AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ready?”
I don’t feel ready.
Then I imagine Danny’s face if he could see us right now: his surrogate brother and his idol, chilling on a beach together.
Some stupid, stupid part of me thinks,Maybe he knew this would happen. Because something about this place and all the years that led me here makes it impossible to hold onto my pinball theory of the universe. I need today to mean something, even if that makes me a fool.
“Here.” I spread the card carefully on my knee, holding it in place. Victor scrawls his name and sits back, chewing on the end of the pen.
“I don’t know what the fuck people do at this point,” he says, frowning. “I’m not gonna pray or some shit.”
I'm drained, like I could lie down and sleep for days. “I don’t know either.”
Crouching in the sand, he props his chin on his knees. “You think he’d like to stay here? The view’s pretty good.” He bites his lip, flushing a little under my gaze. “I don’t know. If it was me, I’d be happy here.”
“Ok.”
We spend an hour carrying random shit to the top of one of the hills with the best view of the water—rocks, shells, some flowers Victor found in a crevice of driftwood. I dig a little hole and, after holding it for a long time, put the card inside and bury it. He helps me stack up a makeshift cairn and then sits next to me, letting me exist in the silence.
Eventually, he clears his throat. “I wasn’t happy,” he offers, like it’s some kind of exchange for the piece of my life I let him see. “All I ever wanted to do was swim. Fast and far. Then everyone got weird about it, my coaches, the press, and all anyone wanted me to do was show up on TV and make them money. I never said the right things, so people told me what to say and I said that. And I guess you saw, but my team was toxic as shit.” He picks up a rock and throws it across the sand. “Nothing turned out the way I thought it would, but it was too late to get out.”
“Is that why you did it? To get out?”
A strange expression works its way across his face, then he smiles bitterly. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Shutting down the conversation, he stands up and brushes sand off his ass. He’s been swimming in his briefs this whole time. “Let’s spend the night out here. We can make a driftwood house.”
“Are youvolunteeringto spend the night outdoors?”
“I’m volunteering to watch you build me a house and then let me sleep on you so I don’t have to touch the dirt.”
I’ll never forget the rest of that afternoon, even though nothing significant happened at all. We built a shitty shelter that fell over three times before we got it to stand up. I read Peyton’s book while Victor swam. Sometimes he would run up the sand, look at me for a moment as if making sure I hadn’t vanished, then run away again.
We were high on the freedom of not being in love. Love has borders, limitations. A million movies and a billion books have charted its course. We chase it because we already know how it makes us feel, and once you’re in love, your only choice is to fall back out of it again.
Hate is intimate, endless, obsessive. Addictively co-dependent. You can’t disappoint someone who believes in the worst possible version of you. You can only memorize them, every hope to break, every vulnerability to tear open, until they’re your everything and you’re their shield against the nightmares that you made for them. And now that I’ve tasted it, I’m not sure I could ever go back, even though I know it’s wrong.
At some point, I drift off on my back in the sand, waiting for him, and when I open my eyes, he’s crouching over me. He tips his head toward the ocean, the bright horizon in his eyes.
“Come on.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Come on.” His hand slips through mine like an electric shock. I’ve never held someone’s hand like this, fingers threaded together, and he feels so incredible that he could lead me anywhere and I’d never let go.
We walk together down the sand, to where it’s wet and bubbling. The people in the distance with their umbrellas and plastic buckets have gone home, and we’re the only ones left.
My heart flips when the surf touches my feet, and my hand tightens around his. He rests his chin on my shoulder and I can feel him smile. “It’s ok. This whole world wouldn’t be here without water. It protects me. It’s always protected me.”
His shirt flutters around him in the breeze and, just like in Naples, he looks like an untouchable god of the sea. But this time he’s mine to touch.
He leads me deeper, until the water’s around my knees, shifting the sand under my feet. I shudder, but he holds on. “Shh. Just listen to it. Let it touch you.” I close my eyes, then yelp in protest when a swell rushes up to my waist. “Getting wet’s the hard part,” he says. “After that there’s nothing to lose.”
And so I follow him deeper, to my chest, because I want to know how it feels to have nothing to lose. He squeezes my hand whenever it’s time to jump over a wave. The water is cold and rough around me, and it’s all too much when a wave slaps my face, fills my mouth with water. I let go of him and move to solid ground, secretly proud of the progress I made.
Victor stays in the water a minute longer, diving under the waves and coming back up, tossing his hair back. He lets the next wave carry him to me, stumbling on all fours, laughing.
I shove him when he tries to wipe his sandy hands on my clothes and we tussle through the shallow water. He wins, just like always, and throws his arms around me, rubbing dirt down the back of my shirt.
