Orange Juice

Chapter Twelve

 Perfect day for a beach trip, it was. The sea was glistening as though there were a thousand dazzling little crystals swimming in flowy waves of blue that perfectly matched the clear sky. The sunray chased all those who came and went, warming and drying the surface of their occasionally wet skin.

 Sash and Hassan had driven over on the motorcycle, while Dante, Lizzy, and Alya all rode in Tulip the van with Sunny in the driver's seat. They drove with the windows down, loudly blasting and singing along to their favorite hit summer songs while the fresh summer breeze blew through their morning hair.

 Parking in a spot right above the hot summer sand, they unloaded the beach towels, cooler, striped red and orange beach umbrella along with Dante's surfboard from the van as they made their way down where the waves crashed on the shore.

 Choosing a spot, they stuck their umbrella in the sand, rolling out the long towels to sit on while placing down the coolers that contained thirst-quenching cold colas before stripping down to their beach wear.

 Lizzy threw aside the jean shorts she had been wearing, remaining in the high-waisted pink bikini she wore underneath. Sunny averted her gaze the moment she caught herself unintentionally staring, turning around with a slightly reddened face as she took off the thin summery beach shirt she had on previously. She remained in a yellow floral beach bra and tropical-themed beach shorts. Lizzy had only then noticed the tattoo on Sunny's shoulder; two female symbols intertwined in one another. She wondered if it meant what she had assumed it meant but decided against asking for the time being.

 Dante had already rushed off to surf, followed closely by Hassan who dived into the water, randomly disappearing under the water for a few minutes every now and then only to swim back up to the surface just as his friends would begin getting seriously concerned.

 Alya and Sash sat under the shade of the beach umbrella, exchanging conversations and cold refreshing cola bottles whose caps they had flicked open with a keychain. Lizzy offered Alya to swim with her, but Alya declined, ranting on about her detestation of getting sunburnt.

 Sunny pointed out a rocky cliff right above the deeper side of the sea, putting forth the idea of jumping from there. Lizzy was immediately on board with the idea, not even requiring a second of consideration to agree.

 Sash joked to Sunny about pushing Lizzy off the edge once she was close enough, which resulted in his sister throwing a handful of sand at his face. Blocking his eyes last second, his hands grazed into the grains of sand, aiming at Lizzy but missing as she grabbed Sunny's hand and quickly darted away.

 The two ran over to the cliff, racing halfway through for no exact reason. Lizzy won that race, jumping in triumph as she reached the bottom of the cliff. Catching her breath for barely a moment, she began climbing up.

 "Be careful!" Sunny, who had just begun climbing under her, warned, "These things could be really slippery, dude. And I'm climbing right under you so we'll both die."

"Live fast die young, baby!" Lizzy exclaimed excitedly as she recklessly climbed the rocky cliff.

"No! No, absolutely not!" Sunny yelled back, "'Live slow, die old and happy' seems like a way better motive to live by."

 Lizzy giggled just as she reached the top. She cheered enthusiastically into the open air summer where she stood, turning to give Sunny a helping hand after noticing she was almost there. She pulled her up, using a slight bit of extra force that caused the two to almost collide.

 Catching a glimpse of their friends below, they began waving for about a minute until they finally caught Alya and Sash's attention. The two at the bottom waved back to them giddily.

 Peering over the edge to the waters below, a daring grin made its way on Lizzy's face. She turned on her heel to face Sunny, standing inches away from her as she spoke, "I'm gonna dive."

 Sunny's eyes went wide as she shook her head, "Said absolutely no sane person who valued their life."

 "I'm gonna do it!" She repeated stubbornly while Sunny still assured her how horrible of an idea it would be to jump head first into water from such a high distance. "Come on, juice girl. What's the worst that could happen?"

 "Instant death." Sunny said frankly, looking Lizzy dead in the eye.

"At least that would be kind of cool, wouldn't it?"

"You really wanna die diving from a cliff? Imagine your friend Hassan just casually going his mermaid shenanigans and swimming with the fishies, then oop, there drops his best friends' unsolicited corpse out of the holy sky." She peered over, "Speaking of which, I am getting really concerned for that dude. I mean he's been under the water for at least five minutes-"

 Sunny stopped midway through as she heard the sound of footsteps moving further away. She whipped her head around only to find that Lizzy was now right over the edge of the cliff, ready to recklessly dive in with no hesitation.

 "Lizzy!" She shrieked just as Lizzy dived forward into the water below. She rushed over the edge just in time to find her breaking through the rim hands first, her body in an almost perfect line as she got submerged into the glistening blue waters.

 After a few moments, she peaked her head back out of the surface, shaking her hair dry before looking up at Sunny who stared back at her with a look of utter disbelief and great amusement. The sun shone on her wet freckled face as she widely grinned at her before speaking, "You coming down or what?"

 Sunny chuckled, "Holy shit." She muttered under her breath before backing away two steps and then rushing forward to jump into the waters below. Unlike Lizzy, Sunny was nowhere near even attempting a dive, but a mere jump into the water was satisfying enough for her.

 She splashed in, the cold refreshing water surrounding every inch of her previously dry and warm body. The tiny bubbles around her lifted her up until she could once again see Lizzy who was swimming over towards her.

 The two floated facing one another, the same look of disbelief on Sunny, contrary to the pure adrenaline she read on Lizzy's face.

 "You're very interesting yourself, you know." Sunny commented and Lizzy threw her head back in laughter. Somewhere nearby, Hassan reached over the surface to take a deep breath, only to dive back in once again for who knew how long.

 After energetically swimming for a few more minutes, the two made their way back to shore to rest for a little while. Two joggers passed by, one of them staring Lizzy up and down hungrily and whistling as he did. "Nice ass, sweetheart." He commented on his way.

 "Suck my dick!" Lizzy was quick to retort, earning a loud chuckle-snort from Sunny. For the next 10 minutes, all the pair had talked about while sitting down on the blanket was their fantasy of a tornado reaching over to swallow every single cat-caller on the beach. Later, Hassan finally joined them whilst Dante was still surfing. He had not parted from the waves since they stepped foot on the beach and Sunny watched impressed as he skillfully rode on the surfboard, admitting she could probably never pull off such a sport even if she had trained for a lifetime.

 For hours, they chatted, ate, swam, built sand castles, and sunbathed while the waves crashed against some nearby rocks. It was a memory in the making, and they were all glad to be writing it down under the bright, blazing sunshine.

 After having lunch, the group began packing up their things to head over to the movie theater to watch the newest version of Hassan's favorite movie series. They all had agreed to do it solely for the fact that their friend had been heavily anticipating it, and because it would probably be awful enough to a laughable extent.

 And so they drove over to the theater the same way they had over to the beach; with loud music, rolled down windows, and their overlapping voices singing along to the upbeat songs that played.