Bratty Exhibitionist: The Dare

I am a brat, and brats do not turn down dares. We accept them, we escalate them, and then we pretend we had no idea things would go that far. So when a guy I was seeing bet me, on a warm evening at the beach boardwalk, that I did not have the nerve to walk the whole pier with no bra under my top, I looked him dead in the eye and said, you are on. I am a bratty exhibitionist at heart, and that bet was the best thing that happened to me all summer.

The top was the problem, or the solution, depending on how you look at it. It was thin, white, and completely unforgiving in the best way. I ducked into the boardwalk restroom, peeled off my bra, stuffed it in my bag, and walked out feeling the evening air in places that had not felt it all day. He took one look at me and immediately tried to take the bet back. Too late, baby. A deal is a deal.

The boardwalk at dusk is packed. Families with ice cream, teenagers on skateboards, old couples holding hands, street musicians, the whole beautiful chaos of it. And there I was, strolling through the middle of it in a top that left absolutely nothing to the imagination, with my guy walking next to me like a man escorting a live grenade. Every few steps I would stretch my arms up like I was enjoying the sunset, or I would lean over the railing to look at the water, and I could feel his panic radiating off him in waves.

The deal was this. If we made it from one end of the boardwalk to the other without anyone obviously staring, he won, and I owed him dinner. If someone noticed, and I mean really noticed, I won, and he owed me whatever I wanted. He thought he was safe. He thought people were too polite. He did not know that I had absolutely no intention of being subtle.

Halfway down the pier, I stopped at a funnel cake stand. The guy working there was around our age, cute, doing that bored summer-job lean on the counter. I ordered, and when he handed me the funnel cake, I leaned forward just a little to take it, and I watched his eyes go exactly where I knew they would go. He stared. He tried not to stare. He failed completely. Behind me, my date made a strangled sound.

I turned around with powdered sugar on my chin and the most innocent expression I have ever worn in my life, and I said, I think someone noticed. My date looked like he wanted to melt into the pavement. The funnel cake guy was still staring. I took a big bite, licked sugar off my lip slowly, and kept walking.

By the time we reached the end of the pier, I had collected at least four more obvious stares, one double-take from a jogger who nearly ran into a trash can, and a very appreciative nod from a street saxophone player. I won the bet so thoroughly it was not even close. My date was quiet, which for him meant he was completely undone, and when I asked what I had won, he just grabbed my hand and started walking fast toward the parking lot.

He did not even make it out of the parking lot. He pulled me between two parked cars, pressed me up against his door, and kissed me like the entire boardwalk had been one long countdown. His hands went straight to exactly what had caused all the trouble, cupping me through that thin top, thumbs finding me through the fabric, and I moaned into his mouth because I had been wound up for an hour too. He yanked the top up right there in the parking lot, bent his head down, and took me into his mouth like he had been starving for it since the restroom.

I have never been touched in a parking lot with that much urgency in my life. He had my shorts down and me bent over the hood of his car within minutes, and the metal was warm from the sun, and his hands were everywhere, and when he pushed into me I cried out loud enough that somebody's car alarm went off. He did not slow down. He just kept driving into me, telling me I was the most trouble he had ever met, and I laughed breathlessly because he was right and we both knew it.

After, sitting in his car with my top finally back in place and my hair a wreck, he said the bet had been a terrible idea. I said it had been a wonderful idea. I said next time, the bet should be bigger. He looked at me with a mix of fear and hunger that I have come to recognize as my favorite expression on a man's face, and he asked what I had in mind.

I have not told him yet. I am letting him wonder. A brat always keeps one dare in reserve, and mine is going to make the boardwalk look like a church picnic.