The Sea Ain't Mine Alone

by Beaumont, C. L.

  Jimmy snorts a quiet laugh next to him, a laugh that means “gee, I can sure imagine that,” and Sydney smiles.

  “Real surprise there, I know. But it didn’t make any sense—it still doesn’t. I mean, the size of a flower has no impact over how much pollen it produces, or whether bees will pollinate that flower and help track the scent to other locations. And how can a flower’s scent rub off on the grass around it? And why in hell should I care? But she would always say it to me whenever I was—”

  Sydney stops immediately. He hadn’t meant to get this far in the story, to reveal this much. He can’t very well tell the man next to him, the hero, that his step-mom whispered that through the thin door to his bedroom on the days he came home with a black eye from school, or missing lunch money, or with another note from his teachers that he skipped class. It all sounds so stupid and childish, so many worlds away from two pro surfers running down a Los Angeles beach.

  Still, Jimmy’s waiting patiently, cheeks still glistening, and Sydney finds he can’t stop even if he wanted to.

  He tries again. “She would always say it to me when I was . . having a rough time, after my father moved us to Oahu. Looking back, I see she was trying to tell me that even the smallest thing can make a big difference. Even the stupidest thing is allowed to make you happy, if you let it. Or something like that. Never quite got the hang of the whole ‘inspirational quote’ hippie trend.”

  He practically feels Jimmy’s slow smile next to him. The thick fog between them clears under the new warmth in Jimmy’s eyes, and Sydney gasps in a breath so deep he feels his lungs stretch out in his chest. He lets it out in tiny sips, silently, so Jimmy won’t hear.

  The newly comfortable silence drags on while Jimmy draws nonsense in the sand with his finger. Sydney finds his internal organs in tune with every cell in Jimmy’s body—every beat of his heart and flex of his muscle. Every thought. Every pulse in perfect symphony with the steady thrum of the waves.

  Finally Jimmy sits up and rolls back his shoulders, casual and competent and put together once more.

  “That’s amazing,” he says out of nowhere. “So you speak Hawaiian?”

  Sydney scoffs. “God, no. Just that phrase. Well, that and ‘he alamakahinu.’”

  “Which means?”

  “A ‘greased forehead.’ Basically someone who kisses ass. She’d lob that one at my younger brother every other day when he discovered he could pit the parents against each other to try and get Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots for Christmas. She saw through his shit in less than an hour, but there goes my father trekking down to the city and buying him the last damn one left in the mall.”

  Sydney hears a rumble next to him and turns just in time to see Jimmy burst out laughing, shoulder brushing against Sydney’s as he leans back in the sand to take a deep breath. He shoots Sydney a smile then, warm and private on the tip of his lips, and Sydney almost closes his eyes and looks away.

  He’s never had a smile like that directed at him. Ever. It almost hurts to look at, like staring straight up into the sun over Oahu without his sunglasses covering his eyes.

  Jimmy clears his throat and pushes to stand, waiting for Sydney to follow suit as he leans down to brush the sand from the back of his thighs and the tops of his feet. Without a word, and with the ghost of that smile still tracing over his lips, Jimmy gestures with his head back down the beach the way they came. He waits for Sydney to take off running beside him this time, and Sydney tries to tamp down the blooming feeling in his chest.

  There’s a sense of doom hovering at his elbow, crouching just to the side of the current happy peace that’s settling warm and soft in his limbs. But then Jimmy Campbell looks over at him as they jog, and the look on his face is just so damn grateful that Sydney would face an entire crowd naked and stripped and exposed if it meant Jimmy would look at him that way again.

  By the time they get back to where they started along Hermosa beach and Jimmy grabs his sweatshirt from the lifeguard stand, the sun is already hot and heavy above them, sizzling across the sand. The rest of the run back had been pleasantly silent, their arms brushing against each other every few steps and neither one bothering to move any further steps apart. Something had been crackling at a low hum between them. Something tense and sweet and thick. And now Sydney finds himself for the first time in his life trying to think of a reason not to say goodbye to somebody.

  Jimmy solves the problem for him by pointing towards the beach showers after running the hem of his tank top over his face.

  “Need to get some of this sweat off my skin before I can walk up the road in public,” he says, already heading towards the building.

  Sydney swallows hard and follows, venturing further into new territory with every step. His eyes track slowly up the back of Jimmy’s body, tank top wet and clinging to every muscle on his back with sweat, thighs tan and glistening, glittering with a dusting of sand, blonde strands plastered to his forehead the same way it had looked at the dockyard.

  The air is suddenly too thin in Sydney’s lungs. Too fragile.

  No one else is inside the dim shower house—it’s still too early for the typical beachgoers with their umbrellas and shovel-toting kids and supermarket paperbacks, and most of the exercise nuts prefer the stretch of beach up north near Venice. Their footsteps echo loudly on the wet concrete floor and walls, which are covered in a muddy layer of wet sand and fill their noses with damp salt. A long, thin window around the top of the room lets weak beams of sunlight into the open communal shower space, illuminating specks of sand and dust swirling in the air.

  Sydney finds himself hovering near the doorway, uncertain and tense, as Jimmy walks calmly inside and strips off his shirt like it’s nothing, heading for the far left of the three shower heads against the wall and flipping it on, testing the water with the tips of his fingers.

  He steps under the spray, and Sydney holds his breath as the water sluices in sheets down Jimmy’s body, clinging to his stomach and the crease between his thighs, causing his shorts to glide along every contour of his skin. Revealing the soft bulge between his legs.

  “You just gonna stand there and watch?” Jimmy says, joking.

  It knocks the wind out of Sydney. He jumps, then hastens inside and strips off his shirt, also leaving on his running shorts. It’s ridiculous. He’s been shirtless in front of hundreds of people—thousands. He’s a champion of a sport where the entire point is to be shirtless. And yet here in this poorly lit, muddy, chlorine scented beach shower, in front of a man who’s already even seen his tattoo up close and gasped at it in wonder, Sydney feels nerves roiling through his gut.

  His fingers tremble as he goes for the far right shower head, and his stomach sinks down into his toes when he realizes it’s broken.

  “This one’s broken,” he says unnecessarily out loud. He wants to kick himself.

  Jimmy just hums, now tipping his head back to let the water run through his hair, down across his face, dripping down the front of his neck and over his Adam’s apple. Sydney swallows and forces himself to move to the middle one closer to Jimmy, hating with every fiber of his being this sensation of being completely out of his depth.

  This isn’t Danny Moore, showing up to a major international surf competition to a stunned and awestruck crowd, blowing surfers from all over the world out of the water. This isn’t Danny Moore, silently scanning the surface of the ocean, figuring out the force and timing of an upcoming set of waves by sight alone while the hushed beach anxiously waits, hearts in their throats while their hands shield the sun from their eyes.

  No—this is just him, plain old Sydney Moore from bumfuck-nowhere Iowa with the armful of books and the weird name, standing in a shower just one foot away from Jimmy Campbell. Just him trying to force his goddamn hands not to shake as he turns on the water and lets it slap sharp and icy against his skin, blasting away the salt and sand while it gradually warms.

  Jimmy suddenly hums next to him as the now-hot water pounds aga
inst his back, massaging sore muscles. It winds its way along the concrete walls. And just like that, it’s the most erotic thing Sydney’s ever heard.

  A horrifying warmth starts to pool in the pit of his gut, and he presses his forehead against the freezing concrete wall to try and blast some sense, any sense at all, back into his brain. He takes a slow breath under the spray and assumes the stance of Danny, shoulders back and chin high, chest puffed out. Jimmy’s probably showered in front of tons of other men in the Navy. He’s faced a bullet and won. Faced ‘the Danny Moore’ on the starting line of a surf competition unexpectedly and didn’t even blink an eyelash. So surely Sydney can handle a fucking post-run shower.

  But then Jimmy turns so that his back is to Sydney, and takes a slow step back so his shoulders are just inches from Sydney’s clenched chest, and any attempt to retain a hold on his usual, unflappable persona becomes instantly null and void.

  They both realize at exactly the same moment just how close they’re standing.

  There’s a mutually held breath hovering in the room like a secret. A bomb waiting to drop. The water hisses over both of their half-naked bodies and echoes softly across the floor, a steady trickle of wet slaps on concrete and sand.

  Sydney pushes the wet hair back out of his eyes and takes a deep breath. His chest is just inches from Jimmy’s shoulder blades. One small lean and there would be physical contact, his peaked nipples able to just barely trace the outline of Jimmy’s spine. When he breathes out, shaky and slow, he sees goosebumps form all along Jimmy’s back. An invisible imprint of Sydney’s lungs. His skin shivers, muscles twitching. They’re breathing in tandem, quick and shallow. Wet skin surrounded by hot, swirling steam.

  Sydney takes one tiny step forward, his chest now just a finger-width away from the man in front of him, and Jimmy tilts his head back gently on his neck, letting the water drip down the front of his collarbone and chest.

  Sydney can see the dip of Jimmy’s collarbone from over his shoulder, can see the droplets of water cling to his skin and slowly roll down over his pectorals, catching on his nipples and trailing down onto his stomach.

  Sydney wants. He wants like he didn’t even know it was possible to want. Wants to lean that last inch forward and press himself against Jimmy Campbell like a ship pulling in its anchor. Wants to press his nose into the hollow of Jimmy’s neck and shoulder. Wants to taste the water dripping off his skin, taste how the salt of his sweat differs from the salt of the sea. Wants to run his hands up his slick wet sides and hold on.

  He feels attacked, barraged on all sides by thoughts he’s never even known could exist. The air between them starts to thrum and crack, humming as it pulls their skin closer and closer with each moment they don’t move apart, each breath that passes without a denial.

  Sydney licks his lips and starts to lift up his hands, tracing ghostly touches up the sides of Jimmy’s arms, their final destination still a mystery waiting to make itself known. His fingers hover over the tops of Jimmy’s shoulders, left fingertips just a hair’s width away from the raised, pink scar. A soft and broken sound escapes the back of Jimmy’s throat. Sydney lowers his fingers towards his wet and warm skin. Breathes in the smell of his neck, dips his nose closer to his hair, lowers his fingertips and lowers, lowers, lowers—

  A bang in the doorway startles them both, and they leap apart. Sydney’s heart clangs in his throat. His hands hover awkwardly in the air, grasping at nothing. Jimmy quickly turns his back to the door as two more men walk in, talking loudly now and throwing down bags onto the wooden benches in the center, barely paying any attention to the two forms standing stock still in the corner of the showers.

  Sydney tries desperately to get his breathing under control, to tame the unbearable shaking throughout his body. He hazards a glance to his left, just under his eyelashes, and sees Jimmy staring resolutely at the ground, letting the water splash directly onto his forehead. Sydney’s eyes flicker downwards against his best intentions, and he holds in a gasp.

  The front of Jimmy’s running shorts are tented.

  Sydney rips his gaze away to look down at himself and sees, mortified, that he’s in a similar state. That he’s trembling and aching and visible. Exposed in the corner of a muddy concrete beach shower.

  In a barely controlled panic, he slams off the water and books it to his shirt, holding it awkwardly over his front and making for the door before the other two men, still talking loudly and stretching over in the other far corner, can see him.

  The outdoor world hits him like a slap to his face. It’s an assault on his senses. The sun and sand and salt and breeze and people all swarm around him in an electric daze. He stumbles on numb legs towards the shore and then stands frozen. He can still hear the sound of Jimmy’s quiet moan mixing with the soft slap of water on skin in his mind. Jimmy’s indrawn breath as Sydney’s lips had quivered just above the top of his neck, the cascade of goosebumps down his dripping spine.

  He tells himself that he has absolutely no idea what the fuck just happened.

  An eternal minute later, he hears what must be Jimmy exiting the showers back behind him. Hears him stop and hesitate in the sand, probably debating whether to yell at Sydney for ever stepping closer to him in the shower, for causing his body’s private natural response to the wetness and the heat to be exposed, or just to cut his losses and book it for good. Stay far away from Danny Moore just like everyone had warned him to.

  Sydney waits and holds his breath, listening for Jimmy’s footsteps to run the other direction, to head straight for Hermosa Avenue to his apartment and never look back.

  He stares blankly at the sand in front of him, head tipped down. When he hears a person walk up next to him, he half expects to turn and see one of the other men from inside, waiting to greet his face with a punch after they belatedly realized what had been going on (about to go on?) in the dim corner of the showers. He thinks of all his belongings in a trash bag on the porch.

  Instead he looks up, half-wincing, to see none other than Jimmy Campbell. He’s holding out a cheap towel he’d grabbed off a rack back inside, physically placing it in Sydney’s fingers when he doesn’t immediately move to grab it.

  Sydney holds the towel helplessly in front of him and stares down at his fingers. He licks his bone-dry lips and nearly coughs trying to swallow.

  “I—I’m sorry if . . . that wasn’t . . .”

  “Nothing to be sorry for. Nothing happened,” Jimmy says. His voice is calm, but Sydney can hear an odd sharpness concealed beneath it. Sydney nods dumbly and finally runs the towel over his face, chest, and stomach, the shock from earlier having thoroughly and mercifully killed his erection.

  Jimmy clears his throat, continuing to over-do it in pretending all is business as usual.

  “Look so, I don’t have tomorrow off, but I don’t start my shift ‘til eleven. Figured we could start early and drive down a little bit south, check out a new stretch of beach to surf,” he says, voice lighthearted. He doesn’t quite meet Sydney’s gaze.

  Sydney blinks. There’s no way he’s hearing this correctly. Absolutely no way on earth that Jimmy wants to spend even thirty more seconds in his company.

  In fact, Jimmy’s already far outlasted anyone else Sydney’s ever come into contact with besides his own damn family. Surely that’s enough of a victory for him. Now Jimmy can cross ‘try to befriend the enemy Danny Moore even though he tried to do something nasty’ off his bucket list and go back to his normal friends and surf with people who aren’t assholes eternally damned to Hell.

  But Jimmy stands there, still looking up at Sydney with an absolutely unreadable expression, and he doesn’t walk away. All Sydney can do is ultimately nod yes.

  Jimmy nods once back, his neck a bit stiff and tense, then pulls his shirt back on over his still-wet skin.

  “Right, then. Same time. I’ll pick you up from here in my car,” he says quickly, thrown over his shoulder as he turns to leave.

  Sydney watches him wal
k two steps away, then belatedly calls after him, voice thin and rattled.

  “James!” He visibly winces at his mistake. “Sorry, I mean—”

  Jimmy holds up a hand to halt the apology as he looks back at Sydney. The expression in his eyes is one Sydney would swear he’s never seen before in his life. It’s thrilling and infuriating and beautiful all at once.

  Jimmy’s lips grow soft, and he gazes back at Sydney for a few silent beats. He rubs his palm once over his left shoulder, then drops his hand back to his side. His hair glows in the brilliant sun.

  “You can call me James,” he finally says.

  And then he’s gone, leaving Sydney open-mouthed and rattled in the sand. Wanting to break his own mask and chase after James. To grab his wrist and desperately whisper, “Who the hell are you?” and, “Please, not yet. Please don’t go.”

  9

  Sydney fiddles with his motel room key as he waits at the edges of the dirt parking lot, staring down blankly at his shuffling flip flops.

  He’s early. Again. He wants to roll his eyes at himself. He never would have stood for this a week ago—standing in a parking lot alone waiting for a ride when he could very well already be surfing perfectly fine on his own. He certainly wouldn’t have been standing there waiting for someone who now knows, without any shadow of a doubt, that the “fairy from Oahu” felt a physical attraction towards him, accidental or no.

  His mind keeps telling himself to walk away. Let James pull up to an empty parking lot and realize that it all would’ve been a horrible mistake anyway. Let him shrug, and go meet up with his normal friend for the morning, and one day tell the story at a bar of the few days he humored Danny Moore when he was stranded in L.A.

  It’s the plan Sydney came up with the day before after they’d parted ways outside the shower house. He’d stood in the sand for who knows how long staring at his own toes and convincing himself that the ache between his legs was well and truly gone. And then he’d taken four different busses and almost three hours to travel all the way across the city to the Griffith Observatory, where he’d looked out over the hazy, smog covered city and tried to guess the occupation of everyone that walked by. Where he’d decided that he would definitely, without any second thoughts at all, not show up to be picked up by James Campbell the next morning.