The Sea Ain't Mine Alone

by C. L. Beaumont

  ~

  The crowd is up and cheering on their feet for James Campbell, rushing past Sydney in a humming wave to meet him at the shore. James emerges from the shallows with a dazed smile on his face, board held high over his head and his chest still heaving from his last ride.

  It’s a moment that Sydney’s been at the center of dozens of times, and yet he’s never felt a wave of energy quite like this—such a churning force of genuine happiness directed at just one person the way the crowd on the beach is currently looking at James. He wants to burst through the crowd and run to him and wrap him in his arms. Badly. Desperately. He needs to prove to himself that everything that happened that morning wasn’t just some dawn fever dream.

  Instead he stays by the edges and watches, arms still crossed, sunglasses still pulled low. Danny Moore would never run to congratulate a competitor, let alone a surfer in a competition he isn’t even surfing in. It would only throw suspicion on James.

  He's not quite sure what to do. The elation coursing through his body is so intense he barely knows how to contain it. And yet, at the same time he has an overwhelming sense that he’s intruding—that his presence is somehow dampening the celebration still happening on the shore of which he was once the untouchable champion. He tracks the golden glow of James’ skin moving through the crowd, and sees that the announcers have hailed him over and pulled him near a mic to say congratulations. Sydney can’t even hear James’ quick, one-word replies over the sound of the cheers still rolling through the crowd.

  Sydney realizes with a sinking feeling that they never talked about this part—about what they would do and how they would meet up again if and when James wins. Sydney knows how it goes, for the other surfers at least. You win an amazing round, and the other surfers want you to chill with them with a beer while you watch the rest of the day’s surf, and then you go out that night to one of the local bars to celebrate and hype each other up for tomorrow, and then you don’t get back to your house or hotel room until three a.m. with sore muscles and the promise of a hangover for the Finals.

  At least, that’s how some of the surfers do it—the ones that Rob seems to be friends with. The ones James is probably used to back in his normal life where he doesn’t have to wake up on a boring beach and be stuck kissing Danny Moore.

  But still, the thought of going back to his house and waiting alone for the rest of the day—hoping with a tinge of doubt to hear James’ footsteps coming down the path in the middle of the night—feels worse than suffocating. Sydney knows he’s fucked. Knew it, if he’s honest with himself, from the moment he leapt up from his hammock and saw James Campbell standing there saying, “Didn’t predict this one, did you?” with his hands casually stuck in his pockets. With his deep grey shirt open just slightly at the neck.

  And Sydney’s supposed to be standing on the brimming beach as Hawaii’s most decorated surfer of ’75 and ’76, and instead he’s waiting on the edges like a teenager with a crush on the high school football captain. Ridiculous.

  An idea finally occurs to him, that he could at least walk back up to the Jeep and give it an hour. Wait and then come back down and peek if James is still hanging out with people. He can’t spend one more second on this beach with James just fifty feet away from him and a complete inability to take one step any closer. With a resigned nod, Sydney tears his gaze away from James’ back and makes his way up towards the top of the beach. He quickly winds down the familiar streets of the town, avoiding everyone’s gaze like he knows how to do.

  He’s just turned the corner onto the side street they parked on that morning when he hears footsteps running up behind him. His gut clenches, an unexpected fear zipping down his spine, then he hears a voice.

  “You fucking bastard, where the fuck are you going?”

  He leaps around and comes face to face with a furious James Campbell. He opens his mouth to answer, but no sound comes out.

  “Seriously, where are you going? Why didn’t you come to me?”

  Sydney realizes in a wave of hot shame that James looks incredibly hurt. Far more hurt than angry, the way his deep blue eyes have turned a shade of black,and his lips sag.

  Frantic words rush to Sydney’s head and pour out of his mouth before he can think them through. “Look, I—I’m sorry, James. But you won and everyone was there and looking and I didn’t want them to see you with me because they love you, I mean, you saw it, and I thought you would hang out with the other surfers, and I could wait here for an hour and see if you still wanted to go home with me, but I totally understand if you don’t w—”

  James Campbell is kissing him.

  James Campbell is kissing him.

  On a tiny side street in the middle of broad fucking daylight after just annihilating his first round of the Billabong Masters, James has his hands tight on Sydney’s neck and shoulders and Sydney is gasping against his lips, holding on for dear life. He swallows down his groans and breathes out against James’ mouth “you fucking did it,” and “thank God,” and “I’m sorry,” and “James.”

  The kiss is rough but quick. James pulls back after just a few seconds, lips already red and swollen, then he quickly glances both ways down the empty street before holding the back of Sydney’s head with his hand and bringing their foreheads together.

  Sydney can barely breathe. He grips handfuls of the t-shirt James threw on after unzipping the top of his wetsuit. His skin beneath the shirt feels hot enough to burn Sydney’s hands.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I didn’t know you . . . that—I should have stayed. Please, I’m sorry.”

  James shakes his head against Sydney’s skin and breathes quick through his nose. “You were there,” he says roughly. “Hey now, you were there.”

  Suddenly Sydney knows—that James did hear the announcers teasing him, and did hear whatever everyone else whispered behind his back all morning, and did see the stares directed his way, some awe, some disgust, some resentment. That he saw it all, understood everything. That he knows from experience that Sydney wasn’t just an innocent bystander wracking up an undeserved reputation all these years.

  James knew, and he still came running after Sydney like hell when he noticed he was gone, and he’s still here now holding his curls in his hand and risking it all just to taste his mouth, just to press his forehead gently to his.

  James Campbell is a marvel.

  James pulls back and looks up at Sydney, knocking the wind out of him for the tenth time that day.

  “You’re alright?” Sydney asks.

  James blinks hard and nods. “I saw you on the shore, right when I came back up from that wipeout. Was far away, but, you looked like shit,” he says.

  Sydney tries to laugh, but can’t. “I thought that . . . James, I thought you weren’t gonna—”

  James takes his hand gently. “Shh, I know. I wasn’t sure either there, for a second. Made me realize I needed to get back out there. I didn’t even know the round was still going on—thought it had timed out while I was under.”

  They stand in buzzing silence. They’re both remembering that day. Sydney thinks of pulling James’ limp body from the water, and forcing air into his lungs, and running his tongue over his own lips in stunned silence after James started breathing, trying to figure out if the taste of his skin was now forever changed. A sudden laugh comes bubbling up out of nowhere from his chest.

  “Those other surfers didn’t know what the fuck hit them when you started paddling again,” he says. “Thought you were a corpse come back to life.”

  And James starts laughing too, leaning over to catch his breath and eyes lighting up with the thrill of his victory, with exhaustion from the morning’s surf. Sydney wants to taste that smile on his lips, but holds back, awkwardly crossing his arms.

  “Yeah, well, there’s only so many times I can almost die before it gets old,” James shoots back, which has them losing it all over again, staring openly at each other and trying to hide their chuckles over the fact
that James Campbell almost drowned twice before Sydney’s very eyes, and James Campbell just fucking won his first heat of the Billabong Pipeline Masters.

  ~

  James insists they find an out-of-the-way place to watch at least another round or two, and Sydney leads them to the place in the trees where he’d watched and waited for his chance to jump in and surf all those years ago. They sit shoulder to shoulder in the shade while Sydney tells him blasé facts about the other competitors. It’s the first time he’s ever had a willing listener to talk to about anything related to surfing (about anything at all). It feels exquisite. Soft, velvet honey dripping from his tongue for only James to see.

  By the time they make it back to Sydney’s home in the Jeep, the sun is late and heavy in the sky. Sydney can tell James’ shoulder is bothering him. The adrenaline of victory has finally worn off, leaving James sore and exhausted, and he’s holding his upper body too carefully when he moves. Sydney can’t quite understand the feeling that comes over him when he sees James’ entire body visibly relax the second they come within sight of his little hut.

  James sits out on the porch, rubbing at his shoulder, while Sydney tries to throw together some food that doesn’t look like a ten-year-old made it, somewhat anxious at the easy domesticity of it all. They haven’t even kissed once since they’ve been back from the beach, haven’t even really touched, and Sydney wonders if he minds—if he doesn’t feel like the warmth will slip away unless they tear at each other the same way they did by the Jeep. As if James can still back out any second since neither of them has taken off their clothes and actually seen each other naked, or stared at a full erection and reached out to touch—

  Sydney bites his lip and shakes that thought from his head. He quietly reaches down and adjusts himself in the privacy of the kitchen, wondering when he grew up to be such an absolute idiot who couldn’t even make dinner without thinking of James Campbell’s cock. Of James Campbell wanting to reach out and touch his . . .

  He sets a plate of pasta down in front of James out on the porch and pulls up the chair beside him, stretching out his legs to crack his toes. It feels completely reasonable, totally normal that someone be sitting at his side—a habit of eating seven years’ worth of dinners alone broken in the span of five minutes. It’s also the most bizarre occurrence he can ever remember happening on his little beach, cock-related thoughts aside.

  “I’m surfing in the Finals day of the fucking Billabong tomorrow,” James says after a long stretch of silence.

  Sydney chuckles, grateful for the distraction. “Surprisingly, that fact hasn’t changed since you last said it an hour ago.”

  James elbows him in the arm and digs into his pasta. “Oh right, I forgot that’s old news to you,” he says over a full mouth. “You’re so humble about it all, it’s easy to forget you’ve won before.”

  Sydney’s hates himself for finding something endearing about a man like James Campbell talking with his mouth full, and he simply shrugs before they spend the rest of dinner in easy silence. The breeze rustles through the seashells hanging from the eaves, and Sydney realizes they’ve never sounded so beautiful to him before. He knows he would’ve cut them down long ago, just meaningless remnants of the previous tenant, except for the fact that the first shell on the first strand he held the scissors to looked just like the pearl from his momma’s necklace, and he hadn’t gone anywhere near them again.

  “I’m not gonna be able to fall asleep any time soon,” James says once they’ve finished. The sun is starting to set over the ocean horizon before them.

  “I have an old Pendleton—use it sometimes to go down and watch the sunset by the water, if you want.”

  James looks over at him and smirks. “You watch sunsets on a beach on a blanket by yourself? What, do you live in a fucking romance movie?”

  Sydney laughs and goes to get the blanket anyway. He knows James’ interest when he sees it, and it shocks him deep in his core to realize that he could even know another person so thoroughly. It makes him wonder what James can read in his own face, even after such a short amount of time, and he wants to cringe at the thought of what he must be able to see. That, or the thought that maybe James actually doesn’t see anything at all.

  They lay the blanket out on the lower part of the shore and relax over the soft sand, just out of reach of the waves. James goes to lean back on his elbows and winces.

  “Your shoulder’s tight,” Sydney says. “I could see you were having trouble paddling with it. Gonna feel like shit tomorrow.”

  He’s almost surprised when James doesn’t fight him on it, or call him out for being blunt. Instead he just nods and continues to knead at the sore muscle with his hand.

  “You’re right, there.”

  Sydney says his next words before he even realizes what he’s saying, before he can stop to think of the implications of his question, or the myriad of reasons why James wouldn’t want him to do this—place his hands on the most guarded part of his body, skin to skin. And then James’ answer to his ridiculous question stuns him so thoroughly he’s left to gaze helplessly out at the sunset-colored waves, gently lapping at the shore and bathing the world in shimmering gold.

  “Do you want me to give you a massage?” Sydney had asked.

  And James had sucked in a breath, and let out the tiniest little moan, and turned to look at Sydney with his beautiful deep blue eyes bathed in the golden haze of sunset.

  And James had whispered, simply, “Yes.”

  14

  An electric shiver ghosts down James’ spine the moment Sydney’s warm fingertips rest on his skin. He sits on the blanket in the sand with one leg bent, looking out over the rolling hush of the ocean, dripping in pearls of orange and red and painted with foaming gold. He holds his breath tight in his lungs, afraid to exhale and release the moan hiding in the back of his throat, emerging from the tense pit of his chest to shatter the thin silence.

  Sydney had taken his time to slowly kneel behind him. He’d waited a careful foot away for James to strip off his shirt after James had awkwardly stared down at the sand for too many seconds, the image of Sydney’s hands on his bare skin emblazoning itself onto his mind, halting his thoughts.

  The echo of their last words still trembles quietly in the air, thrumming in the space between the open V of Sydney’s thighs and the dip in the small of James’ back. The simple, almost-too-easy dinner and their casual walk down to the shore have been replaced in an instant by a breathless anticipation, crawling slowly up through James’ stomach and shivering in the shallow breaths leaving his lungs, mixing in with the restless thrush of the ocean as it hums.

  James listens to Sydney’s steady, even breathing behind him, and he envies him for the millionth time in two days how he can remain so goddamn stoic all the time. So effortlessly in control. He thinks of the way Sydney stalks across a beach, the way he can respond to absolutely anything thrown at him with just a single word, and meanwhile he remembers his own admission by the Jeep from earlier that day and burns with shame. As if Sydney Moore wanted to spend his day babysitting James on the sand. He walked away at the end of the day, after all, did he not? Excuse or no.

  James wonders, as he wondered right after he emerged from the waves and saw Sydney wasn’t clapping or coming his way, whether he’s gone and fucked everything up by telling Sydney multiple times now to stay by his side—unnecessarily trying to voice it all out loud when all they’ve done is explode the building tension between them with a kiss. And he doesn’t even know what this ‘everything’ is, if this ‘everything’ is even allowed, or if it exists.

  They kissed. Goddammit.

  He’s achingly aware that he’s not wearing a shirt. Goddammit.

  It’s embarrassing—to feel so unbelievably affected, right on the verge of a shiver or a moan from the second he feels Sydney’s body heat radiating up his back from behind. Sydney’s hands are still and smooth, not a hesitation in his fingers. He glides slowly up and down the slop
e of James’ sore shoulders, fingertips just barely alighting on the sensitive skin of his neck, leaving shivers in their wake.

  The silence sits around them, heavy and deep. It’s a warm blanket in the cold dark of a storm—and the storm itself. Sydney’s breaths gently rustle the hair at the top of James’ head, leaving tingling warmth to drip like slow, salty water down the rest of James’ scalp.

  James waits in silence for the unspoken moment—the moment when he somehow knows that this will turn from shoulder massage into a caress of something more. He wants to lean back into it, and he wants to sprint away from it. When he’s still making up his mind, finally, with the tiniest hesitation, Sydney’s hands move to firmly grip the tense muscles of James’ left shoulder, reaching around to place his palm flat over the scar and kneading into the tissue.

  James moans, and Sydney’s hands immediately still. The silence thrums.

  “You’re not hurting me,” James whispers.

  His words break every last wisp of tension that had still been hanging over them in a cloud. With a long, shaky sigh Sydney scoots forward so that James’ body is suddenly cocooned within the V of his thighs, resting along the length of his lean body.

  James frowns when he realizes he doesn’t even remember Sydney taking his shirt off behind him. He can feel Sydney’s heart racing straight against the muscles of his back, the slightly uneven rhythm to his shallow breathing, and James realizes in a moment of piercing clarity that Sydney doesn’t feel stoic about this at all. That the touch of his fingertips on James’ marred skin does not feel like some commonplace occurrence to end the day—does not effortlessly flow from his hands like some sort of post-workout stretch with a friend.

  No—this is more. This is letting the entire ocean see that Sydney Moore is touching the physical imprint of the haunted darkness on James’ skin. That Sydney Moore, the man who can read the sea herself like a lover, is sitting at the edge of the earth holding James upright from falling back into the sand. That he’s placing James’ weary body securely in the warm space between his thighs, in full view of the same particles of ocean that James’ mom used to wade into with her stockings on to make James laugh.