not on a physical level, but they also felt very different at the same time. It was intimate. It was the kind of precursor to a kiss or something in a story. It was the kind of thing a boy did to a girl to make her lose her breath. But Blossom didn't lose her breath; I lost my breath. I pulled my hands out from under her bikini top and took two steps back, almost tripping over my own feet. I had stopped focusing on holding in my stomach. My cheeks were burning red.

Blossom seemed to notice how flustered the entire experience had made Mia, and she mercifully finished up around her breasts as she turned to look at the blushing girl.

"You're so fucking cute, Mia, my goodness. Don't feel bad, my body tends to have that effect on everybody - boy or girl or otherwise. You're only human, after all, right?"

She winked and made a kissy gesture with her lips. It might have seemed self-aggrandizing or arrogant, but Blossom was playing it up to try and minimize Mia's discomfort. Clearly some part of Mia was into her, and that made Blossom's head spin with all sorts of fun thoughts and ideas.

"I'm just not used to like... touching people like that... it's not you..." I was lying. I mean, I was telling the truth, but that last part - the part about it not being her - that was a lie. It was definitely her.