Sydney scoffs. “Really? ‘Fucking all weekend’—that’s what you’d call this?”
“Well I’d like to know what else the great Danny Moore would call this, seeing as how you’re such a fucking genius and all. You clearly moved heaven and earth just to get me to stay here in the first place, what with paying off my own damn hotel room and begging the league to let me surf.”
Sydney slams down the mug on the counter and huffs. “I don’t know, James! Maybe I wanted you to stay here so badly because I, the great Danny Moore, actually just hoped that I would maybe get to kiss you. You know, like a fucking normal person would hope for after meeting somebody like you. But clearly getting James Campbell to stick around is too much of a fucking challenge, even for a genius like me!”
“That’s not fair. You know that’s not fair.” James doesn’t realize until it’s too late that he’s already dropped the bundle of clothes to the ground. He stands naked at the opposite end of the house, wanting to crumple and scream.
“Well life isn’t fair, as I’m sure you of all people would know,” Sydney spits back.
James huffs out a bitter laugh, hands floating wildly up into the air. “I can’t just stay here, Sydney! I have a job, my apartment, I have a whole fucking life back in Los Angeles. I can’t just leave it all and move here to la-la paradise land with you!”
“That la-la paradise land is my actual life—and, in case you forgot, it really isn’t such a paradise at all, even with the fucking palm trees.”
“Oh, well keep going, now you’re really convincing me to stay.”
“Well what the hell else do I need to say to convince you then? What else do I need to do for you?”
“Do for me? I don’t need you to do jack shit for me!” James yells.
“Apparently not, since your life was going totally according to plan before. And all of this definitely would have happened even without any of my help. You’ve made your point loud and clear.”
“Made my—well if I’m such an annoying burden why do you want to keep me around?”
Sydney scoffs, eyes blown wide. “Why do I—you seriously have to ask that?”
“Yes, I seriously have to ask that,” James glares, arms folded fiercely across his chest. He ignores the fact that Sydney’s spine is slowly curving, making him look vulnerable and young, as if James’ words were physically penetrating his bare skin.
Sydney swallows, and a small moan gurgles in his throat. “Why the hell wouldn’t I want you around?” he gasps. “You . . . you make me—” Sydney looks lost, eyes desperately searching around the empty room. “You just won the championship!”
James blinks away the stinging water in his eyes, hating the fact that he knows he would hand the championship right back if it meant Sydney would finish saying what he originally started.
He sniffs, hiding it by clearing his throat. “Okay, so that’s all this is? I’ll just come to you each time I want to win something and you’ll graciously bend over backwards to help me? As long as I give you something back in return?”
Sydney’s body shakes. “How dare you? How fucking dare you?”
James wants to punch himself in the face. He holds his ground, feeling wild and desperate, unleashed—the same primal force that had yanked his finger over the trigger. “Well what the fuck else am I supposed to believe when you ask what you can do for me to somehow goad me into staying? And what . . . just—just fuck the rest of my life? Throw that all away?”
“You just told me thirty seconds ago that you don’t need jack shit from me, so I doubt I’ve already forgotten that that’s exactly what you don’t want me to do.”
“Oh, so now we’re trying to do what I want, huh? First you wake up and all but shove me into the shower to leave and now you’re begging me to stay?”
“I didn’t want you to be late for your fucking flight!”
“Right, because you always know what’s best for me. I’m going to lose, but you decide I should get a pity win. I get a hotel room, but you decide I don’t need it. I come here to watch the Billabong, and you fucking decide I actually need to surf in it instead.”
“But you fucking won!” Sydney groans and grabs his hair with both hands. “God, James, why the hell can’t you just let yourself be happy?”
“I’ll start letting myself be happy when you stop pushing me away!”
“Pushing you away? You’re the one who’s fucking leaving!”
Sydney’s words echo through the house, falling like lead through the dense air.
James stares at him, wanting to drop to his knees. Hot, prickling water stings behind his eyes. He covers his face with his hands, feeling utterly fragile and exposed. “Fuck . . .” he sighs, and shame burns through him when his voice breaks. “Just what the hell are we even fighting about? How did this even happen?”
He pulls his hands away from his face and gasps when he sees Sydney. He looks devastated. Wrecked and small and trembling in the middle of the kitchen floor. Lost. The polar opposite of Danny Moore strutting across the sand in his aviators, head held high.
Sydney’s lips shake as he whispers. “I don’t—James, please . . . I don’t know what to do if you leave. I can’t just . . .”
James feels as if he’s just been slapped in the face. “Fuck, Sydney,” he breathes.
Sydney releases a loud, wet breath as James takes a hesitant step forward, forcefully scratching his fingers through his thick stubble. “Listen, I’d—I’d rather get shipped back to the fucking war than get on that plane. But I have to.” He chokes on a rising sob and shrugs. “I just have to.”
“I know,” Sydney whispers, and then he starts to sink to the floor. For the first time since stepping out of the bedroom with his clothes held between his legs, James rushes naked across the vast space of the house towards Sydney. He grips Sydney’s shoulders and presses his face into his own bare chest as Sydney’s hands cling to his arms.
“It’s my life, Sydney,” James chokes out again. “There isn’t a way to . . . this isn’t my life. We aren’t . . .”
James can’t even finish the thought. Sydney nods while he gulps down shaking breaths, trembling and hot beneath James’ hands. James grips Sydney’s cheek in his palm and lifts his face towards him, and they share a brief, wild look before James pulls him into a fierce and desperate kiss. Sydney moans under the force of his lips, hands immediately going for James’ chest as he straightens his shaking legs to stand.
With a heaving sigh, James walks him back him against the counter and licks into his mouth, swallowing Sydney’s grunt. He pants harshly through his nose, pressing himself along the entire front of Sydney’s warm skin while Sydney’s huge hands grip and consume his shoulders and back.
James holds Sydney’s face in both of his hands and whispers lost words into his sighing, wet mouth. “I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean any of that . . .”
Sydney shakes his head and turns his face to kiss along James’ wet cheek. “I’m sorry. You know I don’t . . . I shouldn’t have s—”
James silences his words with another kiss, groaning as their tongues brush, and he clutches hard enough at Sydney’s soft skin to bruise. His chest is torn in two—half hating himself that he couldn’t let Sydney finish what he was going to say, and half absolutely terrified to let him say a single thing more.
Sydney’s hands on his skin are desperate—starved and crazed. James thinks of opening the creaking door to his own empty apartment later that day, the plain cold lines of his twin-size bed, and heaves out a stifled moan into Sydney’s mouth, crushed by the weight of the reality that he’s about to walk away down that tree-lined path.
His lips ache, swollen and sore as Sydney utterly consumes his mouth, limbs shaking as he grips trembling skin covered in rough shivers. Neither of their cocks are hard.
“This . . . this isn’t it,” James breathes into Sydney’s mouth. “It can’t—it won’t be—”
Sydney grips him tighter and devours his
lips on a desperate moan, like a drowning man finally finding air, sucking it straight from James’ own lungs. He catches the bead of sweat starting to drip down the nape of James’ neck.
James caresses the disheveled curls falling across Sydney’s ear, caught between wanting to yank them and suck them gently into his mouth. Sydney’s body hangs limply in his arms as if the man isn’t made of pure, lean muscle. As if the second James steps away, he’ll collapse and fall to the hard floor.
“Sydney, look at me,” he whispers. For the first time, he notices that Sydney’s palm has been warmly covering his scar, protecting the raised skin.
But when Sydney’s pale eyes rimmed in red finally meet his, James realizes he has absolutely no idea what he could say. He struggles to get in enough breath, left speechless as he stares into the two little circles of clouded grey. “Look at me,” he says again, an apology written in his face.
Sydney does look at him, looking somehow devastated and furious all at once, then he softly shakes his head no and reaches again for James’ mouth, falling against his chest.
James kisses words onto his lips, mouth open and panting. “Sydney, you are—”
“James,” he whispers.
“This isn’t—”
“James.” Sydney shuts his eyes tight, holding James’ jaw. “It isn’t just . . . fuck, I . . . I lo—”
“I know,” James moans, the truth of it suddenly ripping through his chest. He nearly doubles over. “Fuck, Sydney, I . . . I know, it’s—”
Sydney kisses him, somehow the saddest motion James has ever felt. “James.”
And James doesn’t even know what the hell he’s promising when he whispers back, “I promise you.”
20
“Beverage for you, sir?”
James presses his forehead against the cool glass of the window and looks down at the endless sea below. It feels like they’re barely moving, just stuck forever, hovering in the same patch of blank sky. He keeps reaching for the bullet in his pocket with panicked fingers, never remembering in time that his pocket will be empty.
“Sir?”
The stewardess winks at him for the third time on this flight. James runs a quick hand over his jaw, wincing at the rough spot he must have missed when shaving in the plane bathroom with the cheap razor he’d gotten midway through sprinting across the terminal. He drums up his best courteous smile and shakes his head no, already turning back towards the window when she leans in and speaks again.
“Were you on vacation, then?”
James has the sudden, intense sensation of what it must be like to step on stage for a play, head popping out from behind the backstage curtains.
“Sort of, yeah.”
The stewardess leans her elbow against the empty seat in front of him and relaxes the slope of her shoulders.
“I never get to go to the beaches,” she sighs. “Never have enough time on layovers—just time to sleep and do it all over again. You see any good ones?”
James chuckles, hoping it doesn’t sound too ironic. A very specific stretch of sunset-covered ocean drifts through his mind.
“A couple chill beaches. Palm trees, water, sand, the whole package.”
She laughs, high and tinkling, and James notices a man across the row start to pay very close attention while pretending to read his newspaper.
“Oh, did you see any of that big surf competition they had? Was all anyone talked about for weeks leading up to it. Billabang something?”
James opens his mouth to just retort—say “no, I’ve never even heard of surfing in my life, sorry to disappoint, just sat on my ass on a lounge chair all weekend with a beer in my hand, talking normal sports.”
Then he sees Sydney’s face from the day before in his mind, eyes bright and a single tear on his cheek when he’d shaken James’ hand in the sand.
James takes a deep breath and schools his features to look as casual as possible.
“Yeah, the Billabong Pipeline Masters—”
“Ah, that’s it!”
“Right. I, uh, well, I won that, actually.”
The stewardess laughs again, louder this time. James knows he shouldn’t be surprised at all to see that she thinks he’s joking.
He puts on a smile and tries again, hand awkwardly rubbing at the back of his neck. “No, seriously, I just surfed there this weekend—why I was on the island. I won the competition.”
The stewardess leans in, giving James a full whiff of her crisp perfume. “Well you can show me the shiny trophy when I finally get my beach vacation time,” she says low. She winks one last time, and sets a can of Pepsi on the seatback tray.
James stares numbly at it as she turns and makes her way down the aisle, acutely aware that every man’s gaze but his is following her ass down the plane. He looks under the Pepsi can and confirms what he already knows—a folded slip of paper with a phone number in bubbling scrawl.
James sits back in his chair and closes his eyes, crumpling up the paper in his palm with a wash of guilt. He realizes he’s never felt like more of a queer then he does in this moment, even when he’d had his own cock down Sydney Moore’s throat. He’s got the number of a beautiful woman in his hand, the invitation practically painted across the sky, and all his mind can see is Sydney’s face when they’d finally pulled apart for breath that morning, naked and trembling in the grey light of his kitchen, brushing the sweat damp hair from each other’s foreheads, cocks still awkwardly soft.
Sydney had kissed his forehead once after a second’s hesitation, imprinting the feel of his mouth onto James’ skin, and then they’d each stepped back with forced, harsh movements. James hadn’t had time to shower, and they hadn’t had the air for any more words. James had dressed and gathered up his things like a ghost roaming through the rooms, already feeling as if the house was abandoned and empty even with him and Sydney still standing right in the middle of it.
He hadn’t allowed himself one final look out towards the sea when he jogged down the steps. If he’d looked, it would have been admitting he might never get the chance to see it again.
Then Sydney had driven him across the island to Honolulu, lips in a tight line, breathing uneven. He hadn’t come close to hitting anything on the road, just drove straight and smooth and easily under the speed limit—perfectly in line. And James had gripped Sydney’s thigh so tightly on the drive he was surprised Sydney even had feeling still left in his leg, trying to somehow force assurance through his skin and straight into his bloodstream, up the veins in his body into his heart and lungs.
Assurance of what, he’s pretty sure neither of them fucking knew.
And he’d wished like hell that the island wasn’t the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He’d pressed his fist tightly against his mouth as he looked out the window and watched the rolling green zoom past, dotted with pearls of flowers. He’d wished that it hadn’t looked like Vietnam anymore—that it was just some meaningless mixture of pink and blue and green. The warm breeze had blown stiff and suffocating against his face through the open Jeep.
He’d stepped up out of the Jeep at the airport drop off after they’d quickly swung by the hotel, and only then had he realized in a jolt of panic that he hadn’t hugged Sydney one last time back at the beach. Hadn’t kissed him or held him or let himself be held. Hadn’t known if Sydney would even accept that embrace.
And now they couldn’t—not standing there at the airport terminal, one Jeep in a long line of taxis, surrounded on both sides by parting and reuniting embraces and tearful hugs.
Sydney had stepped out smoothly and handed him his bag, hands hanging limply at his sides after James carefully took it so their fingers didn’t touch. Sydney had licked his lips, staring down unblinkingly at the blinding concrete, shattering the illusion of the man held carefully together he’d been through the whole drive.
Then he’d looked up, and shown James everything with his eyes.
“You surfed like hell, James Campbell,” he’d said,
just as the announcement to start boarding James’ flight blasted through the crackling speakers. And James had only had the strength to barely whisper Sydney’s name before he’d torn his gaze away from those pale eyes and practically run into the terminal, leaving Sydney alone and untouched on the sidewalk, looking like he’d just said goodbye.
The announcement to prepare for the descent sounds in the stale air of the plane, and James presses his forehead to the cold glass once more. The stewardess passes by one last time to pick up trash, and James feels like the scum of the earth for not even looking her direction. He doesn’t know whether she tried another wink.
Instead he waits for her to pass, then opens the can of soda and takes a long gulp, telling himself that the brown liquid running down his throat is actually creamy and cold and pink. Topped with whipped cream.
He closes his eyes and shivers along his arms, remembering the gentle scratch of his mom’s long, coral-painted fingernails across his scalp.
Remembering the press of Sydney’s trembling wet lips on his cheek.
And he stares down at the ocean, at the hazy Los Angeles sprawl slowly sharpening into view. He imagines the salty slap of the waves against his skin, the velvet crush of the warm sand. Then he shuts his eyes tightly against the bright, sharp world, and he rolls the crumbled piece of paper in his hands until it resembles the shape of a bullet.
~
The LAX terminal looks exactly the same. James feels surprised as he navigates the hallways, dodging other harried travelers with their trails of luggage, until he remembers that of course it looks exactly the same—it’s only been five days since he was last there, running like hell to catch his flight after being stuck in a taxi in traffic and praying to God that he wasn’t about to do something extremely stupid showing up unannounced at Danny Moore’s doorstep.
He’d had a different piece of paper in his pocket that time, in Lori’s bubbling script.
The Sea Ain't Mine Alone Page 35
