They put the boat into the Wando at the neighborhood ramp and set off in the direction of the Ravenel Bridge. The Allman Brothers blasted over the speakers, but once they got moving, Tipsy heard nothing but the engine. She smiled up at the cloudless blue sky through her sunglasses. The combination of hot sun on her shoulders, cold beer on her tongue, and glancing droplets of salty water on her shoulders made her shiver. For the first time in over a week, she felt pretty darn good, as if her supernatural hangover had finally worn off. They passed under the Ravenel Bridge and she wondered if the drivers above watched Will’s boat and thought, oh how lucky! It was her turn to feel fine, and thank the good lord, she did.
They pulled onto the beach at Morris Island after cruising back and forth to find a space to squeeze in and drop the anchor.
“Whoa,” she said to Will as she eyeballed the boats crammed in on the shore and anchored just off it. “I haven’t been out here in years.”
“You mean you and Ayers didn’t bring the kids out here?”
“Right, because it’s so family friendly.” Something about his choice of the biggest public party scene in town worried her. “I don’t know, Will. Maybe we should just cruise up the intercoastal?”
He laughed. “It’s only one day, baby. The best part is the people watching.”
“Oh, I’m watching.”
Beer flowed and the sun shone, and despite her initial trepidation, she relaxed. Unlike Tipsy, no one out here seemed to have a care in the world, and it was contagious. The partiers skewed toward their mid-to-late twenties, but Tipsy’s thirty-plus generation made a loud and proud showing by blasting the classics, like the Notorious B.I.G. Some revelers wandered the beach, while others stood in the water with red plastic cups and bottles in koozies. A few diehards sipped from flasks. The boats anchored off the beach tied up to other like-minded vessels, sometimes half a dozen in a row. Music blared from at least fifty conflicting speaker systems.
On the boats, men sang at the top of their lungs while women climbed onto the fiberglass tops and perched precariously on railings, shaking and swerving in ways that were sexy on some but downright embarrassing and scary on more. Tipsy found herself standing on the bench seat of Will’s boat, bopping up and down to some pop country song she’d heard a dozen times but couldn’t place, and waving her beer over her head. She leaned over and kissed Will’s hair as he reached into the cooler, and then said to Mimi on the bench beside her, “Lord, sister, if only Ayers and Jimmy could see us now.”
“I know.” Mimi giggled. Tipsy hadn’t glimpsed her inhaler all day. “This is the most fun I’ve had in forever.”
“Moms gone wild!” shouted Shelby, who was not a mom, but didn’t seem to make that connection after slurping down a few Jell-o shots.
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