It isn’t a ring.
It’s a small medallion on a chain, made of sanded, gleaming wood. James holds it in his palm and runs his thumb along the smooth, flat surface. Something about the coloring of it looks familiar to him. Then he notices the barest trace of spray paint at the edge. Realization slaps against his face, and he gasps.
“Your first board?” he breathes.
Sydney nods, eyes hesitant. James can tell he’s waiting to see if James will understand why. Why Sydney felt the need to cut apart the first board he ever caught a wave on, and carved out a piece at the center, and sanded and sanded and sanded it until it became something beautiful that shone. Why Sydney felt the need to include the barest hint of old spray paint that never fully scrubbed off, which James knows once formed a word sprayed across Sydney’s board that still shoots icy fear into his own chest.
Oh, Sydney . . .
James places the chain around his neck, adjusting his shirt so the smooth wood hangs just over his heart. He looks up at Sydney with wet eyes, biting his lip, and Sydney’s entire body relaxes like releasing a lungful of air.
James nods, just barely, and he knows that Sydney sees—that he understands. It’s more than any of the words they could say.
James nearly forgets that the two of them aren’t alone on the entire earth, and he flinches when Chris suddenly picks up where he left off, his voice warming the cool frothy spray carried by the wind flowing across the rocky cliff.
“Aloha is the welcome and the goodbye,” Chris says like a hum. “It is the welcoming of this new union—this horizon of sky and sea. And it is the goodbye of the fully separated self—the goodbye to a life lived solely on one’s own path, with one’s own gifts.”
He turns to James. “James, before you say goodbye to your old life as one man, and welcome your new life as sky, is there anything you wish to say to Sydney?”
James blanks. He hadn’t known Chris would ask them this. They hadn’t known anything about what he would even say—no vows or lines or any of it at all. Which is unbearably stupid now that he thinks about it. Who walks into their own wedding without knowing what they’re about to promise and say? But he’s stuck here, and Chris is waiting for him to make a life changing declaration, and he suddenly can’t think of a single word beyond Sydney’s name.
He glances up at Sydney with wide eyes, feeling like the entire ocean is frozen waiting on the cusp of what he’s about to say. Then he sees Sydney’s patient eyes, the little palmfuls of clear ocean water on the safe shore, and the words come rushing out of his mouth before he can even plan them, flowing calm and effortless from his lips.
“You saved me,” he says, throat tight. “And I love you.”
A thick moment of insecurity beats in James’ ears, and he grits his teeth as he thinks that maybe Chris had expected some longer, more eloquent vow after all the gorgeous things he’s been saying to them all afternoon. That maybe he’ll scowl, and tell the Champion of the Waves Danny Moore that he should at least find a man who doesn’t sound like an uneducated, unprepared rock, if he’s going to be with a man at all.
But Chris simply nods, a soft smile on his lips, and he turns towards Sydney, who’s looking at James like he’s stunned. Chris repeats the same thing to him. “Sydney, before you say goodbye to your old life as one man, and welcome your new life as sea, is there anything you wish to say to James?”
James stares transfixed as Sydney swallows hard once, then twice. He reaches again for Sydney’s hands, and Sydney’s fingers immediately lock onto his in a strong, tight grip. James waits patiently, wondering what grand speech Sydney’s about to deliver, as Sydney looks down at their joined hands and blinks.
The moment drags on. James’ breathing starts to pick up. He feels unprecedentedly helpless watching Sydney struggle for what to say for seemingly the first time since James introduced himself out on the waves.
Then Sydney looks into his eyes and gruffly whispers, “James.”
Sydney opens his mouth to say more, but nothing comes out. He looks back down at their hands wide-eyed, then releases a shaky breath and looks back at James with one tear slowly sliding down his cheek. His lips tremble as he barely gets out the word again.
“James.”
Then James watches in awe as Sydney starts to cry, tears streaming freely down his face as his lungs clench over a wet sob. James completely forgets about the ceremony. Forgets Chris and Rob and Lori and the fact they’re even standing up on the cliff saying their vows.
Sydney’s crumpling face is the only thing that exists in the world, and James immediately steps forward and holds Sydney’s wet cheek in his hand, thumb wiping away the water dripping down from Sydney’s eye. His own eyes grow wet as Sydney’s chest vibrates against his, and James waits patiently until Sydney looks up from between their bodies and briefly meets his gaze. He would wait here forever.
“Hey now,” he whispers, pulling Sydney’s face down closer to him. Out of nowhere, an odd sense of calm drapes over his skin, banishing the panic of watching Sydney Moore break down and replacing it with warmth spreading through his veins—the soft heat of the sand against the soles of his feet when he shook Sydney’s hand on the Billabong shore.
He grips Sydney’s wet cheek harder in his hand as Sydney tries to hold back the choked sounds in his throat. “I’m right here,” he whispers. “Look at me.”
Sydney’s wet eyes fly back open and lock onto James’ face, wrecked and lost with a hint of embarrassment burning in the vivid blue of his irises. James rubs his cheek and smiles, letting Sydney see his own lips shake. “Here I thought I was gonna be the one to lose it,” he says.
Sydney laughs wetly, coming to life and wiping the back of his hand over his cheeks and nose. “So did I,” he says roughly, eyes crinkling. “But then again, you had all that Navy training.”
James shakes his head and sniffs. “Ridiculous man,” he whispers.
With a final pat and one last swipe of his thumb across Sydney’s cheek, James pulls away his hand, pausing briefly to straighten the collar of Sydney’s shirt. Sydney rolls back his shoulders, running his forearm over his eyes once more and sniffing hard.
When he’s ready, he gives James a small, grinning nod, and they both look at Chris and gesture to go on. The vows are done; they both know that Sydney just said everything he ever could with one word. He doesn’t need to say anything more.
Chris appraises them both, his face gentle and solemn, then he bends down to pull a gleaming conch shell out of the bag, cradling it softly in his large, rough hands.
He clears his throat. “With this sound, we will ask for the attention of the sky and sea as witness, to see that you, James Campbell, and you, Sydney Moore, have chosen now to join together as one, binding yourselves to each other with your hearts as the unbroken horizon line. May no man, no law, and no force of nature cause that horizon to bend or break. When I sound this horn, the sky and the sea become one.”
With one final serious glance at each of them, Chris turns his back to face out over the ocean, raising the conch shell to his lips. The wind whispers in the silent pause. Then Chris takes a deep breath and blows a deep and mournful note through the shell, echoing out across the waves and billowing over the sea.
James’ chest vibrates with the groaning hum. He looks up at Sydney, whose eyes are burning brilliant blue framed by long, wet eyelashes. Sydney smiles and runs his hands across James’ shoulders, and James closes his eyes and hums as Sydney presses a long, soft kiss to his forehead, his thumbs coming up to rub along his jaw.
James reaches up to hold onto Sydney’s wrists as the conch shell continues to blow out over the sea. And the brilliant wind in his hair, the foaming salt in his nose and the back of his throat, and James breathes in the scent from the hollow of Sydney’s neck as his toes grip at the foundation of the sun warmed earth.
Sydney pulls back and looks at him just as Chris finishes the final call on the shell. James moves to step back from Sydney, uns
ure what Chris will do next, when suddenly an unexpected voice breaks the bubble of silence.
“Aw come on, give him a real kiss!” Lori cries.
Sydney laughs as James shoots Lori and Rob a breathless smile, and then before he can even lick his lips, or raise his brows at Sydney to silently ask what he wants to do, Sydney’s wet lips are on his mouth.
He caresses James’ surprised lips, moving slowly against his skin while a moan builds deep in his throat. James feels the kiss right down to the soles of his feet, wrapping around every muscle and bone. He smiles against Sydney’s mouth, grips the back of his neck, and pulls him closer against his lips to deepen the kiss with a soft moan, not giving a shit that three other people are watching him place his mouth on another man’s skin. Watching him taste the sound of his name still trembling on Sydney’s tongue, or weave his fingers through a head of dark curls, or swipe his thumb along a sharp, angular jaw.
It feels an awful lot like flying. Like soaring down the face of a wave with nothing but the ocean spray blasting against his grinning face.
Sydney presses one last kiss to the corner of James’ mouth, moving his lips gently across the edge of James’ beard, then he steps back, dropping his hand after one final squeeze.
James belatedly realizes that Chris is placing the shell back in his bag and slinging it over his shoulder, quietly starting to step away behind them. James quickly steps in front of Chris before he can leave and tries to think of what the hell he should even say, feeling somber and giddy in his chest all at once.
He catches the deep brown eyes framed by unruly, grey brows and forces himself to speak. “Thank you,” he says. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what we would’ve done.”
Sydney stands beside him and nods once, his eyes full of meaning. Chris steps back and looks between the two of them thoughtfully for a moment before giving a small smile and bowing his head.
“It was a privilege,” he says. Then he nods towards Rob and Lori waiting behind them. “Go and celebrate, then. And one of you better win for Oahu next month in Huntington Beach.” Then he looks once more at the sea, shoulders his bag, and calmly walks back towards the path leading down to the beach, stepping smoothly along the way with his head held effortlessly high, not looking once behind him.
James watches Chris leave with the strange urge to reach out and beg him to stay, oddly sad and empty with each further step the man takes down the cliff path. James waits until Chris’ silver head disappears behind the rocks and into the trees, then startles when someone gently touches his shoulder. He turns to see Sydney guiding back around towards Rob and Lori where they stand near the peak of the cliff.
“I think Rob’s gonna pass out if you don’t go over there,” Sydney whispers in his ear, and James only has the chance to take two steps forward when Rob covers the distance in three leaping strides and crushes James in his arms, gripping hard at his back.
They don’t say anything. Rob’s chest presses the smooth, unfamiliar weight of Sydney’s medallion against James’ skin, the wood already warmed by the heat of his body. James breathes into his shoulder, and Rob’s hair tumbles loose from his bun across the side of James’ face.
Then Rob thumps his back hard once before stepping aside so Lori can jump in, and she squeezes her arms around James’ neck as he buries his face in the top of her hair. Sydney steps up behind him, running his palm up the small of James’ back, and James has the sudden sensation, forming a lump in his throat, that he has never been alive until this moment. That his heart has been beating half-speed from the morning he woke up alone as a kid until now. That he has never, truly never, felt the real kiss of the sun against his skin until these specific rays. This specific sky and sea.
But then Lori steps away from him, slipping out of his arms. A buzzing silence falls, and everyone stands frozen still, and James fears that everything in his entire world is about to turn strained and uncomfortable for the rest of time—that all four of them will stand at the top of this cliff without any idea what to say until the earth dies, the memory of Sydney’s lips on his forever burned into everyone’s minds.
Then Rob clears his throat and turns to Sydney. “So, who the fuck is Sydney?” he asks.
Sydney laughs, the sound of it washing over James like smooth, warm water. The earth unfreezes, and time starts ticking away again in a rhythm with the waves. They all shuffle their feet, unconsciously moving a few steps away from where the ceremony just took place.
Rob turns to James and sports a wicked grin. “And what the hell is this about him calling you ‘James? Who the fuck are you, now—some middle-aged pastor from Kansas? I taught you better than that, man. Be cool.”
James rolls his eyes as the last wisps of tension break, giving way to clear, fresh air as James starts walking down the path besides Lori, Rob and Sydney walking a few steps ahead of them. But Rob and Sydney slowly pull away as they all eventually make their way back along the stretch of beach, and James prides himself that he doesn’t immediately break into a sprint to keep up like a desperate kid.
Lori walks beside him in easy silence, one hand playing with the tips of her hair draped over her shoulder. When Rob and Sydney are too far ahead to hear, James sticks his hands in his pockets and breathes in the familiar spray of the sea.
“Rob’s not giving him the ‘break his heart’ talk, is he?” he asks.
Lori snickers under her breath. “No, he gave him that over the phone when he called a week ago. I was terrified just sitting in the next room over,” she laughs.
James chuckles, peering into the distance as Sydney and Rob pause by the shore in front of the house, their toes dipping into the wet and foaming sand. He watches Rob lean forward to put his hand on Sydney’s arm, holding him there. They learn towards each other, both speaking low and occasionally nodding. Something tells James he already knows the gist of what they must be talking about—something about the fact that James damn well knows that these are the only two men on earth he’s ever looked in the eyes and told that he used to want to swim out forever into the water and never look back.
That he still does. Some days. After the long nights filled with red mud and lifeless black eyes. When he thinks maybe the warm arm around him is really a deadly jungle vine, pulling him down into the smoke.
James blinks. He hadn’t even realized he’d stopped walking, and Lori’s shoulder brushes against his as they both stare at Sydney and Rob standing in the shallows. The sight of the two people James loves most in the world currently holding each other by the sea burns fresh, sharp warmth through his chest, making him have to blink away.
“How long are you guys staying?” he hears himself ask Lori.
Lori takes the bait and goes along with the change in subject, taking a breath and flipping her hair back off her shoulder as they resume their walk. “Only until day after tomorrow,” she says like it’s an apology. “You know it’s hard for Rob to get time off like this. And me, too.”
James rubs the back of his neck. “Shit, of course. I didn’t realize—we could take you out somewhere tonight? Try and find somewhere in the city? Or I’m not sure if we have anything to cook –”
“Oh please, I’ve already made Rob get us reservations to the most expensive restaurant in Honolulu tonight by our hotel, and you’re gonna stay here and enjoy yourself. Don’t worry about us.”
“But you came all this way, you took time off—”
“Jimmy, we’ll see you tomorrow, I promise. I’ll probably wake up tomorrow morning to find Rob’s already snuck out at the crack of dawn and hitched a ride back to you because he’ll be too impatient to wait for poor old me.”
James snorts under his breath and grins down at his bare feet, watching them sink into the sand just as they finally reach Rob and Sydney standing quietly on the shore. Sydney immediately reaches for him and pulls him close to his side by the waist, kissing the side of his head without hesitation. The plain, blatant fact of it makes James’ heart tug in his chest.
He wants to call up to the heavens for somebody up there to take a picture of them all—of James standing on the beach of his home in front of his two closest friends with Sydney Moore effortlessly pressing his lips into his hair. Of him breathing easy and open with the warm weight of Sydney’s wedding gift hanging around his neck and over his chest, protected by the thin navy fabric of his shirt and with the cool chain brushing the edge of his scar.
Rob puts his hand on Lori’s shoulder with an air of finality. “So, we’ll see you guys tomorrow?”
Sydney tilts his head. “I guess we can spare you some time.”
Lori squints at him. “I don’t think I can ever call you Danny ever again. Just doesn’t fit.”
“Oh, you’ll get used to it again, trust me,” Sydney says, right at the same time Rob loudly whispers, “He’ll kill you and bury you at sea if you don’t!”
A silence falls on the group after Sydney laughs through his nose, and James has the choking urge to say something—anything. That he should thank them again, or talk about what just happened, or somehow put all the chaos in his head into words. That he needs to keep them forever in their huddle on the beach before anything has the chance to break away or fall apart.
“Alright, Jimmy?”
Rob’s looking at him with the same questioning expression he was wearing the very moment they first met.
James shakes his head, reminding himself that he’s in Oahu, and that he owns a surf shop, and that he’s married, and that he’ll never again be all alone. He smiles apologetically. “Yeah, yeah, sorry. Just lost in my head.”
Rob and Sydney look at each other and explain, at the exact same time, and in the same superior voice, “He does that.”
Lori huffs. “Oh, God; the world can barely handle one man obsessed with Jimmy Campbell. We don’t need two.” She grabs Rob’s arm and raises a hand at Sydney’s open mouth to gently cut him off. “We’ll catch the bus,” she says to his silent question. And then, to an affronted Rob, “You have to pass on your crown now that you’re not married to him. Leave them be. It’s their wedding night.”
The Sea Ain't Mine Alone Page 60
