Chapter 3: The Outdoor Shower

The day at the beach had left a fine grit clinging to everything—skin, hair, the creases behind my knees. By nine-thirty Sarah was already gone, face planted in the king bed upstairs, fan blasting on high to drown out the world. Her snores carried down through the open window like a steady tide, low and even, the kind that meant she wouldn’t stir until morning. I stood on the deck wiping down the grill, the last coals ticking as they cooled, when Kayla padded out from the guest room in the same electric-blue bikini she’d worn the night before. A thin beach towel hung loose around her hips.

“Still got sand in places I didn’t know existed,” she said, voice soft against the roar of the surf. She tilted her head toward the far end of the deck where the outdoor shower waited, half-hidden by the cedar half-wall but open to the night sky on top. “Come rinse off with me? It feels so good out here with the stars.”

I told myself it was harmless. Just two people washing off a day at the beach. The same lie I’d been feeding myself since the car ride down. “Yeah. Sure.”

The shower stall was simple but exposed—wide rainfall head mounted high, tiled floor sloping gently to a drain, no door, just that low wall facing the dunes and the endless black ocean beyond. We stepped under together. I twisted the handle; hot water exploded down in a heavy sheet, drumming against the tiles with a sound that blended perfectly into the waves. Steam rose immediately, thick and fragrant with salt air, curling around our bodies like a living thing. The night breeze slipped over the half-wall, cool against the heat, raising faint gooseflesh where the spray hadn’t reached yet.

At first we kept our suits on. Awkward laughs, passing the bar of soap back and forth. I scrubbed my arms, chest, the back of my neck while she worked the sand from her legs. Water streamed over her shoulders, darkening the bikini fabric until it clung like a second skin. The strings at her hips looked fragile, ready to slip with one careless tug. I kept my eyes on the tiles, on the soap, anywhere but the way the water traced the curve of her waist and pooled at the small of her back.