“This is ridiculous.”

“Oh, so now you’re having second thoughts, after we drove all the way here.”

“Well, yeah, because I only just now really realize how dumb of an idea this is.”

“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to try new things. This is new things. And it’s not like it’s anything dangerous or actually stupid.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“Psh, you’ll get over it. Besides, if you just act normal you’re not really gonna draw any attention to yourself. Nobody will notice.”

“Oh, come on, I don’t look that much like a boy, do I?” Emily tugged at the collar of her shirt and looked down. “I mean, I know there’s not a whole lot to look at here, but… Still.”

Her friend Rachel, sitting in the driver’s seat to her left, looked over at her with a shrug. “Sure, up close it’s pretty obvious, but from a distance, it’s like I said. Trust me. Just stay cool and don’t do anything weird, and nobody’s gonna think something’s up.”

“But… The hair would kinda give it away, wouldn’t it? You don’t really see guys styling their hair like this…”

“Sure you do. Maybe not… exactly like that, but there’s lots of guys that go for the curtains-and-ponytail look you’ve got going on. Usually shorter in the front, sure, but it’ll be fine.”

Emily held her head in one hand for a moment, eventually speaking up with a groan. “Fine. Screw it. You’re never gonna stop bugging me about this, so let’s just get it over with.” Pulling her shirt off and bunching it up in her hands, she turned to look out the window and added, “I’m so gonna regret this, aren’t I?”

“Only one way to find out,” Rachel said as she opened her door and stepped out. “So come on.”

With a sigh, Emily got out of the car herself, leaving her shirt behind and cautiously looking around to ensure that she wasn’t being gawked at. Her slim, athletic body had drawn a lot of eyes all throughout high school, but now there was much more to see with her only coverings being sandals and an old pair of swim trunks she’d acquired from her boyfriend.

Finding nobody so much as passing by, she took a deep breath and tried to look natural as she walked around Rachel’s car so they could both head down to the beach, pretending to be a normal couple enjoying a day off.

With her eyes focused on the path ahead, Emily tried not to worry too much about the fact that this was anything but normal, choosing instead to hope that she wasn’t drawing attention to her half-dressed self. And that Rachel wouldn’t catch too many eyes either, considering that she was only wearing a bikini with a short loose skirt and fully-unbuttoned shirt. Typical beachwear, sure, and on its own nothing particularly special to look at… But surely people would find her curves to be worth checking out – Emily’s appearance had always been fairly popular in her experience, after all, and Rachel was of a similar build but with quite a bit more of what boys actually seemed to be interested in.

So hopefully Emily could do a good enough job at pretending that she wasn’t a topless girl that people looking her way because of her friend wouldn’t notice how exposed she was. Rachel seemed to be leading her onwards through the sand just yards away from the nearest people, so there would certainly be plenty of eyes on them as they wandered around.

“See, this isn’t so bad, is it?” Rachel reached out to pat Emily on the back as they kept walking.

“Easy for you to say,” Emily replied. “You’re not half naked.”

“Will you stop worrying about that? Nobody’s noticed yet, have they?” She waited for Emily to shake her head before continuing. “And nobody’s going to if you don’t make a scene. Just chill and it’ll be fine. All we’re gonna do is go find somewhere quiet to get you that picture you said Leon wanted, and then head right back.”

“Good. I still think this is crazy, but if it won’t take too long…”

Rachel looked over at her with a skeptical expression. “It was your crazy idea.”

“Yeah, and nobody tried to talk me out of it. Shit, everyone encouraged it.”

“Well I thought it might be fun. And, y’know, it doesn’t really take a genius to figure out why Leon was on board with this…”

“He could have seen the same thing in private if he just asked,” Emily muttered.

“Maybe, but going out in public like this is what makes it exciting.”

“I guess.” Then Emily was silent for several minutes, focusing mainly on not looking too nervous as the two girls walked through the sand. She spoke up again once she noticed another reason to be uncomfortable. “Hey, you know if there’s a bathroom around here somewhere?”

“Uh, yeah, right over there,” Rachel said, at first straight-faced as she pointed over to the ocean before breaking down and chuckling instead.

But Emily shook her head. “No way. Not walking past all those people like this just to pee.”

“Well then I think there’s something up ahead here. Probably gonna be plenty of people around there too, though.”

Emily groaned and stopped walking. “Dammit. Fine,” she said, holding out one hand. “Just gimme my shirt and I guess I’ll go in the water.”

“I don’t have your shirt.”

“What?”

“Yeah, you must have left it in the car, I guess.”

With a sigh, Emily held her head in her hands for a moment. “So, what, then? I don’t figure we’d be able to go back and get it.”

Rachel shrugged. “It’d take a bit of time, yeah, and I’m sure you don’t want to spend any longer doing this than you have to. Come on,” she said, once again patting Emily on the back to resume the walk. “We’ll figure something out.”

Emily said nothing more, again focusing on suppressing any signs of her discomfort, especially now that her bladder was sending clear signals that it wanted to be emptied. Fortunately they weren’t particularly urgent signals, but with everything else already making her nervous she would still need to resolve the situation before very long.

The opportunity to do so presented itself after only a few more minutes, when Rachel stopped and pointed out a building visible on the other side of the nearby dunes. “That’s the bathrooms if you wanna give that a try.”

“Might as well, I guess,” Emily said, straining to peek over or around the mass of sand separating her and the area around the bathrooms. “As long as they’re not too packed. Don’t want too many people seeing this.”

Rachel nodded and followed along as Emily started working her way over in that direction. “Speaking of which, have you got a plan made up yet?”

“What do you mean, a plan?”

“Well I doubt there’s not going to be any people there, and since the whole point of doing this shorts thing is to look like a boy, it might get a little weird.”

“You mean…?”

“Yeah,” Rachel said with a little shrug. “I mean, if you don’t want to draw too much attention to yourself, I’d think you’d wanna do your best to blend in.”

Emily put a hand to her head and groaned. “Oh, God, I hadn’t even thought of that.” With a sigh, she added, “We’ll just see how many people are around.”

So they worked their way over to the boardwalk running alongside various shops and the restroom building, and Emily sighed when she saw that there were no lines to get inside, despite the moderate amount of people milling about. At least she wouldn’t have the awkward experience of using a bathroom full of people.

“Looks like it’s the men’s for you, then,” Rachel said nonchalantly. “If you don’t want people staring.”

“Guess so.” With a sigh, Emily glanced over at Rachel. “You’ll be waiting outside, right?”

“I’ll keep a bit of a distance so it doesn’t look weird, but yeah.”

“Good,” Emily said as she started walking towards the bathroom, trying to keep her nerves from unsettling her stride and hoping that her racing heart wasn’t obvious. She noticed a few people looking at her along the way, but none of them seemed to be interested for more than just a moment to register her presence, and there was nobody to stop her from walking right into the men’s room as if all were normal.

She was able to relax a little bit once she was inside, seeing nobody else and convincing herself that there was nothing to worry about, because it would be easy enough to pretend that she hadn’t gone into the wrong bathroom.

Until she actually tried the stalls, finding both of them to be occupied. Waiting for one to open up was immediately dismissed as an option if she still wanted to go mostly unnoticed, leaving very little available to her. Maybe she could just walk right out and find somewhere to hide in the sand instead, but her bladder was especially eager for the relief it knew to be at hand, so she doubted her ability to hold on for very much longer despite the fact that she wasn’t especially full.

So she reluctantly approached one of the urinals instead, already regretting her decisions even before she had actually done anything.

Once she was standing where she needed to be, she looked around before pulling down on the front of her shorts, at the same time leaning a little forward and getting as close to her target as possible to hopefully minimize the visibility of her anatomy.

Then she focused downwards, keeping an eye on her hands as one held her shorts down and the other went down to try and aim properly. Having no experience whatsoever with what she was trying to do, Emily relied on guesswork as with two fingers she spread her lips, moving those fingers to what felt like the right position before convincing herself to relax and let go…

… Only to see a weak stream falling from between her legs to get absorbed by the inside of her shorts. In a panic she pressed her thighs together to stop the stream, prompting a complaint from her bladder as it was denied the relief she had promised. She used the moment of control to adjust herself, and when she let go again her stream went a little farther forward, but still ended within her shorts, prompting her to hastily continue trying to correct her aim while she peed.

In a few seconds she was able to aim well enough to get some pee directly on the floor rather than in her shorts, and was now certain that she knew how exactly to correct her positioning.

But before she could use that knowledge, the sound of a toilet flushing made her tense up, weakening her stream to once again fall directly downwards as, without thinking, she rushed to pull her shorts back up and tried to  cut her relief off entirely as she stepped away from the urinal and turned to leave before anyone could see the puddles she had made and associate them directly with her.

She could feel that her legs were wet and only getting wetter as she speed-walked outside, feeling little warm trails down the inside of her thighs as she looked around for somewhere to properly take care of what her bladder was already trying to do for her.

The only thing resembling cover she could find was a drinking fountain off to the side, between the bathrooms and the next building, so she headed for it before she had a chance to register how bad of an idea everything was.

Quickly positioning herself so that the fountain could at least partially shield her from the view of people walking past, Emily tried to act normal as she spread her legs, pressed on the button to activate the fountain, and bent over to drink while simultaneously releasing whatever hold she still had on her bladder. She was certain that her face was red enough to look sunburnt, but still she tried not to anything that might seem particularly suspicious.

When she glanced upwards to see if anyone was paying attention to her, she noticed Rachel approaching and seemingly very quickly catching on to what was happening – without a word, Rachel went over to the adjacent mini-shower used for foot-washing, and ran some water over her feet to cover up Emily’s splashing.

Fortunately, Emily ran dry fairly quickly, being able to step away from the water fountain not even half a minute after she started drinking from it. Her face was still red as she got herself away from her puddle and nearer to Rachel.

“Yeah I think I’ve had about enough of this,” she said, plainly but quickly.

“Me too,” Rachel said with a nod. “But just hold on one minute,” she added as she pulled her phone from her pocket, holding it up and moving so that she had a view of Emily facing her with the populated boardwalk in the background. “You did promise your man a picture, so smile for the camera.”

Emily’s response was to quietly and nervously put one hand behind her back, hold up the other with two fingers raised in a narrow V-shape, and bite her lip as she looked away with a crooked smile.

The emulated sound of a camera’s shutter could be heard over the chatter in the background, then Rachel took a moment to check the picture before putting her phone away with a satisfied smile and a nod. “There you go. You want me to send that to him directly, or would it be better coming from you?”

“I don’t think right now is the best time for this.”

“Yeah, you’re right, we can sort it out in the car. And, hey,” Rachel playfully hit Emily in the shoulder as they both set off in the direction they’d come from. “All things considered this went pretty well, didn’t it? I bet you actually kinda liked it.”

“Uh…”

“And I bet Leon’s gonna try to get you to do it again for him, so really this was just a good test run, wouldn’t you say?”

“I mean, I guess so… And, well, now I know I’m gonna have to use the bathroom before taking my shirt off if I’m gonna do this again.”