The Sea Ain't Mine Alone

by Beaumont, C. L.

  With each step he takes towards the doors leading out to the sprawling maze of Los Angeles, James feels as if he’s stepping father and farther away from home. Which is ridiculous, because up until five days ago the only place besides Los Angeles he’d ever even been to had been goddamn Vietnam, like the world’s worst global traveler.

  His palms itch to feel the warm saltwater underneath them, toes straining to sink into warm, soft sand. Nothing like the icy, seaweed-choked water and rocky grains that make up the SoCal shores.

  Nobody’s looking at him as he steadily makes his way towards the doors; nobody even smiles or registers he’s there. He used to love that—the ability to walk through a public place and know with certainty that nobody could spot the scar beneath his shirt, or the way he flinched at loud noises, or the way his shoulder sometimes moved stiff in the joint. It made him feel alive, part of the thrilling, healthy vibrance of the city, leaving the haunted darkness behind at home where no one could see.

  Now, though, he feels a small, foolish pang in his chest as he longs for the beach full of applause directed his way. For his name falling easily from everyone’s lips, and for a piercing blue gaze constantly searching him out in a crowd, desperately wanting to find him, to know he was there.

  “Jimmy!”

  He keeps walking. There’s millions of guys named Jimmy.

  “Jimmy Campbell, you old fucker! Jimmy!”

  James turns around, startled, as a familiar body accompanies the booming voice, bear hugging him without warning in the middle of the baggage claim.

  James stumbles and drops his bag. “Rob? What the—?”

  Rob pulls back and jokingly whacks him on the side of the head. “You turkey, you told us you weren’t going there to surf, just going to watch—and then you fucking won it?!”

  Rob goes to hug him again when he’s pushed aside by Lori, who grabs the bewildered James and wraps her arms tightly around his neck, not saying anything.

  James buries his face in her hair and inhales, an indescribable emotion flowing over within him. He can feel her heart beating just as fast as his against his chest. Finally, Lori releases him, quickly wiping the back of her hand once across her eyes, and Rob’s arm immediately falls around her shoulders.

  James knows his mouth is hanging open like a broken hinge. “How did . . . what—?”

  “Never underestimate the power of a best friend with a police badge,” Rob says with a smirk. “Had to whip it out three times just to figure out what goddamn flight you were on, and that was after I had to call and ask every fucking surfer on earth whether they heard correctly that Jimmy Campbell had just won the Billabong.”

  Rob tries to look stern, but the warmth shines through in his eyes, forcing a smile at the corners of his lips.

  James has no idea what to say. He stands there stunned, bag still lying at his feet. “Shit, man, word travels fast,” he finally grunts out.

  “You’re fucking right it does. Especially when a fucking rookie who just turned pro three weeks ago wins the fucking Billabong Masters from the Wild Card spot!”

  Rob grabs his arm again and squeezes. Lori tucks her hair behind her ear, holding on tightly to Rob’s back. “We’re so proud of you, Jimmy,” she says, eyes wet.

  James clears his throat and bends to pick up his bag, stalling for time until he can speak. He runs his hand through his hair, knowing Rob and Lori know him well enough to see that he’s touched.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he finally gets out.

  Rob pushes him forward towards the doors by the back of his shoulder, leading Lori along beside him as they walk. “I know what you should say. You should thank the only two people who’ll put up with your miserable ass and still pick you up from LAX at rush hour even though you never called to tell them you won the fucking Billabong Mas—”

  “It only happened yesterday!”

  “—and then you say ‘thanks Rob and Lori for inviting me over for dinner,’ because that’s what we’re doing now.”

  “We got stuff to make that chicken dish you like, with the tomatoes,” Lori chimes in.

  “Plus,” Rob says as they step out into the harsh sunlight, “you look like shit. Like some lost puppy in a cardboard box nobody wanted to adopt from the animal shelter.”

  And James laughs, truly laughs, for what feels like the first time since returning to Sydney’s Jeep after he won—or maybe even since kneeling in the foaming shallows off the coast of Oahu, searching out Sydney Moore’s smile in the crowd.

  “Thank you,” he says quietly when they reach Rob’s truck, feeling completely inadequate, and like he should have to sit in some sort of child’s seat for the drive back. Lori grabs his shoulder and uses it to hoist herself up, then scoots to the middle of the bench and pats the seat for James to follow.

  “Of course, Jimmy” she says, and James wonders if he’s imagining the way her voice sounds wet.

  ~

  James sits back in the rickety metal chair in Rob and Lori’s backyard, pleasantly full and sleepily watching Josie run circles in the dry grass. He breathes in the familiar air of Los Angeles, tense and thrumming and alive with the heat of the city—the claustrophobic energy bouncing between the highrises and freeways and hidden backroads, all swept over by the faint breeze of the freezing, kelp-choked Pacific.

  Rob and Lori have been nursing beers and half-heartedly arguing for almost thirty minutes over whether it gets too hot for Rob to try and start a vegetable garden near their fence next spring. James watches them with sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes, simultaneously wishing he was alone in his own apartment while also realizing he’s dreading the hour he’ll have to leave the murmuring comfort of their little backyard.

  Rob laughs, and leans in close to kiss Lori lightly on the cheek before sitting up straight to tie back his hair. James watches the familiar process out of the corner of his eye—the way Rob’s fingers rake through the tumbling, tangled strands, and the way he arches his back.

  Then James blinks hard, and he sits up so quickly that Lori asks him if he’s alright, to which he awkwardly mumbles something about thinking he was stung by a bee. And all the while, James realizes that he hasn’t, not for one moment, even thought about wanting to be with Rob since he surprise bearhugged him at the airport.

  The revelation leaves him breathless—that, and a bit unmoored. He stares into the warm night air, mouth half-open, and marvels that he hasn’t spent one second achingly captivated by the way Rob’s hair curls around his ear, or the tan skin of his forearms, or the way his t-shirt hugs his muscled sides.

  He hasn’t felt nervous, or guarded, or giddy—sharply aware of where his own body ends and Rob’s begins. He hasn’t gone to say or do something and then pulled back with a terrified internal halt.

  James leans back in the chair as Rob and Lori continue their garden debate, and he takes advantage of their distraction to look at Rob—really look at him. He sees the young man who walked up to him in the sand and asked him if he surfed, not knowing that when he reached out to shake James’ hand it was the first time James had touched anybody since hugging his aunt and uncle goodbye his first day out of the hospital. He sees the man who met up with him nearly every morning for two full years without ever knowing where or who James had been in all the years before. Who’d brushed the soaked hair back from his wet face in the shallows, and sat by his hospital bed telling him too many details about the latest episodes of MASH. Who cried out in the hospital hallway in Lori’s arms when they thought James was asleep, an hour before James asked Lori to track down the address in Oahu of one Danny Moore.

  The experience is so wildly different from the way James looks at Sydney he can’t believe he didn’t have this revelation earlier in the day. A manic, bubbling laughter swells in his lungs. Gone is the heavy weight of careful dread, the fear of discovery and simultaneous intense desire to be known that he had always felt in Rob’s presence, even when they were just laughing out on the waves. He can’t decide wheth
er he’s lost a part of himself or gained something more.

  He watches as Lori leans her head against Rob’s shoulder, both of them content to leave James to his quiet thoughts, and all James feels looking at the two of them together is a deep, aching pulse of longing that Sydney Moore wouldn’t be behind him to catch him right now if he were to close his eyes and lean back his head.

  “Bed time for you, old man,” Rob says.

  James flicks open his eyes, not remembering when they’d closed. He shuffles to his tired feet, wincing at the instant fiery soreness in his thighs. “Think I could catch a taxi if I walk out to that main street—”

  “And have you fall asleep in the backseat and get mugged like some loser?” Rob stands and puts a firm hand on James’ shoulder. “Come on. Guest bedroom exists for a reason.”

  James starts to shake his head. “Aw, man, I couldn’t—”

  “You can and you will. Lori didn’t spend seventeen hours trying to pick out a duvet cover just for nobody to end up sleeping under it.”

  “Oh, says the man who returned and bought a different toaster what—four times now?” Lori cuts back.

  James follows behind them back into the house, feeling a bit like a child being put to bed by his parents as Rob smacks Lori’s ass in front of him when she bends down in the linen closet to pull out a towel.

  “Here, Jimmy. The blankets should be fine. It’s hot as hell anyways.”

  For the third time in as many days, James is handed a towel and pointed to a shower that isn’t his own. James is instantly grateful when they leave him to his own devices for the rest of the evening, not sure he could stand it if they’d wished him goodnight or tried to show him around the spare room.

  He putters around in there for what feels like an unbearably long time, flipping through an old magazine until he finally hears Rob and Lori make their way off to bed. Then he creeps down the darkened hallway into the bathroom, ashamed that even the thought of taking a shower when other people are awake nearby makes his stomach churn.

  He stands under the spray with his eyes tightly closed, frozen still as he showers off the remnants of the Oahu sand and salt from his skin—the last remaining wisps of Sydney’s warm scent from the crevices of his body. Then he stares at the ceiling beneath Lori’s pristine soft sheets for hours, pretending that the cars zooming past outside along the freeway are really the roll and hum of crystal blue waves.

  ~

  “Come on, sleeping beauty. Up.”

  James groans out of a dead sleep and blinks blearily into the darkness.

  “What the . . . ?”

  “Hustle, man. My shift’s at nine so we don’t have much time.”

  James’ eyes finally focus on Rob’s ghostly outline in the dim light, and he sees he’s already dressed in boardshorts and his pullover, hair piled on top of his head in a haphazard ball.

  James groans again and turns his face into the pillow, for some reason intensely grateful that he’d decided to sleep in both boxers and a t-shirt. “You’re dreaming,” he mutters against the sheets. “No way. I’m tired.”

  “All you did yesterday was sit on your ass on a plane,” Rob laughs. “Then sit on your ass in my backyard. I was there.”

  “Yeah, but the day before that I surfed my ass off winning the goddamn Billabong, you asshole,” James moans.

  Rob throws a pair of boardshorts at his head, not lightly. “Oh what, so now you’re retired? Don’t think I know you still have another day off before you start work again. Now get your ass up and surf with me before I disown you, miserable old fucker.”

  Rob quietly leaves and creeps down the hallway, trying not to wake Lori as James heaves himself from the bed and pulls on clothes in a daze. Rob’s throwing his extra surfboard into the bed of his truck by the time James joins him out on the driveway, blinking into the thick, grey air.

  “I feel like you’re my dad taking me on a surprise trip to Disneyland that mom doesn’t know about,” James quips as he climbs into the passenger seat.

  “That’s true,” Rob says, starting the ignition like a bomb on the sleepy, silent street. “Except mine and Lori’s kid would be a million times cuter than you in the morning. You look like a wet paper bag.”

  James huffs a laugh out the window. “Real funny.”

  They drive to the beach in silence, passing through the sleeping city covered in a veil of slowly lifting darkness, fading from black into glittering silver. For one startling moment, James almost reaches out his hand and puts it on Rob’s leg as he looks out the window, watching the lazy palm trees crawl by in the thin fog.

  He lifts his hand to do it, fingers itching to land on warm, soft skin. Then he remembers it wouldn’t be the leg he’s hoping to find. He covers up the movement with a too-loud cough.

  Rob doesn’t say anything as they park along their favorite stretch of Hermosa shore and pull out their boards. They strip down to their bathing suits in silence in the sand, James pulling off his sweatshirt and shivering with his bare chest in the cold. It’s the same as it’s always been—the usual routine. Except this time James’ eyes don’t linger on the muscles of Rob’s stomach as he re-ties his hair up into a bun, hair tie hanging out the side of his mouth.

  James bites his lip as he finds himself missing the way the sight would fill him with a secret warmth while they stood shivering on the dawn shore. Finds himself wishing he was watching long, thin fingers comb through dark curls.

  They jog side by side out into the crisp, icy waves, groaning and shuddering at the shock of icy cold. The cool grey air settles across the surface of the restless ocean, tinged with pink as the sun slowly rises above the glittering city at their backs. They paddle out just past the main breaking point, dolphin diving under waves to get used to the freezing slaps of water.

  James follows, frowning, as Rob paddles out even further beyond the point where they’d normally stop to perch and wait for good swells, venturing out into the flat, glassy deep. James pulls up a few feet away from him and rolls his neck to stretch out his stiff shoulder, already feeling a sore ache in his joint.

  “That feel alright?” Rob asks, breaking their silence for the first time since getting in the truck.

  James nods, wondering whether he can remember Rob ever asking him about his shoulder before. “Just getting it warmed up, yeah.”

  Rob hums, and James looks over when he feels eyes on him, surprised to see Rob openly staring at the scar for the first time he’s ever noticed. Rob meets his gaze, something odd passing across his face, then he looks away.

  They wait, staring out at the flat horizon while the waves crest and break unridden behind them. They wait for long enough that James is just about to open his mouth and ask if Rob forgot how to surf without him the last three days, or if Rob’s too nervous now to surf in front of a Billabong champion, when Rob takes a deep breath and releases it with a small hum.

  “So, out with it, then,” Rob says, speaking out to the horizon.

  James frowns. “I haven’t said anything.”

  “Exactly—you just won a pro competition, something you’ve been wanting to do for years, working your ass off . . . and it was the fucking Billabong, and you haven’t said a single word about it. I don’t even know your scores, who you beat, how it went, how you got back in. Nothing.”

  James opens his mouth to try and respond, completely caught off guard, when Rob goes on as if he’s forgotten James is even there.

  “And you know what? When they said . . . when word was spreading two days ago at the beach about who won, that it was fucking Jimmy Campbell, you know all I heard at first was just your name. Everybody talking about your name, over and over. And I thought that you . . . that you’d gone and drowned. That everyone was talking about you because you went off to Hawaii without me and did something fucking stupid and died.”

  “Aw, Rob,” James hears himself say. He wants to curl in on himself at the sharp ache in his chest. Rob actually is hunched over, staring down at his
hands, and James fights down a wave of shame that he would have once been distracted by the way it made Rob’s abs appear chiseled into his sun-browned skin.

  “Rob,” he whispers again, at a loss for words.

  Rob shrugs, sending James a brief, too-casual glance. A sudden cascade of shivers raises the hairs across his chest. “I just . . .” he tries, then swallows hard. “God, man, it—it fucking scared the shit out of me what happened before you left. I can’t stop seeing it. Thinking about it. Think Lori thinks I’m going mad.”

  “You’re not going mad,” James immediately says. Thousands of possibilities of what he could say jumble in chaos on his groggy tongue. “I . . . you know it—the accident, for me, too, it was—it all happened so fast I wasn’t sure I was gonna make—”

  Rob nods and waves him off, giving an embarrassed half-smile. “I know, I know. You’re still fucking half-asleep and I’m here going off, being a drag. Just needed to say that, get it out.”

  “I never thanked you,” James says, nearly whispering, and Rob laughs.

  “You mean, thank fuck I was there to fill out all the paperwork for your ass at the hospital?” He sighs, then straightens his spine. “Well, forget all that. Now you can say why the fuck you haven’t even said the word ‘Banzai’ since you’ve been back.”

  James prickles, looking quickly over his shoulder back at the city—the jumbled, churning chaos of metal and glass rising up from the earth, totally opposite from the vast, empty sea and sky at their front. He turns back to look at Rob, feeling inexplicably far away and small.

  “You know me,” he responds lamely. “Just—I haven’t processed it all, I guess.”

  Rob chuckles through his nose, a small, sad smile on his lips. “I do know you, Jimmy. So that’s why I want you to tell me why you just had what should be the best two weeks of your life, minus the almost drowning part, and you look even sadder than you did that first day I met you.”

  James flinches and rubs the back of his neck. He speaks down softly at his board as embarrassment heats his face. “That obvious, huh?”