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I keep a cautious eye on her as I stand and wrap my arms around Dylan’s taut waist. Ten years since we met, and whenever we’re here, it’s as if we visited yesterday. Dylan isn’t the same guy I met. I’m different too, but underneath we’re the people we always were.
Dylan and Rhys have matching heads of curls, Rhys wanting longer hair to match his dad’s, which now reaches past his ears. I place my lips on Dylan’s and inhale, the smell of the ocean around as evocative as the same spiced scent Dylan’s always had. Dylan gently takes my face in both hands and kisses me softly back.
I taste my man from the sea. The one I worried would pull me under and drown me in his wake but who never did. He stops suddenly and drops my face before turning around. “Hey!”
I suppress a laugh when I see Dylan’s T-shirt covered in water and our son holding an empty bucket, and a smile matching the one his dad used to find his way into my heart years ago.
Rhys giggles and kicks water in his direction, but it doesn’t reach him. In a sudden move, Dylan scoops up his son and throws him over one shoulder. He shrieks and wrestles his dad, but Dylan’s too strong. Rhys has grown to look like me, but he holds his dad’s joy for everything creative and his gentle nature. As with any mum, I don’t notice how my children grow until I see them in a different place. His long legs hang over Dylan’s back; I suspect he’ll have his dad’s height too.
We try to keep our children away from public scrutiny. And as the years pass, the interest in us wanes. Others take their place, as Blue Phoenix find themselves cemented as giants of the music industry, and lose attention as upcoming and outrageous stars, who know how to play the media game, takeover.
This lack of pressure helps me especially, and apart from the occasional break-up rumour, we’ve not held recent interest apart from when Seren was born. We refuse to hide ourselves away, which helps when we holiday. The nightmare of the life Dylan lived back then retreats.
Seren hangs onto her dad’s leg eager to join in the game, and he pauses.
“Should we throw Rhys in the sea?” he asks her.
“No!” shrieks Rhys, “It’s too cold!”
Dylan laughs. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Yes!” Seren bounces up and down.
Dylan drops Rhys to his feet, and the two wrestle, Dylan dropping some of his strength to allow a fairer tussle. Seren heads back to me and grabs a handful of shells from her brother’s sculpture.
“Seren, no!” I take them from her and set about replacing the missing shells, but she continues to take and rearrange them. A splash alerts me, and I look up. Dylan and Rhys sit in the water together, soaked from where they landed, with waves splashing over them as they both laugh, although Dylan louder than Rhys.
Before they return, I manage to fix up Rhys’s creation and knock the telltale sand from Seren’s hands.
“I’m hungry, ice-cream time!” announces Dylan.
Seren holds her arms out to her dad, and he swings her up onto his shoulders. She laughs and grips his hair as her dad runs along the beach, Rhys in hot pursuit yelling out which flavour he wants.
Dylan’s voice travels back to me in the breeze. “Keep up, summer Sky!”
I pick up the bucket and run towards them. The seagulls call their years’ old sound, and the sun heats my bare shoulders. Catching up, I wrap an arm around Dylan’s waist and rest my head against him, as we walk through our own world under our forever summer sky.
The End
