The Sea Ain't Mine Alone

by Beaumont, C. L.

  James catches himself sighing in relief at the sight of the hut. He has absolutely no reason on earth to be thinking of this place as home. No reason to feel his body relax when it comes into view. And yet . . .

  Danny does, too. James is watching him too closely to miss the quick release of breath, the small tension in his lean shoulders which had been there all morning which instantly leaves the moment their feet hit the sand. Danny kicks off his shoes and leaves them haphazard outside before running up the few steps to the still-open door.

  He points to the bushes next to them and says, “There’s your bathroom,” even though James can see the pipework from plumbing running along the side of the hut. James gives him a sharp look and catches Danny’s self-satisfied smirk as he disappears in front of him into the hut.

  James takes the bait and relieves himself outside, trying to calm the sudden fluttering in his chest. When he’s done he wipes his hands off on his shorts, puts one foot on the steps, and pauses. This action feels momentous, even though James can’t come up with a clue as to why. The way the wooden stair creaks under the weight of his leg, as if it wasn’t used to a body besides Danny’s climbing into the house. The way Danny’s hesitating just inside the door, out of sight but clearly waiting to hear James walk up to the door.

  James tells himself that it’s the burning curiosity to see the inside of Danny Moore’s house which is making him take the stairs two-at-a-time, even while a small part of him whispers that he can’t stand the thought of Danny waiting inside alone. After one last look at the ocean he steps through the front door, eyes blinking to adjust to the dimmer light.

  The inside is small—a main room with a kitchen along one wall and a door he suspects must lead to a bed. Almost every wall is made of windows, looking out to the trees and the sea through a dusting of sand. And the books—textbooks, from what James can quickly see—are covering the table, parts of the floor, the little shelves built into the kitchen walls which were meant to store plates and bowls.

  A basket of random wires and metal parts sits overflowing in front of the worn, hand-me-down couch. Standing in one corner is an old surfboard James didn’t ever see Danny use back in LA, cracked and worn along the surface, with traces of paint stained into the waxed wood.

  James does a quick sweep with his eyes and hides a small frown. He can’t quite match the room before him with the man he’s just spent all day with in the Jeep, let alone the man who towers above people on the beach, or wins Billabong Masters championships, or understands every inch of a breaking wave. The man who’d just played soccer with a rock in his sandals walking down the lane, hands shoved down in his pockets, curls in his face.

  The room seems hollow, somehow. Empty like it’s still waiting to be lived in and filled. As if it exists as merely a roof for Danny to sleep under after he’s spent a day working his ass off out in the waves.

  It looks like James picked up his own irrelevant apartment and plopped it right in the middle of an Oahu beach.

  He takes a step further inside, acutely aware of the fact Danny’s standing, frozen, watching him from the corner. His eyes roam over the few pieces of furniture in the room, made of thick and sturdy wood, and he says the first thought that pops into his head. Anything to interrupt the silence buzzing in the air.

  “Not many people your age who have a house full of handmade furniture,” he says. “Well, not many who have a house on a fucking beach, either, but . . . you know.”

  Danny stands awkwardly and grips one elbow, watches James look around, then shrugs. “Didn’t really need to buy any of it. I built it.”

  James lets out a chuckle that sounds more like a sigh and grips the back of the nearest wooden chair with his hand. “Of course you did,” he says under his breath. He wants to go home and throw his Goodwill couch and crooked table in the trash. Wants to ask Danny if sanding the wood leaves calluses on his hands. If the ocean softens them again.

  His eyes catch sight of a single photograph sitting on top of a side table in a corner. Besides the surfboard, it’s the only personalized thing in the room. He’s drawn to it like a magnet, quickly stepping across the creaking floor.

  A young curly-haired boy looks back at him, shit-eating grin over his whole freckled face. A woman crouches behind him and holds him around the middle, eyes bright behind huge cat-eye glasses with a smile that’s just barely forming on her lips. There’s a row of military jets behind them, lined up on hot white cement and steaming asphalt.

  Before he realizes what he’s doing, James picks up the framed photograph in his hands. There’s writing just along the bottom in a long, feminine scrawl, and he squints hard to read it.

  “Me and Sydney. Ft. Knox, 1962”

  “That’s my momma,” Danny says quietly from the corner, with the hint of an accent James has never heard him use before.

  James looks up startled, palms starting to sweat. He has the prickling sensation of being caught out. Then, with a great clunk, something suddenly slots into place in his brain. The day of the accident. Their argument by the shore.

  “Sydney—that’s your real name?” he asks.

  Danny nods, looking down at his bare feet shuffling on the floor. “My first name,” he says in a near-whisper, then he quickly straightens his spine. “But nobody ever calls me that. Only her. She named me after Sidney Howard, apparently, but my father said it sounded too much like ‘sissy’—made it so I only ever went by my middle name.”

  “Daniel?”

  Danny huffs under his breath. “Wouldn’t know it, considering I’ve only ever been called Danny. I would’ve given an opinion, but, you know . . . couldn’t talk yet and all that.”

  James hums under his breath and half grins, still staring at the woman’s bright smile, then he pulls his gaze away from the photo and frowns up at Danny. “Sidney Howard?”

  Danny rubs the back of his neck and shrugs a shoulder. “He wrote ‘Gone With the Wind’—was her favorite film.”

  Pain flashes through James’ chest. “Was?”

  Danny quickly cuts him off with a tight smile: “Not dead, either.”

  James nods slowly, unable to tears his gaze away from the brimming little boy in the photo, small, thin hands holding on tight to his mom’s freckled arms.

  “So, your dad’s military, then?” he tries.

  Danny just hums.

  James feels the air immediately start to turn tense. Watches Danny close off from him bit by bit the longer he holds the photograph in his hands. With one last glance, he sets it back down on the table, matching up the angle with how it was before.

  He’s overflowing with questions, exploding with curiosity in his mind. He knows there’s only one thing he can ask, though. Only one way to show Danny that he understands living in a house with only one photograph decorating the entire place.

  “What’s her name?”

  Danny lets a quick breath out his nose and shoots James a knowing smile. “Ruth, after the woman in the Bible. Hence the ‘Daniel’.”

  James runs a hand over the back of his neck, trying to hide his shock at the word ‘Bible’ coming so casually out of Danny Moore’s mouth. “Man, I wouldn’t know who the hell either of those people were if you put a gun to my head,” he finally says, and he feels warmth tingle through his body when Danny’s face breaks into a laugh.

  “Nobody came up and asked you that question in the middle of the jungle then?”

  “Shockingly, no. We were all busy.”

  James walks toward him in the kitchen, enjoying the loss of tension in the room, when his eyes alight on a contraption taking up almost half the counter—wires and tubes and switches in what looks like a tangled heep.

  “Aw shit, this whole hut is a bomb, isn’t it?”

  Danny rolls his eyes at the poor joke. “It’s nothing. Just something I’m tinkering with.”

  “That’s what people who make bombs in their garage tell the police—just ask Rob.”

  He nearly flinches at the
name slipping out of his mouth, but relaxes when Danny doesn’t appear to register it at all.

  “I highly doubt the criminal classes are most concerned with coffee.”

  “Coffee?”

  Danny turns towards the contraption and points at the parts, trying somewhat unsuccessfully to sound bored. “Coffee. It’s a machine that connects with my alarm clock through a wire I ran in the wall. When it goes off, the electricity creates an imbalance of air pressure, which forces water through the tubes here across the induction burner, and meanwhile the battery operates this lever here which scoops up the grinds and places it in the filter, here, and so when the hot water reaches the end of the boiling process it drips through and starts making fresh coffee. Hands-free.”

  James stares. “You built an automatic coffee maker that’s triggered by your alarm clock in an entirely different room?”

  Danny suddenly seems unsure of himself. He doesn’t quite meet James’ eyes. “Yes . . .”

  James shakes his head and lets out a breath, crossing his arms over his chest. “That’s fucking brilliant.”

  When Danny genuinely smiles, chest puffing out a bit, James goes on. “Seriously, how you even . . . Whatever college I’m sure you went to when you were still in kindergarten must have snatched you up. I mean, this is unreal.”

  An odd look flashes across Danny’s face, but it disappears before James even understands it’s there. He clears his throat and leans against the counter. “Yeah. They must have.”

  Something feels off, and James tries to smooth it over with more mindless talking. “But I’ll shut it. You must get tired of explaining it to all the idiots like me that trudge through here.”

  Danny’s face grows even more serious, and his eyes narrow at James in thought. A silent moment passes before he speaks. James wonders why everything he’s said in the last thirty seconds has felt like massively fucking up.

  Danny gives a casual shrug, but his eyes turn a shade of dark grey. “Actually, nobody else has ever been here,” he says.

  James stands dangerously close to Danny in the tiny kitchen, watching his chest rise and fall in the buzzing air of the frozen room. He knows he should say something about that, can see the way Danny’s eyes are trying to read his face for a response. He should change the subject or take a step back or ask him what for or something.

  Instead he stands there, breathing in tandem with Danny’s chest, feeling for the first time the close intimacy of their shared air in the quiet hut, the sound of the distant waves echoing through the windows.

  James swallows over a dry throat, then looks up into Danny’s face. Their eyes meet. James tries, but finds he doesn’t give a shit what his coworkers would think watching him have to stare up into somebody’s face.

  What Rob Depaul would think.

  “Okay,” James hears himself say. His voice rasps across the word—a word which he’s never noticed in his life could carry so much meaning.

  Danny’s own voice is a low whisper. “The sun will set soon. You want a good view?”

  James nods, and still they don’t move apart. He can’t look away from Danny’s eyes, the two little droplets of ocean that had made him want to suck in some oxygen and live. There’s a loose eyelash draped across Danny’s left cheek. James realizes he could brush it off with his nose if he rose up on his toes and tried.

  Finally, Danny slowly moves his hand toward James, then hesitates, hovering over his skin. James holds his breath, lips dry, as Danny gently places his hand at the top of James’ forearm, gripping his skin beneath his elbow in a warm touch. James’ legs turn to water.

  “Let’s go,” Danny whispers. His palm gives a brief squeeze.

  They break apart, but the moment stays. It hovers over them as James follows Danny outside and down the private beach, sighing at the velvet-soft sand in between his toes. They climb up the rocky slope at one end of the inlet, using moss and grass for cover under their bare feet as they slowly ascend. James follows in Danny’s footsteps up the rocks with total confidence, never more than one small step behind. He listens to their breaths, and realizes they’re in time together more often than not.

  When they finally reach the top of the rocky overlook, James gasps. Danny chuckles under his breath. The sun hangs low and sweet over the sea, dipping its orange and yellow ribbons into the blue depths and swirling through the clouds. James knows Danny’s eyes are on him as he looks out over the view, breathless with the realization he’s standing on the edge of the earth. His mind is free of fear. He thinks that if he squinted hard enough, if he peered through the orange haze, he could just make out the trees which had sheltered him from the hellfire on the beach. Just glimpse the fronds from which Keith had emerged with blood on his face.

  He meets eyes with Danny, expecting to see the warm, soft gaze from earlier, and instead sees a glint of mischief.

  “Oh no. . .” he starts to say, but then Danny is pulling off his shirt and stripping down to his boxers.

  “Oh yes,” he says back, staring hard at James until he groans and starts to reluctantly pull his own shirt over his head.

  “I haven’t even been in the water since I almost died, in case you forgot,” he says through fabric stretched over his face.

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “My head isn’t even fully healed, it still aches all the time.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I’m not even surfing tomorrow. I’m supposed to be out here resting and enjoying myself.”

  “You are resting, and you are enjoying yourself.”

  “How do I even know this fucking water’s deep enough?”

  Danny pauses at the edge of the cliff and gazes back at him over his shoulder. The air between them crackles, alighting into flame. Goosebumps rise in waves across James’ bare skin. His hairs stand on end as he looks at the tattoo covering the muscles in Danny’s back for the first time on the Oahu shore, dripping down the length of his spine towards sculpted hips.

  And Danny’s eyes are roaming over every inch of his own body as James simply stands there in his boxers, hands down at his sides. They trace across his ribs, land briefly on the scar. The earth itches with anticipation beneath the soles of his feet.

  Danny smirks. “Because I’ve done this before,” he says. And then he jumps.

  James runs to the edge with his heart in his throat and peers over just as Danny flips once in the air, curls flying wild in the wind. He crashes into the crystal blue waters below in a heap of limbs, causing the ocean to heave and ripple in frothing waves.

  James’ chest stays clenched until Danny finally resurfaces, running his fingers back through his curls and spitting out a stream of water. He swims in place and looks back up at James, warm smile on his face.

  “Come on then, Mr. Navy,” he calls up. “Show me you can swim!”

  James goes to laugh, cheeks just starting to grin, when suddenly the wave is booming against the back of his skull, and the rock is slamming into his forehead, and the tides are pulling him, gripping him out to the snarling sea. Icy fear crawls up the back of his neck and swells up his tongue. He’s back on the top of the diving platform, waiting for the Lieutenant’s hands to shove him from behind. He’s back in the tidepools, limp and blue.

  He’s waking up to no waitress cap hanging from the door.

  “James.”

  The voice breaks him from his trance, slapping him awake. James opens his eyes to see Danny looking up at him, worry in his eyes. James can barely look down over the ledge. He can’t form a reply. Hot embarrassment creeps up the backs of his legs, rooting him firmly in place.

  “It’s alright, James,” Danny says. His voice is calm and assured. He isn’t lying.

  James tries to nod, but it comes out as a strange jerk of his head. The water slaps against his back, the rock rushes up to meet his face.

  His mom in the box.

  “James. I’ll be right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Like a rush of cool sp
ray, James suddenly feels every muscle in his body release, his feet untethered from the ground. The words hover around his body, shielding him from even the harsh rays of the sun itself. It’s the relief of seeing that rescue helicopter waiting just off shore. It’s the sight of two terrified blue eyes staring down into his.

  He takes a step back from the edge and nods down once at Danny without saying a word. Then James Campbell grits his teeth, takes one last deep breath, and runs.

  He jumps.

  His body soars weightlessly into thin air, floating in the void for an eternal moment before falling towards the earth. The wind roars and thrashes against his body, and the saltwater pounds into his lungs through his nose, and he lets out a whoop from the pit of his chest as the horizon line rushes past.

  The ocean water that hits his skin parts beneath him like smooth velvet, enveloping him with a sudden, cool silence. His lungs burn as he makes his way back towards the air, the orange and red of the sunset lighting his way just above the rippling surface of the water.

  He finds Danny’s eyes and laughs, wide-eyed at himself. At his own daring. “God, you are something else,” he pants.

  “So are you,” Danny responds, smiling. “Well done.” His voice is deep and warm. They swim towards each other in the weightless sea, bobbing among the little swells left over from their jumps. James lowers his chin into the water and lets it lap against his lips as he glides. The sound of their combined breathing echoes across the surface, the little droplets falling from their hair like splashes in a vast, wet cavern.

  James watches the water gently rise and fall over Danny’s chest, tracing smooth, rippling lines over his collarbone, his nipples. The sunlight illuminates Danny’s skin, painting it gold.

  They stop swimming towards each other when they’re nearly chest to chest, cocooned in the sounds of their breathing, the water gently slapping against their bodies, droplets falling from eyelashes as they blink.