'Oh my god, Kimmie, you are sooo pathetic,' I thought to myself as I sat looking at my phone inside the crowded Waffle House. There was not a seat that was not taken by other college kids, all talking and laughing among themselves. It was as if I'd walked into another big party -- not unlike the one going on back in my room.
Spring Break, 2021. I had told myself that with Covid-19 still raging, I wasn't even going to go, but my friends Katy and Chris talked me into it. And since I got here, hardly anyone was wearing masks. Even my two roommates gave up wearing theirs after the first couple of hours. As Chris said, "how do you meet a guy when he can't even see your smile?"
Not that meeting a guy was difficult. After all, Spring Break, right? I had never been, but I'd seen all the videos on the news. Last year the pandemic had already begun, and no one knew what this virus was all about. We only knew people were dying. Mostly old people in nursing homes, but still. My dorm mates at the time decided it wasn't worth going. I agreed, but I was disappointed. It was my freshman year; I'd come up to college with hopes of, besides getting my degree in Ocean Management, maybe meeting 'Mr. Right' and planning a future. But I didn't want to be the one who died. So I'd spent Break in my dorm, studying and doing extra credit work.
Now it was a year later, and everyone was sooo ready to get out. Lockdown? Ugh! It was like being in prison for a year. How do you keep a bunch of eighteen- and nineteen-year-old kids away from a party? So when we heard that Spring Break was up and running, well... My friends can be very persuasive. Katy even threatened to tie me up, stuff me in a crate and ship me to Florida!
"Okay, okay," I told them. "We'll go. But we'll all wear masks, and we'll stay out of the crowds, if there are any."
Crowds. Oh, there were crowds! From the moment we hit the airport coming in, it seemed like colleges from all over the country had just emptied out into Florida. The airport terminal was chaos, but at least 99% of the kids were wearing masks. 'Okay, I can do this,' I told myself. My misgivings were mitigated, temporarily. Chris put her hand on my back and said, "See?" and I had to admit, it seemed like they were handling things well down here. I started checking out the guys, along with my horny friends.
To be honest, I wasn't looking to hook up with anyone. It was like the world's largest candy store to me; fun to look at all the flavors. I knew Katy, and certainly Chris, would hook up; that's all they talked about. I even set rules with them about the use of the room. I didn't intend to lay there and watch either one of them bumping uglies with a guy half the night, while I tried to sleep.
We got to the motel, secured our already-reserved room (thank goodness! We'd have been sleeping on the street, otherwise!) and headed out to the beach, just yards from our sliding glass door.
My god, there were hot guys everywhere! The air was full of frisbees and guys rushing to and fro, making athletic catches and generally showing off for us girls. One guy even jumped right over me while leaping for the stupid disc! He caught it and apologized briefly; then, when I didn't particularly encourage him, rejoined the game with his buddies.
"Kimmie, what the fuck?" Chris was scowling at me, while Katy smiled knowingly.
"Don't even try," she told Chris. "Now, if he came out of that book, she might actually notice that he was hot as fuck!" They both laughed, while going back to checking out all the other hot studs. It was like watching fish school; there was bare skin flashing everywhere. I had no problem understanding the attraction of Spring Break. It was like the air was full of pheromones!
I had worn my bikini, but I was feeling pretty self-conscious, even though I had more 'going on' than either of my friends. Frankly, my boobs mostly embarrassed me. They'd been bigger than any of my class-mates' since eighth grade. I got teased by the boys that year; but from then on, I got hit on. Like, all the time! I'd had a few boyfriends, of course. They mostly wanted to get at my tits, but I 'put out' too, so I was pretty popular in high school. I had decided, college was going to be different. Now, here I was at Spring Break in Daytona, and the compliments (and the leers and the comments) were coming fast and furious.
That was yesterday. Both girls had hooked up at the dance party on the pool deck, and I spent the night alone in our room until about 2:00AM, when they both barged in, laughing and rehashing their evening of debauchery. I had been sound asleep, a fact they didn't seem to acknowledge until I screamed at them to shut up and go to bed.
"Oh, shhhhh, shhhhh," Katy laughed. "Kimmie is having a wild night with her fantasies!" They thought it hilarious that I was sleeping in my cotton nightie. As I got up to get a glass of water, Chris had plucked at my shirt bottom and told me to 'tone down the sexiness before we have to get a fire extinguisher from the hallway!' Funny, yeah. Not!
Well, they were still asleep in bed together this morning, probably nursing a pair of massive hangovers. I had gotten up and, there being no Continental breakfast offered, headed out and down the sidewalk to find some. Good old Waffle House was half a block down; always one of my favorites, anyway. Unfortunately, it must have been everyone else's, as well. Finally a table opened up and, though it was just me, I grabbed it for myself. I certainly didn't want to sit at the counter. As I said, masks were nowhere to be seen by then.
The waitress mosied over and got out her pad. "You need a few to look at the menu, sweetie?" she asked. At least she was masked! She didn't look much older than me, probably 25. Working temporary, I figured, making a little extra while she took evenings off to party. I ordered and then left my mask dangling from one ear as I stirred sugar into my coffee. When she returned with creamers, she looked more closely at me.
"Ah, there you are," she joked. I smiled and grabbed a creamer packet. "I'm smiling, if you can't tell," she said, and as if to prove a point, reached up and unhooked her mask to show me. "I'm Kate," she said.
She had a very nice smile. She was cute, with short black hair teased up and combed forward over her forehead, cut very short at the sides. She looked like a model, in that he was thin and very chic looking. "That's funny," I told her, "one of my roommates is named Kate," I told her, and smiled at her again.
We had a nice little conversation, broken up by her almost constantly moving off to other tables, topping off coffee cups and distributing orders. She kept apologizing.
"I'm sorry, it's just mayhem right now," she said. I told her it was no problem. Actually, I had brought my book with me, but decided I wasn't going to get to relax and read, once I saw the crowd in here. It was on the table, though. Kate reached over me for it. "What's this? A new one by John Grisham?"
"Just came out, I think," I said. "I picked it up in the airport, coming in."
She flipped a few pages, scanned the pages, and handed it back to me. "I love Grisham," she said. Just then she was called to pick up my order, so we got to talk a little bit more. Where was I from, how did I like Spring Break so far, where were my roommates -- those kinds of questions, on her part. I found out she was originally from Baltimore, already had a BA in sculpture, and was staying here because of a residency grant from a local arts community.
