No More Beached Whales

Avery tried to ignore the sound of Molly gagging on her boyfriend’s cock, but a mere centimeter shift of her eye left her face to face with the fellatio. Sighing, Avery wrapped the big blanket around her more tightly and headed inside, loneliness seeping into her bones. There’s something truly pathetic about sitting silently alone watching your best friend swallow a throbbing prick. Leaning over the coffee table, Avery quickly rolled a joint and headed back outside.

“I’m going to the beach,” she called over her shoulder to Molly who was now bent over the railing of the porch taking a drilling of a lifetime. Avery suspected she wasn’t heard.

It was just after 2 am in Stone Harbor, New Jersey and the wind was picking up. The days in the wealthy shore town may have been reaching the high nineties, but the nights were plummeting down to a chilly 43 degrees Fahrenheit. Still wrapped in her blanket and pondering where she went wrong in life to end up as the permanent third wheel watching the two of them get drunk and fuck every night, Avery trudged up the dune, kicking piles of sand as she went. Blocking the wind with her blanket, she lit the joint and inhaled deeply. Ah marijuana, her only solace. The only medicine for loneliness. Except, y’know, getting fucked or whatever.

This had become rather routine for the past three days they’d been staying in Molly’s house. They’d get trashed on cranberry vodka, Molly and Ethan would start fucking, and Avery would go to the beach, get high, and masturbate while watching the waves crash. She thought about whales a lot, but whales weren’t common in New Jersey. She thought of heading up to Cape Cod perhaps, finding that boy she was in love with, and explaining about the whales. Explain how she was a whale herself. Not in size, no, something much deeper, she thought. Though Avery wasn’t deep. She was just stealing ideas crafted by Wally Lamb in her favorite book She’s Come Undone. But none of it mattered. Because no one was listening to her anyway.

She sat under the quilt in the middle of the beach, blowing smoke circles and watching them wrap around the stars then dissipate back into the white sands. She heard the familiar shift of sand tumbling down the dune and she turned to see what appeared to be a very lanky man fumbling towards her. He wasn’t drunk, just vastly uncoordinated. The rest of the beach was empty, yet he seemed to be headed straight for her. Nervous, she called out into the night.

“Hello?”

“Uh hey!” Just as he called back to her, he stumbled and fell to the ground. “Ow! Fuck!”

She jumped up and ran toward him.  “You all right?”

He laughed. “Yeah, just landed on a sharp shell. I sliced my knee.”

“Oh, well, maybe you should go splash some water on it. Salt water is good for cuts.”

“I’ll freeze though.”

“Well, you can share my blanket.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to share your blanket with complete strangers.”

“Fair. I’m Avery.”

“Ezra.”

“You want a hit?” She held out the joint which he happily took from her. He inhaled deeply then sprinted toward the ocean, splashing the salt water on his cut. He sprinted back and exhaled the smoke.

“Ta-da!”

Without responding, Avery sank back into the sand and took another long drag off the joint.

“Unimpressed, eh? Well, what brings you to the beach at two in the morning alone?”

“I got sick of watching my best friend suck off her boyfriend. You?”

“Is that just something that people do?”

Avery shrugged. “Seems to happen a lot in my life. Nothing makes you feel more like a third wheel than literally watching two people fuck. I just come down here to get high and…” Her voice trailed off, realizing that if she were to continue, she’d be giving this stranger far too much information. “What brings you to the beach so late?”

Ezra took the joint from between her fingers. “I came to jerk off.”

“Oh.”

Silence hung over them. After a few awfully long moments, Avery finally spoke up. “Sex on the beach has always looked really uncomfortable, y’know?”

“Hell yeah. I don’t want sand in all of my crevices.”

“You’re kind of weird.”

“So are you.”

“Do you ever think about whales?”

“I mean, I guess so, yeah. Why?”

“They just seem so…solitary.”

“I don’t know. I think there are lonelier animals than whales.”

“Like?”

“You.”

Avery fell silent, sadness washing up her toes like the tide. They continued to smoke their joint, moving closer and closer to each other. He carefully wrapped an arm around her. “The whales don’t have anything to do with loneliness. She loves the whales for their hidden power. People underestimate them. People just think they’re these massive creatures, but they’re so much more. That’s why Dolores likes them. In the book, I mean.”

“You’ve read it?”

“Yeah. And anyway, it’s the whales that end her loneliness. The whales that show her her own power. That it’s okay to be alone.”

“But I hate it.”

“That usually means you should embrace it. Learn it. I’m the same way.”

“Can’t I just solve it by being with someone?”

“He doesn’t love you. But maybe you should. Thanks for the weed.”

He rose and walked straight out towards the ocean. Right into the sea. And she watched as his blowhole erupted, sending a geyser through the night for her.