The Sea Ain't Mine Alone

by Beaumont, C. L.

  8

  Sydney paces in the sand, sinking his bare feet deep into the soft, cool grains while he wills his hands to stay still by his sides. His mind is on fire. Since yesterday morning, he hasn’t stopped going over every detail of his morning surf with Jimmy Campbell—trying to figure out where he went wrong, where he went right.

  Out of all the snippets of yesterday playing on an endless loop in his mind—Jimmy’s surprised, soft eyes when Sydney started telling him about the ocean, Jimmy’s quietly indrawn breath when their shins brushed against each other beneath the water, his gritted-teeth determination as he tirelessly surfed wave after wave, his fierce look of burning resentment that he lobbed at Sydney as he finally walked away—one thought rises above the rest:

  If he comes today, don’t fuck it up.

  Sydney knows it is nothing short of a miracle, an absolute miracle, that he even got Jimmy to go out surfing with him yesterday after that train wreck at the dockyard. Sydney still doesn’t even quite know what went wrong.

  Here he’d kept Jimmy’s possession safe, and driven all the way to his work, and dressed up nicely so he wouldn’t embarrass Jimmy in front of his coworkers with them thinking he was talking to some young, naïve surfer punk. He’d handed back the bullet without a word—no judgement, no questions. Sydney isn’t sure what he’d even been expecting in return. Not anything too grand, certainly, not after what happened that night on the beach. Not even a smile, really. Just . . . something.

  And instead he’d stood there feeling like a dumb kid while Jimmy pushed back his shoulders and glinted hard at Sydney in defiance, seemingly completely unaware of the way Sydney had to control his breathing just looking at him all drenched in sweat with tan muscles bulging and chest heaving and a little smear of grease right along his freckled cheekbone. Instead he’d been left completely unmoored by Jimmy’s quiet admission, coupled with a fleeting, black pain in his deep blue eyes—“This isn’t just a game for me.”

  But for a moment, one shining, glorious moment, Jimmy had given him that look of wonder that he gave Sydney on the pier, even while his lips had formed the words, “You infuriate me.”

  Their hands had joined. They’d touched each other in the palm for far too long, and Sydney knows he can’t be the only one who’d felt the electric current run through the thick, salty air around them.

  And then Jimmy had come back the next morning, exactly like he said he would. And he hadn’t made fun of Sydney’s bizarre tattoo like so many people had before him, or asked a thousand questions about it. And he’d unzipped his jacket and bared himself before Sydney in the soft dawn air, scars and all, and run breathlessly after him into the waves.

  So now he’s pacing on the shore at 6:25 am and running a hand through his curls on repeat, hoping against hope that Jimmy’s final “fuck you” the day before hadn’t been quite as permanent as it had sounded.

  Something moves out of the corner of his eye, and his breath catches in his chest when he turns to see Jimmy Campbell walking calmly toward him across the sand, perfectly on time. Sydney immediately stands up straight and rolls back his shoulders, trying to school the surprise off his face.

  Jimmy’s hair ripples softly in the breeze, glinting in the shimmering, grey light of sunrise. His legs underneath a short pair of red running shorts are steady and loose, completely devoid of all their usual thick tension. Sydney clenches his fist against the imaginary urge to run his fingers through the soft, blonde hair covering sturdy, tan skin.

  The breeze picks up, blowing locks of frizzy curls over Sydney’s eyes. By the time he successfully sweeps his hair back from his face, Jimmy’s standing beside him, looking out at the ocean.

  “You came,” Sydney says. He prides himself that his voice doesn’t come out breathless and giddy.

  Jimmy shrugs his shoulders underneath his pullover and crosses his arms over his chest. “Yeah, well—figured you’d have nothing to do today if you didn’t have me yelling at you for something, so I thought I’d save Los Angeles from the carnage you’d wreak on it if you were left to yourself.”

  It’s an apology for the end of yesterday, Sydney sees. A guilt-ridden admission cloaked in a poor joke. Sydney tears his eyes away from the tips of Jimmy’s eyelashes and gazes out at the water while clearing his throat, forcing the corners of his lips not to smile too widely.

  “A solid plan. Wouldn’t want that policeman friend of yours to arrest me before I can impart all my surfing wisdom to you.”

  Jimmy looks up at him with his arms still crossed, a look of exasperated bafflement in his eyes. “How the fuck do you know Rob’s a cop?”

  Sydney doesn’t meet his gaze and shrugs. “Can’t force me to give away all my secrets, can you? Anyway, we’re wasting time. You have the day off today, judging by the general lack of ‘dead man walking’ about you this morning, but I imagine you’re still hoping to spend the afternoon with him after he gets off his shift, and I’m hoping we can fit in this run before we bake in the sun and smog. So, ready?”

  Jimmy’s shaking his head slowly and groaning under his breath. He doesn’t respond. Finally he turns and starts walking in the direction of the nearby lifeguard tower, pulling his sweatshirt over his head as he goes to reveal a white tank top. He balls up the sweatshirt and throws it up in the tower, then, without a glance back at Sydney, starts running at a brisk pace down the beach, bare feet kicking up loose sand until he turns down towards the wet, compact sand of the shoreline.

  Sydney bolts after him, already left behind. He breathes a secret sigh of relief that Jimmy started running south towards Redondo instead of north towards the insanity that is Venice Beach. Something about this run already feels private, even though Jimmy’s just run off and started it without him, and the thought of sharing it with swarms and hordes of muscle men and sideshow carnies makes him feel a bit nauseous. No—Redondo beach will be almost empty this early. It’s perfect. Jimmy’s a genius.

  Jimmy runs smooth and steady along the shore, head barely bobbing up and down as he glides. He’s a natural runner, calm and loose and easy. His shorts fly up with every step to reveal thick thigh muscles, pale above his tan line. Sydney’s eyes slowly trace down his legs to his calves, already dripping in clinging, wet sand being kicked up by his toes. Sydney feels ridiculous chasing after him with his halting, gangly stride, and then scoffs at himself for even caring in the first place. Jimmy shoots a glance his way when Sydney finally catches up, already breathing a bit hard from his initial sprint. Sydney gives a quick nod.

  They run in easy silence for a mile. A quiet calm settles over Sydney’s body as they breathe side by side. It’s as if the only thing his mind can think about is one foot in front of the other, timing his lungs with the man beside him. He feels a thousand pounds lighter. It’s glorious.

  “You’re unbelievable, you know,” Jimmy finally says over his steady, even breaths. “Do you actively try to be a smug know-it-all all the time or does it just come naturally to you?”

  There’s a hint of a smile behind his words, and Sydney unexpectedly huffs a laugh. The sound of his own chuckle catches him off guard, and it takes him a few strides to catch his breath again.

  “Ah, you know,” he says, exaggeratedly serious, “I’ve got a reputation to maintain, haven’t I?”

  Jimmy doesn’t laugh back. Instead he hums distractedly and cocks his head to the side, frowning a bit at the stretch of untouched sand ahead of them.

  Sydney doesn’t need to work too hard to guess what he’s thinking about—probably repeating the choicest phrases from his circle of so-called friends the other day before their round at the competition, warning him of the dangers of Danny Moore. Sydney didn’t even have to be close enough to hear them talking to know what was probably said. He’s heard it all plenty of times before. The knowledge of this makes him feel strangely desperate.

  Here, now, running on the beach next to Jimmy Campbell with nobody else to see, he wants to do something different, to prove to Jimmy th
at he isn’t like that. Not really. Not all the time. To tell him that he likes Coca-Cola better than Pepsi, and can play the ukulele, and that he once wiped out into some coral and barely missed shredding his knee—words that he’s never before strung together into sentences even in the depths of his mind.

  But then the prospect of revealing himself so thoroughly feels like being stripped naked in front of a crowd, and he nearly shivers at even the thought of opening his mouth.

  The silence settles over them again, thick and heavy as they pass by a narrower stretch of beach, abutted on their left by a high, rocky cliff leading up to a portion of the coastline highway and lined with swaying palm trees. A plane on its way to LAX flies low overhead, momentarily drowning out the sound of the waves. When it finally passes, Jimmy speaks.

  “Rob told me the other night that the sunglasses are kind of your thing,” he says out of nowhere. “Never seen without ‘em.”

  Sydney frowns. It’s the last thing he expected Jimmy to say. It sounds like an accusation, yet another thing to have to defend against, and his skin starts to prickle under under what feels a lot like poorly-masked scrutiny.

  “Well I have to keep something private if every competition I turn up at I’m always going to be such a topic of discussion,” he responds, voice hard. It’s a pointed dig at Jimmy’s earlier recollections of his pre-heat talk with his friends, and they both know it.

  “Keep what private—your eye color?” Jimmy huffs out.

  “No. My expressions, reactions.” The implied “obviously” hangs heavily in the air.

  Jimmy looks over at him, and Sydney forces himself to meet his gaze as they continue to stride across the wet sand. He startles when he sees that Jimmy’s eyes are soft.

  “Sorry, I—I didn’t mean it like that,” Jimmy says. “Guess I just meant . . . or I was gonna ask. . . you don’t wear them around me.”

  Sydney’s heart pounds in his chest, even harder than it already is. That sensation of being stripped naked returns, prickling hotly across his skin.

  “That’s completely untrue,” he says, forcing a casualness into his voice. “You saw me wear them at the ISF, and then you can hardly have expected me to be wearing them at night like some idiot.”

  Sydney trails off, knowing that any other points he could make are useless. He hasn’t been wearing them, and he hadn’t even fucking noticed. He feels flayed open and raw. It’s maddening that such a simple thing as a pair of goddamn sunglasses is turning him into a deer in headlights, somehow caught and exposed.

  His mind races, aborted sentences dying on his lips as he struggles to come up with a better, cleverer, less immature response when he suddenly feels Jimmy’s warm hand briefly grip his upper arm. It knocks the wind out of him. The soft, anchoring pads of his fingers.

  “I wear full wetsuits in July. I get it,” Jimmy says quietly, a self-deprecating smile drooping on his lips. He slows down a little to get the words out without gasping.

  Sydney holds his breath for three strides and swallows. All he can do is nod.

  Jimmy slows further to a jog and then finally stops as they come around another bend, opening up onto an enclosed stretch of pristine beach. He crosses his hands behind his neck in a gesture that Sydney now finds oddly familiar as they both pant for breath.

  Sydney stops and leans over his legs, cursing himself for being so out of shape when it comes to just straight running. He wipes his forearm over the early morning sweat forming across his brow, blocking his sight so he can’t watch Jimmy’s shorts cling to the backs of his thighs as he bends to stretch his hamstrings. He stares at his feet until Jimmy stands upright again. He can feel Jimmy’s deep blue eyes on him, furrowed in thought.

  “I can’t seem to shake the habit of wanting to fight with you every moment,” Jimmy finally says to the sky. The truth of the statement pings Sydney deep in his gut, but he forces himself to huff out a sharp laugh as he straightens his spine.

  “I’m sure you’re not alone in that sentiment,” he replies. He swings his arms once behind his back before continuing, “And besides, you’re a soldier. You’re supposed to fight.”

  Sydney expects a chuckle, but James lets out a harsh sigh. “I’m just a sailor,” he says, nearly whispering. “Well, was a sailor.”

  Sydney hears the sudden darkness in Jimmy’s voice and turns to look at him, shocked at how the energy of their run, the vibrant life in his eyes, could fade away so quickly. Now, Jimmy looks limp and small, staring out at the waves while his body sways gently with the wind. Sydney can feel deep in his veins that this moment is important somehow. That his response to this is the most important thing he’ll ever say.

  “Look,” Sydney clears his throat. “The way I see it, you flew halfway around the world, put on a uniform, and got shot at,” he says. His breath catches in his throat when Jimmy’s eyes meet his, full and desperate like he’s dying to hear what else he’ll say. Sydney presses his own thumbnail into his palm and looks out at the horizon. “I’d say that makes you a soldier.”

  Jimmy blinks hard and bends down to sit in the sand, scooting once to the side in a silent offer for Sydney to sit beside him. The breeze brushes gently against their sweaty backs, mixing with the fresh salt air coming off the waves. The scent of Jimmy and the salt of the sea fills Sydney’s nose as he continues to recover from the run. He feels on edge, fragile and tense and waiting with bated breath—for what, he has absolutely no idea. Just when the silence becomes unbearable, when Sydney thinks that he’s gone and said all the wrong things, Jimmy speaks.

  “I’ve never talked to anyone about the war. Ever,” he whispers.

  Sydney can hardly breathe. He can feel the heat radiating out from the man beside him, can feel as the tops of their arms brush together when they shift and move in the soft, warm sand.

  It’s almost unbearably intimate, sitting here side by side at the edge of the earth—as if every breath coming from Jimmy’s lips is traveling straight to his own, like he can taste Jimmy’s words on the tip of his own tongue. He forces himself to be patient, not to interrupt. Jimmy’s voice when he speaks again is low and trembling, like warm, amber honey filling all the silence in Sydney’s ears.

  “They warned us about that,” Jimmy goes on. “At the Navy hospital, when they were coming around getting people ready to be discharged. Said that people wouldn’t be . . . receptive, when we came back here to the States. All those war protests and shit people are doing up in ‘Frisco and D.C. and places.”

  Sydney glaringly notices he didn’t say, “when we came home”.

  Jimmy licks his lips and lets out a shaky breath, running his fingers through his sweat-damp hair as he stares blankly into the distance, seeing something out there in the swelling froths of water that Sydney knows he never will.

  “But, the thing is, they tell you all that, all the statistics and where to try to find a job and how much money you need to live, and they don’t even tell you what it’s like to feel . . . to feel like a fucking old man and a teenager at the same time. Right? Like you’ve seen more shit than most people see in eighty years, seen people die on the ground, just drop and breathe their last breath right in front of you even though you’re the last person on earth they’d ever choose to die in front of, and you were just playing poker with them six hours ago and talking about their girl they got back home. But then out you come out of the jungle dragging their—their bones behind you and you’re still stuck the same way you were when you first stepped onto the fucking boat. No change at all. Nobody tells you what to do about that.”

  The defeat in Jimmy’s voice is absolutely unbearable. Sydney has the completely unprecedented urge to wrap his arms around him and pull him down under his own body, shielding him from the air. Then he remembers that that would only choke him, fill his lungs with saltwater and sand.

  He waits. Jimmy keeps talking as if the only person even listening to him is the restless sea.

  “And then there’s surfing,” he says, his voice
a bit clearer. “I’ve been doing it my whole life, I mean, minus some years in the middle, but it’s so fucking stupid. Just hop on this plank of wood and float on the water, and the earth will just randomly decide for you whether you’re gonna have a good time or not. Nobody else gets to decide that for you. It’s just you and the earth. It’s just that. It doesn’t . . . mean anything for other people, do anything good for anyone. Not even a team sport. It’s just . . . selfish. But I still do it. I swim out there, and I don’t make any decisions, and I just float around on some wood for a couple hours every day instead of actually doing something with my life. And you know what?” Jimmy clears his throat as his voice threatens to break, then powers through. “I don’t feel any age at all when I’m surfing. Nothing. I just feel like I’m alive.”

  He shuts his mouth, takes a deep breath in through his nose, then rolls back his neck. The silence is electric. Jimmy runs a hand roughly over his face and sniffs softly.

  Sydney can tell he’s on the verge of crying, and furiously trying not to. He’s shocked at the weight of these words. Breathless and guilty with the dawning realization that he’s the first person to ever hear them. A long-forgotten memory, hazy around the edges, pops into his head, and his mouth starts speaking before he can even decide to share it or not.

  “Lahela always used to tell me ‘Ukuli'i ka pua, onaona i ka mau'u.’ The flower may be tiny, but it scents the grasses around it.”

  Jimmy’s head pops up immediately at the sounds leaving Sydney’s lips. “Wait—who?”

  “Lahela. My mother.”

  Sydney suddenly freezes, piercingly aware that it’s the first time he’s ever referred to Lahela using that word.

  Jimmy doesn’t appear to notice, but scrunches his eyes as he stares at the side of Sydney’s face. “You’re really half-Hawaiian?” he asks incredulously, tears on his cheeks momentarily forgotten.

  Sydney forces himself to shrug and continues to look out at the water. “Well, step-mom. Anyway, I always used to roll my eyes at that.”