The Sea Ain't Mine Alone

by Beaumont, C. L.

  “I think he tried to tell me that he loves me, right before I left,” James says. “We were in his house, fucking fighting over nothing. I didn’t . . . I couldn’t let him finish saying it.”

  Rob whips his head to look at him, eyes blown wide. “Fuck, Jimmy, seriously? And you—is that how you feel?”

  James shrugs his shoulders hard, arms falling helplessly at his sides. “How can I? You can’t love someone after two weeks. Two days. That’s not how it—it’s impossible.”

  “Oh, fuck that. Who said there was a rulebook?”

  James laughs. “Probably the same person who said two men can’t fuck each other.”

  Rob chuckles in response, and James feels the air finally settle and relax, clearing away some of the thick, tense fog. “Anyway,” James goes on. “You made the right choice. Lori’s way prettier than me.”

  “Fucking right she is. Sometimes I get confused out here wondering whether something’s you or a clump of old seaweed.”

  “You son of a bitch,” James laughs, and Rob hits the water to splash him right in the face, grinning.

  Rob hums a bit dramatically in his throat. “Fuck. So Danny Moore loves you,” he says, and James finds himself nodding slowly, stunned to hear the words said out loud.

  “I . . . maybe. Yeah.”

  Rob smiles wide. “When are you going back?”

  “To Oahu?”

  “Well, yeah!” Rob looks at him again, sees something in the look on James’ face, then groans. “Shit, Jimmy, don’t tell me you’re not planning on going back.”

  James feels the anger from yesterday morning settle once more over his chest. “Well what the hell else am I supposed to do? I can’t just . . . drop everything and move there.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “It was two days.”

  “And I’ve known you for two years and never seen you look as happy as you do when you’re talking about him.”

  “When the hell was that?”

  “Literally just now.”

  James shoots him a look. “Seriously? Jesus, you sound just like him.”

  “He asked you to stay there with him? On Oahu? Jimmy, why in the living fuck are you back here?!”

  “I have a job!”

  “That you hate and that you’re way too fucking good for.”

  “—that pays. And honestly, I . . . I mean, I barely even know him.”

  “All this time I’ve heard about Danny Moore on the circuit and I can guarantee you, Jimmy, he’s never even had a single conversation with another surfer. And you stayed at his house. You . . . well, you two—”

  “I get it, yeah.” James grits his teeth as his face flushes. “Look, man it’s not just my job. You know that. I have . . . I have my place, the wagon, and you, and—”

  “Exactly. You’ve got jack shit here in LA besides my sorry ass and you know it.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Of course it’s not simple. But you’ve got a man who says he fucking loves you—yes, he at least thinks he does, you can’t argue that—and you’ve got a bank account full of prize money because you’re a fucking professional ass surfer who just won the Billabong, and you’ve got a best friend who thinks you’re an absolute moron for not getting the hell out of here. You like being with him—don’t lie to me. Tell me one goddamn reason why you aren’t back on a plane right now.”

  James says the words before he can even think. “I’m scared.”

  The silence falls, heavy and buzzing. Rob waits, and James forces himself to speak, pushing out choked words.

  “Look, if I go there—there’s no turning back, right? Everyone will know, no matter how hard we try . . . People aren’t idiots. They’re gonna notice that Jimmy Campbell and Danny Moore show up to every surf competition together in the same fucking car. They’re gonna . . . and I can’t just say nevermind in a year and go back to this. To how it is now. Nobody knows, Rob. It’s you. My whole life, you’re fucking it.”

  “And him.”

  James blinks hard. “Yeah. And him.”

  Rob’s voice is soft and gentle. “But does he make you happy?”

  James wants to keep fighting. “Well, you make me happy. You and Lori make me happy. Los Angeles makes me happy. The surf here. No reason why I need to change anything.”

  “Damn right we make you happy, but I’m sure as hell not gonna put stars in your eyes like he did that day on the beach in Laguna.”

  James sighs, not answering. He tries to think of something, anything to change the subject. Now that he’s gone and revealed himself he feels a desperate, racing need for it all to be over. He doesn’t want to sit there on the water and think of Sydney’s face looking desperate and lost in his kitchen. Doesn’t want to think about how neither of them said anything important in those last precious moments, caught in the heat of a frenzied kiss.

  The subject refuses to change, though, and Rob still perches staring him down, waiting for another comeback to refute.

  James gives in to the conversation with a resigned sigh. “We didn’t say anything when I left. We . . . I kissed him. Goodbye. And he dropped me off. And I don’t even know . . . I don’t have his phone number. Didn’t make any plans. I think he thinks we just won’t see each other again—awkwardly wave at the next competition and that’ll be it. I feel like a complete asshole.”

  “You’re not an asshole. You said it—you’re just scared.”

  James laughs, frantic and desperate. “Why is this more terrifying than stepping off a fucking boat with a gun in my hands? It doesn’t make any fucking sense—”

  “Hate to sound like a greeting card, Jimmy, but this stuff doesn’t make any fucking sense. First day I woke up and knew I wanted to marry Lori she was dead asleep and had a horrible perm and was drooling all over my pillow. And I thought ‘I need to fucking marry this girl.’”

  James’ brain halts. “Wait, you never told me you’re getting married?”

  Rob’s face lights up with a brilliant, shy smile. “I, uh, haven’t told anyone yet. I just bought the ring a week ago.”

  Every ounce of frustration leaves James’ chest in a rush. He answers Rob’s smile, reaching out to take his hand and hold it over the water. His throat chokes up on his words, and a million sentences float through his mind before he finally settles, lamely, on, “I’m so happy for you, for both of you.”

  Rob squeezes his hand and smiles, eyes understanding. “Me too, man.”

  The light moment quickly turns strained, the emotions from the past thirty minutes churning into a thick, heavy weight in the air—one that can’t be cleared, only left behind. James lets go of Rob’s hand and dramatically shakes out his shoulders, trying to breathe away the tension still in his limbs. “Right, well, tomorrow morning I’ll bring a check and pay you for the therapy,” he jokes.

  “I’ve kept your sorry ass alive for two fucking years,” Rob smirks. “You owe me at least a hundred grand at this point. Better get real good at surfing.”

  James rolls his eyes and, after a mutual nod, starts to paddle back towards the breaking point of the waves, knowing they’ve said everything that needed to be said. Rob joins him, paddling just behind him and panting as they reawaken stiff muscles from the cold.

  “Look, Jimmy,” Rob calls up to him as they paddle, “all I’m saying is, and this is the last thing I’ll say about it, you decide to go back there, just say the word and I’ll help you. We’ll help you. I’ll miss you like hell, man, you know that. But you just say the word.”

  James looks over his shoulder, more water glossing over his eyes. Rob smiles at him and raises his brows, confirming James heard, then nods over his shoulder at a fresh swell coming their way.

  “You take this one,” Rob says. “Show me how a Billabong champion rides our sorry little waves.”

  James flips him off and starts to get into position to chase the wave, but stops just before starting his first stroke. “Will you tell Lori, for me? Tell her . . . you kn
ow. I want her to know.”

  Rob nods. “Of course, old man.”

  Then James paddles like hell towards the Los Angeles skyline, a warm tingle zipping down his spine as he catches his first wave of the morning and soars into the spray. Rob’s echoing whoop follows him all the way in to the shore.

  ~

  James lifts his hand in a wave as Rob pulls away from the curb in his truck an hour later, wheels revving so he can make it home in time to change and shower before his shift starts at the station. The dust along the side of the highway swirls around James’ shins in a sandy cloud, and the hot morning sun beats down onto his back, high and bright in the sky and quickly drying his damp shirt.

  James shoulders his bag as Rob’s truck disappears from view, turns away from the road, and is immediately slammed with the sensation of being a tourist in his own city. He shoves his hand in his pocket to make sure his apartment keys are still there, but the thought of going back to that stale, empty room feels like some sort of accepted defeat.

  But he should go home. He should throw out the stale trash and open up the windows, run down to the bodega for some groceries to replenish the measly fridge and call in to make sure he’ll still be allowed to show up for work tomorrow. He’s got laundry to unpack, unused boardshorts to put away, a dead and crumpled lei of flowers to awkwardly throw in the trash and a trophy to decide whether to put on a sad shelf or hide in a closet.

  Instead he walks down the beach towards the pier, already thronging with morning joggers and tourists. He hefts his bag higher on his shoulder and makes his way as gracefully as he can through the crowd. It feels surreal that only two weeks ago he’d stood on the sand just below this very boardwalk and emerged from the water having just beat Danny Moore.

  He passes the exact place he’d been standing on the rough wood when he’d locked eyes with an unassuming stranger in the crowd, and James can’t even believe that it’s the same pier—the same physical place. Surely the spot where he first glimpsed Sydney Moore is too private for regular people to be unconsciously trodding over in flip-flops and trainers. Everything now looks like a flat façade—a cheap, thrown-together copy of the water and sand surrounding Sydney’s home back on Oahu. Even the palm tree fronds don’t look quite as green.

  James makes it to the very end of the pier and leans his elbows against the splintered wood, shielding his eyes from the oppressive sun. He looks out along the southern stretch of shimmering beach, snaking around the coastline down towards Long Beach and the marinas. He imagines he can see the cranes from the dockyard piercing up into the hazy sky, heavy and rusted with the slow, eternal drag of labor. Covered in grime and sweat. He wonders if they even have a dockyard on Oahu. Maybe down by the harbor near Honolulu, a black, oily splotch in the middle of paradise.

  The thought makes him cringe. Sydney Moore wouldn’t want to wake up every morning next to an exhausted, sweat- and grease-covered dockyard worker. Not in his little haven of paradise.

  Would he?

  James stands there for almost an hour, letting the skin on the back of his neck burn under the sun and forcing his mind to stay completely blank. He doesn’t think about how his hands have grown soft from a week away from work, or the fact that Rob Depaul admitted out loud that morning that he had kissed him back, or about how James can no longer remember the exact lines and shading of Sydney’s tattoo. He doesn’t think about the fact that Sydney Moore is currently preparing to hurl himself from the tallest waves on earth in just a few days at Waimea.

  He just stands there, bag over his shoulder like a tourist kicked out of their hotel, and he watches the bustling beach slowly come to hectic life.

  When the thirst in his throat makes him feel lightheaded, James finally turns to walk back down the pier with a resigned sigh, making his way towards his apartment with thudding, dreaded steps. The small incline up Hermosa Avenue has never felt so unbearably steep, and the screeches of the traffic make him constantly jump, as if he’d just stepped off the fucking boat that morning with his shoulder still in a sling.

  The door to his apartment opens with a great shove, squealing on its hinges as it swings open into the airless, dark room. It looks like it’s been ransacked; James’ clothes are still scattered on the floor from the day he shoved them into his bag to try and rush to the airport on time. A dropped cup of instant coffee stains the old carpet. The hospital bracelet from his stay lies torn in half on the little wooden table, the still-to-be-dealt-with insurance paperwork folded up in a heap next to it.

  James steps inside and shuts the door behind him with a thud, then takes one slow look around every corner of the room. He can barely hear the ocean over the hum of the cars rushing by just outside his tiny window. His left-behind surfboard is the brightest color in the place, standing limply in the corner as if it can’t decide whether to be happy James is home.

  There isn’t a coffee maker taking up half the counter space. There are no photographs of his mom.

  His bed, shoved away in the corner, is only big enough for one.

  James gasps in a breath and closes his eyes. His knees buckle as the shocking wave of realization floods like fire through his chest and up his throat. He suddenly knows, more than he’s ever known anything in his life, that he is somehow in love with Sydney Moore.

  The realization leaves him trembling and shocked, frozen in the center of his room. He wishes Sydney himself were beside him to confirm that any of this is real—that James really is standing in his Los Angeles apartment with the utmost certainty that he is about to move across an entire ocean to go live with a man.

  And not with just any man. But with . . . with—

  James sprints to the phone on the wall and snatches it off the cradle, groaning in frustration when he doesn’t hear the dial tone. He must have forgotten to pay the goddamn phone bill—what with all the drowning and championship winning and last minute flights.

  In a mad panic, he grabs a handful of change from the dish on the counter and rushes out the door, running like hell down the block towards the payphone near the bodega on the corner, not giving a shit who happens to see. He shoves the quarters into the slot with shaking fingers and holds his palm over the smile blazing across his face, unable to wipe it off.

  He flips madly through the crumpled-up papers and cards in his wallet until he finds the one from Rob’s station, dog-eared at the corners with the number to reach him there written in Rob’s own shaky scrawl.

  The voice at the other end is crisp and professional—completely unaware that the man on the other end of the line is seeing Los Angeles in vivid technicolor for the first time in years.

  “Los Angeles Police Department, Torrance Station, how may I help you?”

  James clears his throat. “Uh, yeah, is Officer Depaul there? Rob Depaul?”

  He hears papers shuffling on the other end of the line, muffled voices and beeping in the background. “I’m sorry, sir, he’s out on patrol. Can I leave a message?”

  “That’d be rad. Yes, just tell—tell him Jimmy Campbell called.” James runs a hand through his hair, lifting his chin to feel the fresh breeze against his face.

  “Tell him it’s about what he told me earlier. I decided yes.”

  21

  Sydney stands on the shore off Waimea just before dawn, silently watching the waves surge and crash in the watery moonlight. The wind whips his untamed curls freely into his face, blowing across his cheeks and tangling with his eyelashes, hovering over the bridge of his nose.

  He’s been standing there since sunset.

  His bare feet are cold and stiff in the sand, buried almost up to the ankle. The wind slices through his sweatpants and grabs ahold of his legs, crawling icy hands up his bare bones. He hunches his shoulders and tips his head down so that his nose is buried in the front of the soft sweatshirt covering his frame. He pauses as the fabric casts a calm, guarded warmth over the skin of his lips and chin, then he shuts his eyes tight, shakes his head at himself, and inhales. />
  He hates being so irrationally stupid.

  The sweatshirt is the only piece of clothing James touched that Sydney hasn’t been able to bring himself to wash. His sheets, his towels, his pillowcases, every article of clothing—all of it went straight to the laundromat in town the second he’d gotten home from dropping James off at the airport.

  There had been no sense in delaying it—might as well jump straight back into his old life. His comfortable, usual, familiar little life. Where all his clothes just smelled like himself, and his meals lasted him for days on the leftovers, and his bed only had the imprint of one body in the morning. Pillowcases only strewn with long, brown curls of hair.

  This goddamn sweatshirt, though. He’d gotten back from the laundromat dragging the huge sack of clean clothes behind him and seen it lying forgotten half-hidden under the bed, like some unwanted monument erected smack in the center of his home. And he’d left the damn thing there for three whole days until he finally picked it up with shaking hands in the middle of the night and held it to his face in a daze.

  And now he feels moronic and utterly hopeless, standing on the beach like some swooning heroine in the secret books he knew his momma used to hide and read, trying to somehow breathe in a reminder of James Campbell’s lost scent against the salty air and warm musk of the sand. Not even surfing, just uselessly watching as the thick black wind slowly lightens into the clean slate of dawn.

  It’s been one hundred and thirty-seven hours since he last held James Campbell. One hundred and thirty-six since he last saw him. The knowledge that that number will only ever grow towards infinity leaves a thudding, irritating ache in his chest, drowned out only by the heaving drone of the wind as it whips across the ocean’s churning surface.

  He needs to keep count, though. To track the number as it grows higher and higher and higher. Because watching the number grow to one thousand, or ten thousand, or one hundred thousand means that it had to have started at one, then two, then three. It means that James Campbell winning the Billabong and then coming back to sleep in Sydney’s bed must have really happened at some time, in some place. That it can’t all have just been a dream.