Fishing in Beirut

Aria and Laura were at the beach, finished with school for the summer, and with only one year left to go. Suburban girls from San Jose. They stretched in the sunshine, the sand soft and delicate, the sky clear and blue. Five minutes earlier some guys had ineffectively flirted with them.
“When I go to Paris I’ll live there till I die.”
Aria laughed at Laura’s certainty. She curled her toes in the sand and worked out the exam stress, no more need for study before the fall semester began. It was fun to imagine the summer lasting forever.
They applied more sun cream and turned over. The music they were playing was Surfer Girl. Days and weeks could be spent this way, on the sand and by the water, with The Beach Boys on the stereo and the evenings cool and free. Aria noticed some older guy observing them.
He drifted off when she sat up, but when Laura went swimming he approached again. He was quite handsome, unusually tall. He said she’d make a great model. That he was a talent scout on this beach and he might have found the one. You could always come along and see if you like it. She wasn’t an idiot she scoffed, and he produced his ID and card. Straight up modelling he promised, departing.
By evening Aria had still kept the secret. Hadn’t mentioned the guy at all on the bus ride home. In her room she looked at the card again, saying his number aloud and laughing at the idea. The guy was just a dick, but maybe he wasn’t.
She stared straight ahead, imagining the life of a model. The guy had said she was the prettiest, sexiest thing. No one had spoken like this before, not the boys she had kissed or her mother. To be sexy was a new thing to be.