Chapter 70

It was a bit of a shitshow getting all the girls to the beach. The whole rigamarole for the hike earlier hadn’t been that bad - JC and I had carried most of them since the water on the shallow side went up to our stomachs, and they’d carried their shoes or boots. Now we had girls in costumes and outfits, full makeup, and bags of equipment. God, the bags of equipment. I was actually glad Cassidy and I were doing our hike; I might have had a heart attack carrying the thousands of dollars in cameras, lenses and various other necessities across the water like that.

It took almost twenty minutes to get everyone and everything across, and I made sure they all knew that they were going to need to get wet going back since we couldn’t do the same thing for all of them in the dark. Seeing the issues, a few of the girls like Terra and Becca pivoted the shoots they were planning. Terra swapped to a swimsuit shoot using the beach and the lake, and Becca decided not to do a shoot at all and help some of the other girls get their own stuff done faster so they could get back to the boats before full dark.

Once most of the transportation was done, Cassidy was waiting for me as the last woman on the boats, and she climbed onto my shoulders while carrying a change of clothes and my boots. I walked her over to the beach, lifting her up and off of my shoulders and setting her down on the rocky sand. All of the other girls had spread out inland, except for Terra and JC who had gone farther down the beach to avoid the houseboats getting in the background of their shots, so I felt safe quickly stripping off my swim trunks and towelling myself dry. Cassidy watched with a small smirk and a twinkle in her eye, and then we both couldn’t help but laugh as a loud wolf whistle echoed down the beach from the direction of JC and Terra. There was no way to know which of them had done it, but they were also far enough away that they couldn’t have actually seen anything.

I put on the outfit Cassidy had picked for me, a decent pair of cargo shorts and a t-shirt she’d bought for me because she liked the fit over my chest and arms even though I always felt like it was a little too tight. I didn’t say anything because I knew she only wanted me to wear it for the pictures, and I likely wouldn’t wear it again for the rest of the week. A decent pair of socks and my hiking boots rounded out the outfit, other than Cass wetting her hands in the lake and playing with my hair a bit to get it ‘the right kind of messy.’

The hike started nicely, as we carefully picked our way up the beach to the rocky terrain beyond, then worked our way around the various shoots while trying not to get behind anyone and ruin their photos. Once we were free, we walked a bit more hand in hand.

“This is a good spot,” Cassidy stopped us. We’d just chatted lightly through the walk, commenting on the costumes the girls had and that sort of thing, and the tension had been building. Both of us knew something was between us that needed to be said.

“Sit up on that rock,” I said and thumbed open the camera app on her phone. I adjusted some settings as she got herself situated, but she sighed and shook her head.

“Robbie, put it away,” she said. “Just ... come here, please.”

I frowned, slipping her phone into my pocket, and went and stood in front of her. She was sitting up high a bit, her feet unable to reach the ground but her boulder perch putting her at least in the ballpark of being eye-to-eye with me. She reached out and held the arms of my shirt, and I rested my hands on her hips, standing close.