It takes him by surprise, to sit there in the back of the taxi and think of Vietnam with even the smallest tinge of nostalgia, of appreciation. He somehow feels completely at ease with the memories as he gazes through the smudged taxi window, even despite his nerves at seeing Danny again.
He tells himself that it’s impossible for him to feel this at peace because he’s about to see Danny again. That would be ridiculous. Everything aside, he’s only known the man for a little over a week.
You felt like an entirely new human being after just one day of knowing Rob, his brain supplies.
James frowns as he looks out the window, the foliage and rolling hills fading into a rainbow blur. No, the landscape is just beautiful. That’s all. Even someone as fucked up as him can appreciate that. Even he can feel relaxed by it as the perfumed air surrounds his skin.
The taxi driver doesn’t ask any questions the whole drive. He drops James off near Mokuleia forty-five minutes later, along the Northshore of the island. It’s a small little town—dirt roads and somewhat ramshackle houses strewn about like they were tossed down in a handful from the sky.
“Keep walking down that trail you see there for half a mile and you’ll see it,” the driver says. “My taxi’ll get stuck if I try it on that road.”
James nods and shoulders his pack, starting off down a rutted dirt lane abutted on either side by rows of blooming trees. The salt of the ocean rushes into his nose, and the wind gently rustles as it drapes over the surface of the island.
His heart is pounding. He’d sat white-knuckled the entire plane ride and thought about what he would say—how he would somehow justify that he basically, at the heart of it, flew all the way across an ocean and hopped in a taxi for the sole purpose of saying, “Thanks for not being a dick and letting me drown.”
It feels humiliatingly unnecessary. Who in their right mind would have stood there and watched him be carried limply out to sea without even trying to save him?
Then he remembers. “Turn and face me like the fucking man you pretend to be all the time!”
And that right there is why he didn’t just ask Lori for Danny’s phone number, he thinks as he trudges down the lane, purposefully taking slow steps. Because he wouldn’t have faulted Danny one goddamn bit if he hadn’t just left James to drown in his own defensive anger and self-pity in the sand. If he had told everyone at the funeral that he wished he’d noticed James fall under the wave before walking away.
The road turns a corner and opens up to a small clearing, a two-story farmhouse in whitewashed wood sitting primly in the center. James gapes. It’s the absolute last thing he expected to see. He triple-checks the address in his hand with the painted numbers on the house and frowns. There’s perfect blooming flowerbeds hanging off the porch in floral rows, and a peeling wood rocking chair, and wind chimes swaying from the eaves. The long, salty grasses covering the clearing fan out in waves from the house’s walls, as if the house had been dropped in the middle of the sea itself, and the water drained.
James shoves the paper back in his pocket and stares straight at the brass doorknob. He doesn’t allow himself to hesitate and strides clear up to the door, praying to God that whatever eventually comes out of his mouth will somehow be the right thing to say.
He knocks, and a few moments later the door creaks open on screaming hinges. James stops midway through the word “hi” when he sees it’s an old man looking out at him, suspenders over a thin white tank top and old khaki pants. The man doesn’t say anything, and they stare at each other. He keeps the door open just enough to poke out his face and the tip of his nose.
Finally James shuts his mouth, licks his lips, and tries again.
“I’m looking for Danny?”
The man doesn’t say a word, just slowly points a shaky finger down a side lane that James hadn’t noticed walking up, leading out from the clearing and down a winding dirt road in between the trees, cutting down a slope to the distant beach.
When James turns back to thank the man, the door’s already shutting in his face. He stares blankly at the whitewashed wood in front of him as the slam echoes in his ears. When he finally wills his body to start moving towards the lane, he finds the wind gone from his sails. The false start robbed him of any courage he’d mustered up, and he shakes his head at himself, feeling pathetic and foolish as he starts to make his way through the sagging trees.
He can just make out the roar of the ocean building as he walks, beckoning out to him through the warm air. He hasn’t even been in the water since the accident. He’d tried to, just yesterday. Put on his trunks and grabbed his board and left his apartment with confidence in his step and determination in the set of his shoulders. And he’d stood there on a crowded beach watching a pack of surfers already in the water, ripping across the pounding waves with security and ease.
And he’d gasped as he again felt the harsh slap of the water against his back, and the sharp pain of the rock slamming into his forehead, and the trembling, guttural moan of the sea as it dragged him half-conscious out into the cold, dark deep. He’d tried to blink the fear out of his eyes, looked side to side to make sure no one was staring, picked up his board and walked straight back up the road to his apartment. Called the World Surf League people the second he set down his board and said he had to drop from the Billabong—unexpected injury.
And now, as he puts one foot in front of the other down the shaded lane of cocooning green, James tells himself to stop in his tracks, turn right around, and go back. That Danny will be embarrassed for him if he says what he has to say—that he came all this way just to see a man who probably hates him. To thank him for doing something that anyone in their right mind would have done.
James fiddles with the bullet casing in his pocket, unbuttons and re-buttons the top of his quarter-neck grey shirt. Before he can force himself to turn back, he rounds a bend and freezes.
The thick brush opens up before him to a small white sand beach, perfectly cradled on either side by rocky outcroppings which frame an endless sea of clear blue. A wooden hut covered in faded teal paint emerges from the dark green shadows of the trees, jutting out over the sand with a thatched roof and huge windows, an overhang of eaves draped with hanging braids of shells blowing in the breeze. James barely has time to take any of it in before his ears register soft music, slowly plucked strings. His gaze zeroes in on the hammock besides the house strung up between two palm trees, swaying slowly back and forth and with one long, bony foot hanging off its side.
When James had first taken that folded up paper with an address on it from Lori’s hand and shoved it in his pocket, he’d briefly pictured a tiny apartment by the sea, the mirror image of his own. Maybe a small, ramshackle house, or a room on the outskirts of the city if he really thought about it—he had no idea what you could afford on an island like this.
But this, this perfect bubble of paradise, floating on the calm sea as if the earth was cupping its palms to hold together Danny’s private world, it makes James fiercely embarrassed for having intruded.
In a blinding panic he realizes this is all a mistake. He shouldn’t be here, stomping into this secluded stretch of beach without an invitation, without the calm or the beauty within himself to fully appreciate it. With every breath he takes, he can practically see himself contaminating the glittering shore, polluting it with the haunted darkness seeping out through his skin—a grey cloud of smog exhaled with each breath from his lungs.
It’s a lost cause. James grits his teeth and turns to leave, already debating whether to even stay on the island for the Billabong, when the music in the air suddenly stops.
He instantly knows he’s been noticed. James waits with a sinking heart as the hammock creaks against the tree trunks, and one long leg reaches over the side to stand up on the soft sand. James doesn’t even move as Danny turns his head back warily to look towards the road, and his eyes fly wide open when he sees James standing there in the clearing of the trees. Danny bolts up to st
anding, the uke left hanging from his fingertips.
“James,” he says, breathless.
They stand there staring. Danny’s mouth is wide open, his eyes blinking rapidly and fixed on James’ face. James is absolutely pinned by the gaze, unable to form a sentence to say why or how or what—none of the words he’d been lamely practicing in his head since first sitting down in the plane. The calm breeze winds through the seashells hanging from the eaves of the house, softly clinking in the still, clear air.
Danny looks like he’s broken. He’s dressed in pajama bottoms and an old, thin t-shirt in the middle of the afternoon. His hair is frazzled and big, face fresh and young. He gapes at James with his mouth still open, chest rising and falling, eyes pouring over every inch of James’ body in wide disbelief.
And James realizes in one glorious second that Danny isn’t angry. That for some reason the sight of Danny Moore like this, unmasked and shocked, surprised in the warm cocoon of his private haven, is causing every muscle in James’ tense body to relax like warm water. He knows now why he didn’t turn back in the lane.
James keeps a light voice and casually shrugs his shoulders. “Guess you didn’t predict this one, huh?”
Danny blinks once more slowly, then shakes his head back into focus and snaps his mouth shut. His brain seems to come back alive, and he stands up straight, shoving his hands in his flannel pockets and clearing his throat. James stops himself just in time from letting out a laugh.
“Yes, well, it’s obvious you still had your plane ticket for the Billabong, and I’m sure you got a week of sick leave off work, so you thought you might as well at least give yourself a vacation and scope out the competition for next year,” he rattles off smoothly.
James takes a careful step forward in the sand. His shoes sink too deep into the soft grains. “Sure, yeah. But that doesn’t explain why I’m actually here.”
Danny’s eyes lose the sharp burst of confidence for a beat, and his body sags like air let out from a balloon. “No, it doesn’t.”
He looks wary, uncertain. James knows he needs to get this over with quickly before he loses his nerve. He’s so tempted to keep on with the joking conversation, pretend nothing’s happened between them since James sipped water from his Navy canteen and joked with Danny on the sand two minutes before Rob walked up.
He has to do this, though. He thinks of Danny on the pier, and he thinks of Keith Hartman handing him a bullet casing in the terrible silence of the hospital room, and he has to.
“Look, well, I’m sorry I dropped in like this. On this.” James nods out at the house and the ocean. Danny’s eyes don’t leave his face.
“I just wanted to—needed to . . . ah shit.” James looks down at the sand and takes a deep breath as he rubs a hand over his mouth, already hating every phrase that comes into his head. It all sounds so trite. So pathetic and lame. Like a poorly veiled excuse just to spy on Danny’s private world. He puts his hand in his pocket and rubs the worn, smooth metal with his thumb. He tries again.
“This is the second time someone’s saved my life, and the first time I never said thank you. So I couldn’t . . . I can’t move on from this without thanking you. You know, saying the words.”
Danny shrugs his shoulders and glances down at his toes. “I hardly saved your life. Like you said, you just got sucked under. And whoever did it before wasn’t expecting thanks anyway. It was their job. There’s nothing you need to say.”
“But I do. You did. I mean, we were . . . I’d just said . . . and you came back after me and pulled me out—”
“I just did what anyone would do.”
“But this wasn’t just . . . I wasn’t just sucked under, and you saved me. You—”
“You were fine. Anyone would’ve helped you out, but—”
“—you got me to breathe again.”
James stares at Danny’s toes for the following beat of thick silence, then looks back up at his speechless face when Danny doesn’t say anything more. He notices for the first time the faint bruise on his cheek, just under his eye. The sight of it makes James sick to his stomach, prickling hot sweat forming up along his spine, followed by a cold shiver.
He forces himself not to lick his lips, refuses to remember the wet, soft mouth against his. He’s ashamed by it now, standing in front of Danny. Ashamed that this man dropped to his knees in the pounding spray and pushed air into his struggling lungs only for James to interpret it as a kiss in a feverish half-daze.
Danny’s eyes are soft and sad. There’s another cautious emotion hidden in the corners of his mouth, one James can’t quite interpret, not from so many feet away. James takes another step forward in the sand and wills his face to look as earnest as possible.
“Look, I—I just need to say it,” he says in a steady voice. “You saved my life. Thank you.”
Danny doesn’t retort this time, just hangs his head for a moment before looking cautiously back up at James. He runs a hand over the back of his neck, eyes roving like they’re lost. “You’re welcome,” he finally says. His voice is so gentle James has to strain to hear it.
And just as Danny’s voice reaches James’ ears, he feels the moment start to tingle at the edges, threatening to pulse and thrum the way the air always does whenever he’s anywhere near Danny Moore. He swallows, then shivers as a bead of sweat drips down into the hollow of his throat.
James wants to stand in it forever—this unspoken, unprecedented question of what now? Wants to feel the air warming in slow, electric tingles up his arms and straight into the center of his chest.
But then he sees in his mind’s eye how out of place he must look standing on Danny’s beach in his too-hot shirt with his shoes in the sand. The rolling warm air turns sharp and stale, and in a blink James is back to being an intrusion again. Unneeded and irrelevant now that he’s finally got out what he needed to say.
He lets the easy silence, the flickering pulse still clinging to his skin, last for one more indulgent moment. Then he clears his throat loudly and takes a casual step back, breaking the air back into an average, stable calm.
“Right, well, I’ll leave you be. If you come down to watch the competition, don’t be a stranger.”
He turns to leave before Danny can even respond, hating the fact that every fiber of his being wants to stay rooted to his spot in the sand. He’s only half a dozen steps away when he hears a word called out sharply into the peaceful quiet.
“James!”
He flashes back to Danny calling out his name in desperation outside the showers—that second ever time Danny’s mouth had formed the sounds. He turns slowly, looking just over his shoulder. He raises his eyebrows in a silent “yeah?”
Danny runs his fingers through his curls and opens his mouth twice before saying anything. His feet shuffle in the sand.
“Would you—do you want to see the island tomorrow? Just that the competition isn’t for two days, and you’ll just be here with nothing to do, and I thought that maybe . . . well there’s this road we can drive down that people think is scenic, and I have a Jeep, or there’s some choice spots to swim, or I could even tell you where you should go check out on your own, or—”
“Yes.”
Danny pauses mid-word and blinks. “Yes . . . you’d like that?”
James fights to keep the smile from brimming over onto his face. His heart feels tight and warm in his chest, the same way it did whenever he woke up and saw the pale blue swimming shorts laid out on his tiny bed.
“Sure. I mean, famous local like you. I’d be an idiot to say no to that.”
Danny smirks, glancing away toward the rest of the beach with a twist in his mouth. But James catches the hints of a smile there, a real, soulful smile lighting up the contours of Danny’s face, turning the corners of his eyes into little pieces of glittering sky.
Rob had told him something once, in one of the quiet, raw moments between a set. Something about how Lori made him want to fly and bury himself below the earth at th
e same time. How the grounding brush of Lori’s hair on his cheek when he held her always got all tangled up with the wing-like curves of her shoulders beneath his arms.
Ridiculously, James thinks he suddenly understands more of what Rob was saying than he ever had before, even on the nights when Rob’s hair was against his own cheek in his foggy dreams.
“Well, guess I’ll come back here in the morning, then,” James adds, turning once again to go. It’s easier to turn away this time, knowing he’ll see this specific piece of horizon line again tomorrow.
Danny nods, standing stock still in the sand. “Any time.”
James thinks he hears a whisper when he’s already halfway down the lane, a voice carried faintly on the breeze, hidden deep in his mind. It’s illusive and far away, shivering up his spine and trembling through the boughs on the swaying trees.
“Thank God,” the whisper says, in a voice more desperate than when Keith had screamed, “For God’s sake, Jimmy, save yourself and run!”
12
James lies awake, staring at the ceiling of his Honolulu motel room at four a.m., counting down the seconds until it’s a reasonable hour to get up. He’d spent the rest of yesterday wandering in somewhat of a daze. He’d tried to do a bit of sightseeing along the sleepy North Shore after leaving Danny’s beach behind him down the lane, but found he couldn’t focus long enough to even look at what was right in front of him.
It had felt wrong, somehow, seeing those sights alone with Danny Moore back in his hammock just a few miles away. So he’d hopped on a bus he hoped was heading back towards the city and spent the rest of the evening hunting down a cheap motel, a cheap dinner, and a cheap paperback to pretend to read in his motel room until his stinging eyes finally closed in sleep.
The Sea Ain't Mine Alone Page 15