Tubing: an Infinite Summer Story

Farewell, WBS Apparel.

In the summer of 2024, my good friends at

The Double Dealer

collaborated with my other good friends at WBS Apparel to create Infinite Summer, a summer-themed poolside reader, and put out an open call for submissions. Alongside that was a contest: the publishers’ favorite stories would be placed at the front of the magazine and the authors would win WBS Apparel swag. Naturally, I had to enter. I wrote my entry the same night the poolside reader was announced.

Sadly, the closing of 2024 also saw the closing of WBS Apparel. As the Infinite Summer poolside reader is out of print and their merchandise is no longer in production, I was given permission by the editor of The Double Dealer, my friend

T.R. Hudson

, to share my submission with my subscribers.

This story, Tubing, placed third in the contest and won me a gift card, with which I bought a sweet pair of their eye-catching sunglasses. Jim, Chet, Max, Kurt, and Dom, I am looking forward to seeing what you all do and build next. Thanks for the memories, the magazine, and the glasses.

They don’t make these anymore.

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Tubing

My bros and I wake up early on Saturday. My head’s pounding, we were celebrating the end of the semester up until about three hours ago, but nothing’s stopping us. Junior year’s over. I have a precious few days before I’m expected back home in Corpus to work at my dad’s shop. The guys all say they’ll come down next weekend so we can hit the beach. But today is about tubing.

We throw on swim trunks and tank tops. The tubes go in the back of Tim’s RAV4 and then we fill the coolers. After the fuck-up with the big cooler last year, we came around to getting a few of those personal-sized inflatable ones.

We get creative with the booze because cans and bottles are banned at the Guadalupe. I pour a couple fingers of whiskey into a CamelBak bottle and brim it with Coke. The bros used to make fun of me for the frozen pre-mixed margaritas and fuzzy navels but I’ve made believers out of them. Packs of beef jerky and a ziplock bag with smokes and a lighter go on top.

The drive takes two hours. It’s hot by the time we get to New Braunfels. We blow up our tubes while we stand in line for the bus to the river entrance. The heat radiates off the pavement and the bus smells like diesel. But the water in the Guadalupe is always cold. Looking forward to that.

Since we have our own tubes, we skip the rental line. But we get a locker to hold our phones and stuff. I lash the tube and cooler together and get cozy. Headache disappears instantly. I lay back and put my hat over my face. I think about how the water particles move together for a short time and then disperse into the environment.

A bump. I sit up in my tube. I’m at the traffic jam before the first chute. I was out for about forty-five minutes. I can’t see any of my bros. That doesn’t bother me. This float has a designated start and stop.

Things open out after the chute. I drag my stuff up the concrete steps to the first rest stop, with the picnic tables, wondering if the bros are waiting here. They’re not. I sit down and dig my smokes out. She asks if she can have one.

I look up. She’s my age, cute face, dirty-blonde hair cut above her shoulders. Can’t help but notice her body in her olive-green bikini. I slide a couple of cigarettes out of the pack and tell her one of them is hers if she sits down. She does. I light up and tell her my name. She says hers is Alison.

I ask what she’s doing here alone. She says she lost her friends and she feels dumb for not bringing her phone. She doesn’t trust those waterproof carriers they sell. I don’t either. She’s eyeing my cooler and I can tell she’s thirsty. I tell her to help herself. When she reaches down, I see a tattoo of the back half of an arrow, as if it’s pierced between her shoulder blades.

“Oh, my God,” she says. “A fuzzy navel?”

I tell her she’s welcome to it. I pick up the CamelBak bottle. It’s gotten a little bit warm because this cooler doesn’t actually insulate for shit and when I open the nozzle a jet of foam shoots straight up in the air and she laughs. We drink and share a bag of jerky. She’s ready to look for her friends. So am I.

We tie our tubes together. She drinks my booze and shares my smokes and I tell her she’s running up a tab. She promises to pay. Things get a little blurry after that. At this part of the river, everyone’s buzzed. It’s noisier, but everyone’s having fun.

I catch a prickly and piney smell and I ask loudly who’s puffing and not passing. People laugh. Someone’s got a speaker and Alison and I sing along to “Drive” by Incubus. A dude is standing up on his tube and throwing cherries at people out of a Tupperware. I catch one and I give it to her. She says it’s been soaked in Everclear.

At the second rest stop we lay on the grass. She wants to give me her number. There’s a bicycle cop with a pen and notepad. Alison’s handwriting’s going out the window. Mine would be, too. I stick the paper in the cooler. A distant thought tells me to put it in the bag with the smokes, but it will be fine.

I’m past buzzed when we get back in the water. We wade out chest-deep and I have one hand on our tubes and the other around her waist and I stop to kiss her. I lift her up. She weighs nothing in the river. The Guadalupe is always cold but I still remember the smooth warmth of her thighs around my waist.

My tingling fingertips run along her back under the strap of her top and I ask her why she has an arrow tattoo. She tells me when you get shot with an arrow, the worst thing you can do is pull it back out and you have to push it all the way through. She doesn’t elaborate. We hold hands the rest of the way.

At the exit, she finds her friends and tells me goodbye. I promise to text her. I look for the bros but they arrive after me and I realize we probably passed them up at the second rest stop. I empty the cooler of trash and find the paper reduced to pulp, no digits recognizable. I never see her again.

I have an incredible summer. But I think a lot about how she and I, two drops of water, moved together down the river for a moment.

And the Guadalupe is always cold.