Rob shrugs apologetically. “Obvious enough to us, at least.”
James sighs. “Man, I don’t want to drag Lori into anything . . .”
“Too late—she’s already dragged in. We both fucking care about you.”
James swallows down a sudden tightness in his throat. “I know.”
“We just want to help you ou—”
“I’m not a child,” James hisses. He immediately runs a hand over his face and groans. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
Rob silently nods his head in understanding. He sits and waits for James to speak, and James fights against the urge to just swim out towards the distant, flat horizon, leaving every word of this conversation far, far behind him.
He doesn’t even know what he could possibly say—how he could open his mouth and tell Rob Depaul that he has quietly, unknowingly kept James from walking out into the ocean for two whole years, and that James threw the bullet Rob never knew about far away into the Oahu sea, and that now James wants to keep surfing with Rob for an entirely different reason than simply grappling with both hands to stay alive—simply forcing himself to look away when Rob fixes his hair.
He doesn’t know how he could possibly tell Rob Depaul that he missed him fiercely in the moment he knelt in the Banzai sand before the exploding crowd, and that he now sits next to him alone out on the water and feels the ghosts of Sydney Moore’s smooth hands across his skin, in his hair, between his legs. And it’s as if the entire Pacific Ocean suddenly sits between between him and Rob now, vast and lonely and uncrossable—a bottomless deep.
He’s been silent for far too long. “You know I’m not good at this stuff,” he finally whispers, scratching at his poorly-shaved jaw.
Rob hums. “Yeah, I know you’re shit at it. But so am I.” He turns to look at James, bobbing on his board with the rippling surface. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, then fills his chest with a deep breath. “I missed you, Jimmy,” he says.
James’ face grows hot. He looks back down at his board. “Aw, it was only a few days, man,” he says, trying to keep his voice light, half-hoping Rob is leading up to one of his jokes.
“No, I mean . . . the past two weeks,” Rob says. “Since the ISF. I’ve missed you.”
The gentle slap of the water across the bottoms of their boards is deafening. James swallows over his dry mouth and wishes desperately he had some water nearby to gulp down.
He missed Rob, too. Missed him in a way he never knew he could, even when he was being held close in Sydney’s arms. And James knows he could repeat Rob’s words right back to him, and laugh it off and say, “Sorry, man, about all that—you know I am. But I’m here now, right? We can start surfing together every morning again like old times. Just because I’m a champion doesn’t mean I won’t still surf with the sorry likes of you.”
But just the thought of those words feels like acid in his mouth. He lets himself say the first part with shaking lips—the part that would have seemed absurdly impossible to admit out loud just two weeks ago.
“I missed you too, man.” And then, to fill the silence. “I’m sorry.”
Rob shakes his head. “Nothing in hell to be sorry for.” He takes a deep breath, and James feels the moment suddenly shifting like the ocean itself rising to swallow them whole, forcing up from the deep until the whole earth tilts.
“You looked happy,” Rob says quietly. “With him.”
Everything changes. The air around them crackles and fizzles with sharp heat. James stares down at his board and thinks he’s going to vomit. His limbs shake, and his gut clenches, and he closes his eyes as his vision starts to fade to grey around the edges.
“Facing off against that fucking fairy . . .”
“You don’t want him checking out your ass as you paddle out, sick fucker . . .”
“He’s lucky we all still even let him surf . . .”
James takes a shaking breath and finally forces himself to meet Rob’s gaze, wincing as his blue eyes stare straight into brown.
Then James freezes; Rob’s face is soft and patient. James realizes he isn’t angry or jealous that James found a different surf buddy from him, or even accusing that out of all the people it had to be Chief Circuit Asshole Danny Moore.
He isn’t implying . . . is he?
No—Rob’s just stating a fact, you looked happy with him, and waiting to see if James will pick up the lifeline and answer.
James picks it up with sweating palms.
“He—he’s been a good friend to me,” James whispers.
Sydney holding him in the shallows, palm pressed up against his scar. “You were brave.”
“Probably find that hard to believe,” he adds.
Rob shakes his head. “Nah, man, if you say he’s different, I’ll believe it.”
James has the overwhelming sensation that the entire ocean is listening, frozen and waiting on the tense cusp of his words. He grips the sides of his board hard in his palms, reminding himself where he is, then closes his eyes and thinks of a beach far, far away.
“After I was shot,” he says in a steady, flat voice, “back in Vietnam . . . I wished I hadn’t woken up. In the hospital. I was . . . I was alone.”
Rob freezes beside him. They’ve never talked about this. Never. Not even the day James took off his sweatshirt and bared his skin before Rob. Never even said the word “Vietnam” to each other out loud.
James licks his lips, speaking to the unbroken horizon. “These other soldiers there recovering told me to check out this beach a little way’s south. Said there was a platoon stationed near there that had fixed it up, added a little lifeguard tower and made some surfboards out of the extra supplies . . .” James clears his throat, achingly aware that Rob is barely breathing over the sound of his words. “So I went, you know. Borrowed one of those boards, caught one wave. Nurses were pissed as hell later that I got the stitches wet,” he laughs under his breath. “But I . . . when I came back . . . that was the one day I had where I knew that if I surfed, I wouldn’t—wouldn’t just wake up one day and swim out as far as I could and not come back.”
He looks over at Rob and sees that his eyes are wet. Rob nods solemnly, fingers gripping tightly at his board. And something about the look on his face, the lines around his mouth . . .
Quite suddenly, James understands a critical piece he’d been missing before.
“I’m realizing as I say this out loud . . . you probably knew all of this, didn’t you? Or, most of it. That’s why you made me meet you every morning before work?”
Rob smiles, his eyes drooping and dark. “More or less, man, yeah. I mean, I didn’t know . . . you know. But—was wondering how long it would take you to figure it out.”
They look at each other, and James blinks hard as the air around them softens, lifting some of the fog. He thinks of the bullet lying somewhere at the bottom of the lost sea, and he knows that it’s now or never, the raw truth of it yanking hard within his chest.
“Rob,” he says, holding his gaze. Rob tenses. “There’s something . . . I’m not . . . everything with Sy—with Danny . . .”
James suddenly can’t look at him, tearing his eyes back out at the water. His voice when it comes is just trembling air, and James has no idea what it sounds like, or when he says it, or whether his mouth even works.
He shuts his eyes. “Rob. I’m gay.”
James thinks he’s going to slip off his board and sink down into the murky, cold deep, lost forever until the currents slam his rotting bones into a rusting bullet. The seconds tick by like hours, hammering across the sea.
Then, out of the thrumming, manic fog in his mind, he hears Rob saying his name. Realizes he’s been saying it for a while.
“Jimmy. Jim, come on, look at me.”
James does, trying to suck air into his lungs which have shriveled, his body crumpled and small.
Rob holds his gaze and keeps every line in his body completely still. “I know,” he says softly
.
James can’t believe what he’s hearing. “What—you guessed?” he whispers.
Rob shakes his head. “No, I know.”
Realization crashes down on James like a slap of icy water. He shudders and runs a hot hand over his face. “Shit, I didn’t think you remembered that.”
Rob laughs once under his breath. “Hard to forget.”
And Rob’s voice is gentle, but James cringes all the same, face prickling with beads of cold sweat on his brow.
“Hard to forget.”
Hard to forget how James had stopped in his tracks when he was halfway down the street after leaving Rob and Lori’s housewarming party early, hearing wild footsteps chasing after him. How he’d turned and seen Rob sprinting crookedly towards him, face loose and happy from drinking, begging James with half-slurred words not to leave, not yet. Not to leave him yet.
And James had been so overcome with adoration for Rob Depaul in that moment—chasing after him and begging him to stay in the middle of the warm, lamplit street—that James had taken two steps forward and grabbed the side of Rob’s face and kissed him square on the mouth.
And for two breathtaking, beautiful seconds, Rob had kissed him back.
Then Rob had put his hands on James’ shoulders and gently pushed him away, whispering, “Wait, man, wait,” and James had realized what the fuck he’d just done and jumped back from Rob’s touch like it was a scorching flame, too horrified to even apologize, wanting to fall into the pavement and be swallowed up by the road.
Rob had tried to step forward and take his arm murmuring, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” like he was trying to wrangle a terrified animal, and James had finally gasped out, “Fuck, sorry,” before taking off running down the street, madly wondering why he felt sixteen and one-hundred years old all at once. He’d run the four miles back to his apartment, not even bothering to stop for a cab. The sound of Rob calling out his name echoing down the street had rung in his ears the whole way back.
And the next morning he’d sat on his bed and stared at the wall after not sleeping a wink, wondering what his life would be like without ever seeing Rob Depaul again, wondering whether it was worth it, whether he should just . . .
When at six o’clock on the dot, he’d jumped out of his skin when he heard Rob banging on his door saying, “Come on, lazy asshole, I’ve been waiting for you down on the beach for twenty minutes!”
And James had opened the door with a shaking hand, and seen Rob looking at him like it was just any other morning, and thought that maybe, just maybe, Rob had been just drunk enough not to remember any of it at all.
Turns out he couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry,” James says into his hand. “God, you know I never meant—”
“It’s okay, Jimmy. I meant it when I told you. It’s okay.”
“But Lori—”
“It’s okay.”
James’ chest clenches painfully, erratically squeezing on his lungs. “So you knew this whole time, then?”
Rob nods, eyes serious. “I knew.”
James feels an incredulous laugh bubbling up inside of him, mixed with the dramatic crash of the last two years of his life slotting into place. “And you still—how did you—you still stayed? You never said anything? You still . . . you still wanted to surf, and—”
Rob grimaces, shaking his head. “Don’t turn me into a saint, Jimmy. I never fucking said anything to stop Kip and Dean and the rest of them when they got going about Danny, did I? You were right there, you could hear fucking everything, and I just . . . I let them—”
“I’d never expect you to do that.”
“That’s exactly why I should have.”
James doesn’t know what to say. He sighs through his nose and massages his shoulder with his hand.
The earth has permanently tilted on to its side beneath him, forever altering the way he walks on the ground, swims through the waves. The silence stretches on, frazzled and tense—pulsing.
Rob finally breaks it in a hesitant voice. “So, Danny. He really is gay then.”
“Yes.”
“And you and him . . .”
James clears his throat in the silence, then swallows down a rush of throbbing panic. “Yes.”
“For how long?”
James huffs out a laugh. “Two weeks—not even that, two fucking days. I stayed with him in Oahu. That wasn’t the plan, but it just sort of . . . happened.” James looks at Rob, somehow feeling that this is critical to make clear. “We hadn’t . . . we hadn’t, before then.”
Rob nods, slowly. James can’t believe he’s saying any of this out loud. The words falling from his mouth explode like bullets piercing the peaceful morning air, tainting the sleepy calm hovering over the ocean.
And yet Rob sits next to him, relaxed and easy, limbs loose and soft despite the fact he’s barely moved in the last twenty minutes. James realizes he’s never wanted to hug him more than in this moment—all those long nights, and the days with the beautiful sunshine on his tan skin, and that night in the streetlamps—never more than now.
Rob clears his throat and runs a hand over the back of his neck. “Well, in the spirit of admitting things . . . fuck, man, I feel like this is the shittiest thing to say to you. I don’t . . . maybe I shouldn’t . . .”
James gently splashes some water with his hands by his thighs, chest still aching. “Go on, can’t be worse than any of the shit I just said.”
Rob grimaces. “That’s just it, I . . . well, listen.” Rob quickly glances at him, and James bites the inside of his cheek when he sees Rob’s eyes are wet. Rob grunts once under his breath as he looks away.
“Thing is,” he goes on, “if we had met some other way—you and me. If it was earlier, some other time, if I hadn’t already been with Lori . . . you know I love her, man. I love Lori. But if it was some other—I think that . . . I would’ve wanted to try, Jimmy. With you. I think—I know—I would have wanted you.”
James’ mouth is dry. “Like that?”
Rob’s chest shakes. “Yeah, man. Like that.”
“I didn’t know you—that you had . . .”
“I fucking kissed you back, didn’t I?”
“Well, that doesn’t mean—”
“And, before that, too. I . . . around you. I knew.”
James is shocked at the terror he can hear in Rob’s defeated voice—the fear that what he’s just said makes him the biggest asshole on earth.
“Does Lori know?” James whispers, because he needs to know the answer to that before he can feel any sort of emotion about it at all.
Rob rubs a hand over his face and sighs. “Yes. Fucking miraculously, she does. Thought I’d shit myself telling her and she just . . . she just—”
“She’s Lori,” James says in a gentle voice, hoping Rob will somehow understand.
A beautiful light washes over Rob’s face, softening the lines in his brow. He shrugs as he smiles at the distant horizon. “Yeah, she’s Lori.”
And James realizes he’s never heard anything more wonderful in his life. Because he’s sitting out there, bobbing gently on the ocean, and he just heard the man he dreamt about for two long years say that he might have felt that way about him too, that he did. That he would have done that.
And all James feels in this moment is a bone deep affection for his friend—a clean wave of relief that he wasn’t losing his mind on those mornings when their shins would brush together in the water, when they would sit side by side in the baking sand, and Rob would lean close enough that his hair fell down over James’ shoulder. That he hadn’t come back from the war completely lost and mad, unable to tell the difference between friendship and romance, car horns and bombs, swimming away from the shore and a silent death.
He wants to get back on a plane and jump into Sydney Moore’s arms and let him finish everything he ever tried to say.
Maybe.
Rob’s still waiting for him to respond, staring d
espondently down at the water.
“That’s not a shitty thing to say. Not at all,” James says.
Rob huffs and flings up a hand. “How are you not fucking pissed at me right now? I mean, I knew . . . I knew that you—even before that night, and I strung you along for two years, just—”
“You didn’t string me along, man. You saved me. That day I met you? It wasn’t . . .” James sucks in a wet breath. “You know, it wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay. And you’re my best—my only—you’re my brother.”
Rob sighs, sagging his spine. “James,” he says, for the very first time. “I’m just so sorry I couldn’t . . . well, I couldn’t be that for you. When you needed it. When you wanted it. I’m fucking sorry.”
James nods, letting Rob see the sheen over his own eyes. “I know. You don’t need to be sorry.”
The silence stretches on again, softened by the blanket of the waves. James briefly tries to imagine now what it would actually be like to kiss Rob Depaul—to sigh into his mouth, and comb through his hair—and can’t. Every time he closes his eyes he sees Sydney Moore’s lips. Sydney’s face, and Sydney’s freckles, and Sydney’s curls.
“Listen, I’m glad you already had Lori,” James goes on. “I wouldn’t . . . I’d never wish this on you. Being like this.”
“Fuck, Jimmy, I don’t wish it on you either.”
James looks over at him, shivering at the wave of warmth rushing over his skin.
“I know, man. I—I hear you.” He shrugs, shaking out his shoulders. “Just . . is what it is.”
Rob sighs, eyes still sad like he’s just told James that the world is ending. James thinks that maybe it is, maybe these are his last few seconds on earth. He can’t decide whether he’s upset about it or relieved. A sudden weariness he’s never known settles thickly in his bones, snuffing out the brief burst of warmth from before. He left Sydney Moore’s lips back in the middle of the Pacific Ocean—his face and his freckles and his curls. He left them behind.
James startles from his thoughts when Rob clears his throat. “But Danny. Is he . . . you know. Is he that for you?”
James remembers Sydney’s face as he’d walked away from him that final time, leaving him alone on the airport sidewalk in a line of taxis.
The Sea Ain't Mine Alone Page 37