Continuum

by A. R. Hadley

"The beard?"

  "Yeah."

  "No," he chuckled.

  "Yes," she said, her voice gaining momentum. "I remember..." She changed, becoming reflective and seductive. "I remember when I first came back from New York. I remember your face. Your skin." She closed her eyes, shook from a chill, then opened them. "And your face against me." She smiled and stood.

  "Do you want to go upstairs now?" He smacked her butt.

  "Stop it." She began to walk away.

  Cal snagged Annie's hand, and she glanced at him as he said, “You really felt the baby kick?”

  “Yes,” she replied, arrested by the little-boy-in-a-man's-body expression on his face. "Well, not kick. It was more like a flutter. A swoosh." She smiled.

  Cal took the plate from Annie, then pulled her body toward him. Slowly, he rolled her sweater up her torso … a centimeter at a time.

  Annie turned into a statue, absorbing his strength and magnificent quiet and introspection.

  Placing a hand on the small of her back, he pulled her navel closer to his face as Annie’s eyes filled with tears. She rubbed her hands through Cal’s short hair over and over, combing her nails against his skin.

  He laid his ear against her stomach, listening, warm and content to stay there all day. Her insides made sounds. Pizza sounds. Annie made sounds too. Weeping ones. The happy kind. They ran through her entire body in a flash. As she bobbed and shifted, Cal's head moved with her gentle motions. A hiccup or a flutter passed through the walls of her uterus.

  She stilled.

  Went silent.

  Didn't move a muscle or breathe.

  "Shhh," she whispered.

  It happened again, and she smiled.

  As Cal tilted his head up, a grin wider than one found on a jack-o-lantern spread across his face. Tears were in his eyes along with that pumpkin smile. He swallowed past the lump in his throat as he rolled her sweater down, speaking his love with his eyes.

  Annie bent and kissed his forehead, replying with her eyes too, and then she took both of their plates to the sink.

  "You really don't have any plans? You just showed up here unannounced with no idea what was coming next?"

  "You're my plan, Ms. Baxter." He gazed at her smiling face. “We have to go back down there in the next day or two. I still have to make additional arrangements for the funeral.”

  “We?”

  “Are you free?” he teased.

  "I’ve never felt freer.” She glanced at her mother and Barney on the porch as she made her way back to the table. “And you’re sure … you’re sure you still want to marry me even after witnessing that brand of crazy?" She pointed her head toward the outside.

  Cal smiled, and it warmed her from the inside out, telling her everything.

  "You're smiling now, but you still have to meet my father.”

  "Come here," Cal said, scooting his chair from the table and patting his thigh.

  Annie did as he said, but apparently, she wasn't close enough to his liking, and so he put his hands on her waist and pulled her body toward him. He looked up at her face with the most earnest eyes she’d ever seen him sport.

  "I'm sorry I wasn't here for you," Cal said as Annie rested her hands on his shoulders and peered into his supplicating eyes.

  "You already apologized. It's okay.”

  "No, Annie." He wiggled her hips. "It's not okay." His voice left no room for excuses.

  Annie’s eyes moved side to side as she searched his, looking for the meaning of those sincere words. Finding it, picking up on his truth, she stacked verity alongside love and hope and the promises that had made a home inside her soul, heart, and mind.

  "I'm sorry," Cal repeated, pressing his fingers into her waist.

  They stared into one another’s eyes, exchanging a powerful gaze, the magnets of their skin making their own trade, pulling each inside the other.

  Cal leaned his head against Annie’s chest as she rubbed her fingers through his hair, then held him to her.

  He breathed her in.

  He soaked her in.

  He was full of her.

  Cal wanted nothing more than to be with Annie always. The forever he’d never had the courage to believe in existed within Annie. He’d found it. He’d found her. The one. The reason.

  He was home.

  learn to swim

  butterfly

  backstroke

  breaststroke

  freestyle

  please everyone

  please no one

  drown

  Olympic judges waste my time

  I am drowning…

  in amniotic fluid

  or I am flailing

  in the ocean surrounding

  your heart

  and mine

  drown

  wade

  drown

  paddle

  DROWN

  fuck

  come up for air

  toss me your circular-shaped preserver

  or I’ll give you mine

  and we will share the orange ring

  and find safety riding the tides

  Swim

  move through water

  not to go under

  sink or swim

  live or die

  survive or perish

  Annie should've been happy Cal had brought her to the beach, ready to do something she’d suggested, but the drive to listen and learn and surf wasn't in her today. Or it had left her.

  The anticipation of the week's upcoming event kept her on the edge of sorrow. If she climbed on the board, if she pushed herself, she might slip. Not into the ocean. She could handle crashing into the floor of the sea. What she couldn't do was slip over the precipice of remembrance. That cliff was at least twenty or thirty feet…

  Straight.

  Down.

  They stopped several yards from the shoreline. A few people were in the water. A few on the sand. Cal gripped his old board in both hands.

  "The first thing I want you to do—"

  "I’ve done this before." She cut him off with a smile. "Remember?" A single brow arched, her infamous trick.

  The sun hid behind white clouds. It didn't trap the light or the insistence on his face. "When?"

  "I was sixteen."

  "Who taught you? One of your boys?"

  "No. Yes. Not really."

  "Show me what you remember.”

  His know-it-all attitude was charming. Fucker. And he seemed taller, cuter, and full of endless chess moves. She took the board from him without a roll of her eyes and started to walk toward the water.

  "No." He took a giant step, snatched it from her hands, and dropped it on the sand. "Here." He pointed at it.

  "You want me to get down … on the sand and—"

  "And show me the moves." His damn smile controlled his eyes and voice.

  "Oh. I'll show you the moves." She wiggled her eyebrows.

  He crossed his arms and waited, inflating like Superman.

  "Jeez, Prescott. Has anyone ever told you you’re like an army captain or something? You need a whistle."

  When he had no reply, Annie did roll her eyes, then she lay facedown, head up, looking like a penguin ready to glide through snowy sand on a board in California with Captain Prescott attending. He was probably busy checking out her ass instead of her proper form.

  He whistled. "Sexy, baby."

  Of course. She rolled her eyes.

  "This is my eyeline." Cutting the air with a hand, she showed him where her eyes should rest. "This is my middle." She wiggled her upper body over the imaginary line she drew in the center of the nine-foot-six board. "It's coming back to me."

  He squatted near her rear. "Knees and feet together." He brought her ankles closer until they touched. "Good. Now show me how you stand and balance."

  "Really?"

  "Annie…" He sounded agitated as he stood. "Since when do you have a problem listening to me?"

  "This board is not your bed."

&n
bsp; "No, but you’re making me want to spank the living fuck out of you."

  Whipping her head toward him, she squinted. Damn him if he didn't look so freaking beautiful backlit by the sun. She stood — without showing him how she would balance — and she would balance.

  "Let's go," she said.

  "Are you always this impatient?"

  "I'm restless."

  "The ocean will calm you." He played with her ponytail.

  "The ocean calms you. It makes me nervous."

  "Nothing makes you nervous. Doing this is going to give you confidence."

  "Do we have to do it?" Annie knew she sounded like a whiny, pregnant bitch. What was happening to her? It hadn’t been that long ago since she’d talked him into doing this. Now, he was an expert.

  "What's going on with you?" he asked.

  Change. Stuff.

  Where were they now? Thirty minutes from Ojai at Surfers Point Beach. Miami to Seattle to California. Where would they live? When would they actually get married? Would they? Or would this be one of those long engagements where the fiancé inevitably backed out, made excuses, refused?

  "Maybe surfing isn’t safe for the baby," she said.

  "We’ve talked about this. I researched it."

  "The internet is not my doctor."

  "Do you want me to call your doctor?" They stood eye to eye. Toe to toe. Heart to heart. "That's not what this is."

  She gave him her shoulder, lifted the board, and went toward the water.

  "Damn it, Annie." She could hear him mumble and curse, but she knew he was following. His footsteps pounded the wet sand behind her.

  Several wipeouts and dozens of waves later, Annie's body gave new meaning to the word tired. Not just pregnant tired, but exhausted and sore. She left him to surf alone and found a spot on the sand to rest. Apparently, the fucker had perfected the art of surfing. What didn't he do well?

  Dance…

  Annie smiled. Maybe he’d lied. Maybe he was a closeted Fred Astaire. She wouldn't know. He’d never tried dancing with her. The time in the loft didn’t count. It was thirty seconds of hip wiggling. And laughter…

  With a blanket draped across her shoulders, she’d spent the last thirty minutes or so digging her toes into the sand while sitting on the tip of her board, sunglasses on, watching Cal — his taut form, his ass looking fine in his wetsuit as he paddled against the waves, turtle-rolled, and hoisted his spectacular forty-five-year-old body on top of his twenty-five-year-old board.

  He was in the zone.

  Annie used the time to pick over the details of the week. The thirty-foot precipice of sorrow — the funeral and the family she had yet to meet. She hadn't been to a service since... She had to bury that thought — along with her feet in the sand under millions of inconsequential but essential grains of dirt.

  They’d scattered her brother's ashes in the ocean. It had been too soon. Was Peter a part of the ocean now? The sand? The earth? The sky, the clouds, the universe?

  Cal trotted toward her, hair wet and slicked to the side, surfboard in hand, a satisfied smile on his face. A peace in his eyes he had misplaced. He freely displayed what she knew had always existed in the deepest corners of his heart.

  She wanted to reside in the placid green of his eyes forever.

  They were safe.

  "I need a date," she yelled across the distance he closed between them.

  "We can go out tonight." He dropped his board. The two of them formed a T. He sat, legs crossed, behind her. "Where do you—?"

  "No. I want to pick a wedding date."

  "Write it in the sand." He drank a good swallow of the water from the bottle he’d just grabbed from their cooler. "We do good things in the sand."

  "I can't be waddling down the aisle." She took the water from him and had a few sips.

  "Let's wait until after the baby is born then."

  "No. Life will happen. The baby will happen."

  He swiped the bottle. "Have you thought of any other names?"

  "You still haven't told me if you want to know the sex." She lay flat on her back on the board, giving him an upside-down view of her head.

  "Sure. You?"

  "Maybe." She fidgeted with the zipper on her suit. Up then down. The noise and sensation pacified her the way a strand of hair between her fingers did.

  "We’ll be fine." He touched her zipper, putting a stop to her telltale sign. "You’ll be fine."

  She sighed.

  “Do you want to tell me, or do I have to drag it from you? I have ways.”

  Another exhale left her lungs.

  Cal played with the damp strands of her hair.

  Fine. He really wanted to hear it? Fine. It was ridiculous.

  "It's like if I make a bad choice now..." She hesitated. It was ridiculous. She huffed. "It will ruin things later." She covered her eyes, then peeked through the web of her fingers. "I have pregnant brain."

  "Is that a real thing?"

  "Oh, you have so much to learn." She smiled but then turned pensive again. Her breathing slowed.

  "One decision changes fate, Cal," she said as he hovered over her.

  He didn't look a day over thirty-five, sun behind him, green eyes changing to the color of a gem, bangs dangling over his forehead despite the new cut.

  He touched her cheek, smoothing his fingertips over the contours of her face. "You can't go through life without choices."

  "I know." She swallowed. "What if I do something? What if I accidentally hurt the baby? What if something happens if I choose to find out the sex? If I change an appointment? He wasn't supposed to work late. He made one choice."

  Peter would never meet the baby. He had wanted to have his own baby. He had been too young to die.

  Cal lay sideways, propped on an elbow, his face inches above hers.

  "Superstitions be damned, Annie. We have a funeral to get through this week." He drew in the sand with one of his fingers. Lines. Lines. Lines. "I should've thought about all of this before I asked you to come."

  "I'll be there for you." Reaching her arm backward, she stroked his cheek. "It's all I've wanted. I'm fine."

  He lowered his head and kissed her between words. "All." Kiss. "You." Kiss. "Ever." Kiss. "Wanted." Kiss.

  "Yes," she groaned. He tasted like salt and the complete opposite of superstition. She grabbed both his cheeks. "I can handle it. I've handled you. I can handle it." His face remained cradled in her hands as she pulled his lips toward her.

  She swallowed fate.

  She danced her tongue around his mouth, searching for reason.

  She would swim with the big fishes. Make choices. Have a baby. Bury sadness. Inch away from the cliff that called out to her in the waking hours and screamed at her in the dark, early hour of the three o' clock in the morning.

  Cal sat up, wiped the corners of her mouth, and then he looked into the distance. He flicked at pieces of nothing on his wetsuit.

  "My mother hated surfing." He smiled. It was put-upon. Rehearsed.

  "Really?" Annie eyed him cautiously. "No. She probably just—"

  "What the fuck am I going to say?" He spoke like the metronome: slow and deliberate. He traced his index finger along the indentation of her cheekbone. "At the funeral?" Up stroke. Down stroke. "To the people?"

  Arms over her head, she held onto his hips and stared into his eyes. "You’re good with people."

  "Constance wasn't so good with them." The same smile as before graced his face as he shook his head. "They’ll attend for my grandfather. He was the one who knew Ojai, loved it, and breathed it. She moved us here to be closer to them."

  "I'm sorry." Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. "This week. I don't know." She shrugged. "I'm supposed to be making you feel better."

  "You make me feel."

  The air hung like static between them for a moment, their eyes speaking millions of miles of everything the silence wouldn’t say.

  "What else do you remember about her, your mom, from when
you were younger? C'mon. Something positive."

  "The light catches your eyes," he said instead.

  She’d never seen him so serious — and this was Cal — the definition of concentration and strategy.

  "I can see myself in there," he said, and rested his palm against her temple.

  "What do you see?"

  He looked again to the ocean — a straight line of depth and courage all the way to the horizon. "Both of us chase death."

  Both of us demand a reason for it when there isn't one, Annie thought.

  The baby would replace the grieving. Is that how it would be? One thing replacing another? Distractions. Did she chase death? She wanted to ask death questions.

  If she could catch up or stop wondering. If she could find an ultimate distraction. If she could focus solely on love and life and moments of pure pleasure. Everything would be all right. She could be what he needed. That was, after all, what she’d wanted all those weeks without him. She didn't need to drain him.

  She wished to be the stars he saw inside her eyes. The flashes, the flecks, the comets. The reason one stayed up late toting a blanket to recline in the grass and stare at the blinking, illuminated canvas. Hoping to catch one swoosh, one brilliant streak. To replace empty with hope. To be reminded humans were a speck on the tiny little globe in the vast universe.

  Fading stars would light up more than the sky. They would blaze a trail of fire and ice across her soul.

  The way the baby would.

  The way Cal would and had.

  They’d ride the cosmic wave together … wherever it would take them.

  Annie stared at the animals arranged on the bookshelf, inspecting each one’s size and imaginary strength, wondering where and when Constance had collected them all. Which ones might have been gifts? Which might have been purchases from faraway places?

  No two elephants were the same. The urge to capture the statues crept up on her. And dammit, she’d left her camera upstairs on Cal's bed.

  As she reached out and touched one, the light from the window struck its rotund shape, illuminating its tiny body. The entire little giant could’ve fit in the palm of her hand.

  "Are you hungry, baby?"

  Fuck! As she let go of the elephant, it clanked against a larger one, causing Cal to laugh.