The Sea Ain't Mine Alone

by C. L. Beaumont

  Sydney’s throat tightens, and he takes a moment to let his words settle. James waits beside him, steady and calm.

  “She grabbed my arm, and my father grabbed my other arm, and she was crying, yelling at him not to take me. Then I remember her cross necklace fell on the ground—just that specific detail—and then suddenly I was in the car. That’s when we moved out here, to Pearl Harbor. My father never spoke of her again and I’ve haven’t seen her since. Lahela moved in about six months later.”

  James lets out a slow, deep breath. “Shit.”

  Sydney chuckles softly. “Shit is right.”

  “You ever think about trying to find her?” James asks.

  “Think about that every day. I don’t even know where I’d start. I don’t know what her maiden name was—can’t remember if she ever had a job before my father, where her family was from, if she went to school, nothing.”

  A familiar shame creeps up the back of his neck, the ever-present muddy weight of inadequacy that drags him down whenever he stops to think about the fact that he should be able to just hop on a plane and find her.

  He should be able to take a few hours and find out her maiden name and her family and her job. And then he wonders if he would still get on that plane even if he had the ticket in his hand and was standing on the tarmac at the bottom of the stairs.

  James reaches over and touches his arm, breaking him away from his thoughts. “You’re a genius, yeah? You ever get too creaky and old for surfing, you got a career as some sorta private investigator all set—already got your first case.”

  Sydney smiles then, and briefly covers James’ hand, inordinately grateful for James dropping the subject with a joke. He takes another sip of beer and feels it settle in his stomach, releasing the ache in his muscles from the full day of battling the waves. James watches the waves beside him, lost in his head. Sydney wants to let him sit there all calm and relaxed for hours, but he also doesn’t know when he’d ever get another chance, or work up to the same courage, and so he opens his mouth and tries to look as casual as possible.

  “And you? You never said how your mom died.”

  He half expects James to be offended, or to say that it’s none of his damn business. Instead James hums like he was expecting the question, then leans back further in his seat to relax.

  “I was ten. She went to work one night—was the third shift waitress at this diner—and just . . . never came back home. Woke up to an empty trailer. Then the neighbor—you know, the surfer guy, Mr. Cool—he came over and got me, finally, a couple hours later. And he didn’t tell me what happened, just drove me out to my Auntie Cath’s place in the Valley. And then my Uncle Ron finally told me like ten fucking hours later that she’d been hit by a car, and I was staying with them.”

  Sydney winces. “Did she . . . was it—?”

  “They told me it was instant, yeah. That’s the story I’m going with.”

  Sydney breathes in the ocean, melting back into the chair. “Your aunt and uncle?”

  James shrugs. “They did alright by me, I guess. Not like they really wanted a third kid, or could afford it. I was never really . . . never really a part of the family, but I don’t hold it against them. Least they took me in.”

  “They didn’t take you back in when you were sent home,” Sydney says, not really hiding the ice in his voice.

  James rubs his shoulder. “Was partly their idea I enlisted in the first place. I spent a few years out of high school working odd jobs and wanted to go to college—something my mom always told me was non-negotiable, even when I was just a kid. But then . . . you know, it was the early days of the war at that point. We didn’t quite realize how bad . . . well, and they were offering incentives to enlist. Uncle Ron told me to take a few years of vacation on a ship in the tropics and then come back with money for school.” He laughs and rolls his eyes. “A real win-win.”

  Sydney swallows down the rage still bubbling in his throat. “But after?”

  James hears the tone in his voice and softly smiles over at him, even though his eyes are sad. “You can’t hold that against them, love. They were . . . they made sure I was alright, yeah. Helped me get into the rehab facility in LA where I was at for a few weeks, before I moved out and found my job. But then they were already moving to Sacramento. And I was alive, just recovering.” He tilts his beer. “Plus, they left me the station wagon.”

  “Where is that now?”

  “Sold it.” James’ mouth twists. “Only got a hundred bucks for it, though.”

  Sydney wants to argue more, wants to scream up at the sky that it should be illegal for someone to have taken a look at James Campbell, who’d just been shot in his country’s fucking uniform, and just leave him a barely-functioning car and tell him good fucking luck.

  But James’ thumb is calmly tracing the hairs on Sydney’s forearm, and he looks so handsome in the glowing evening light, and Sydney blinks to realize his anger has completely fizzled away.

  “Well, it does make sense then,” he says.

  James turns and looks at him. “What makes sense?”

  “Well, you know, ‘lack of a true father figure’—it’s what’s supposed to turn you into a queer, isn’t it? It’s a Bible truth.”

  James barks out a laugh, face turned up to the sky. “You’re something else, Moore,” he says, grinning. “Man, who the fuck knows who my father was—some sailor that was in Long Beach on leave, probably. My mom never said anything, I was too young.”

  “Well there you go,” Sydney says. “Absent father, single mother imprinting all of her feminine ways on you—”

  “Don’t make me kill you only two days in to living together, you fucking loony.”

  Sydney ducks as James throws his balled-up napkin at his head, then rises on aching legs to his feet, stretching out his body with a groan. He feels shockingly lighter than air, as if he didn’t just sit there and have a conversation about his family for the first-ever time in his life. He thinks for the thousandth time that James Campbell is a marvel.

  “Must be exhausted,” James says behind him.

  Sydney hums, even as his eyes fall closed. “Getting there.”

  James’ arms suddenly wrap around his waist from behind, holding him close.

  “My man,” James whispers into the nape of his neck. “My sleepy man. Come on to bed.”

  And Sydney realizes it would take the force of the entire ocean, or every one of Waimea’s waves combined, to stop him from following James between the cool sheets.

  ~

  It’s six in the morning.

  Sydney’s eyes blink awake to the sight of the fading yellow numbers of his alarm clock, and he thinks that maybe time travel really is possible, because there’s no way on earth that he closed his eyes what feels like thirty seconds ago out on the porch, standing in James’ arms and breathing in the salt of the sea, and now he’s naked, in his bed, and it’s six in the morning.

  The sheets are warm and soft against his bare skin, radiating a cloud of heat, and he winces as he shifts and his sore abdominal muscles scream in protest. Something tightens around his waist, something heavy and constricting, something warm and smooth and firm with a blanket of soft hairs . . .

  “Did I wake you?” Murmured in a rough, intimate voice into the back of Sydney’s neck.

  Sydney immediately feels around with his hand until he touches James’ arm wrapped around his stomach, pulling James’ palm up to press it to his lips. James settles his hand over Sydney’s chest when he lets go.

  Sydney’s throat feels like sandpaper. “How long did I just sleep?”

  James chuckles, a puff of hot, damp air on Sydney’s skin. The day’s worth of stubble on James’ jaw sends prickles down Sydney’s spine. He slowly becomes aware of the lines of James’ naked body against him, his broad chest against his back, his stomach and the tops of his thighs cradling his ass, their intertwined calves.

  “About ten hours,” James whispers. He presses Sydney cl
oser into his body. “We were both pretty exhausted, I think.”

  Sydney hums, his body melting like warm water with the pull of James’ strong arms. James taps his side gently. “How do you feel?”

  Sydney considers. “Like I’m dead and just woke up in the heavenly gates.”

  James kisses him right where his neck meets his shoulder, sending a hot cascade of shivers across Sydney’s skin. He shifts back into James, suddenly piercingly aware of the warm, soft bulge of James’ cock pressed against his buttocks.

  They lie there in silence for what feels like days, or even years. Sydney wonders if it’s possible for his mattress to have gotten one thousand times more comfortable overnight. For the air to have gotten sweeter, and the oxygen more pure, and the breeze to have transformed the simple cotton of his sheets to fine linen.

  Then, so slowly he wonders how many minutes have passed without him noticing, he feels James’ body start to wake up and tense behind him. His mouth opens and closes, and Sydney hears the roll of his tongue as he licks his lips.

  It sounds as if James is working himself up to say something, something important which can maybe only be said when his face is pressed against the back of Sydney’s shoulder, and he waits, leaning back into James’ body for what feels like the thousandth time over the last few weeks.

  It feels exquisite—like waking up from a nap in the warm sand, then standing up on his board on a wave that he knows will travel on in a perfect barrel towards infinity. He realizes he isn’t afraid of what James will possibly say.

  James sighs into Sydney’s back, and his warm breath softens across his skin. “You’re still awake?” he asks, even though Sydney would bet anything he already knew the answer.

  Sydney hums, and James nods against his shoulder and clears his throat. “I couldn’t really sleep,” he says. “Couldn’t stop thinking about what . . . what the hell I’m gonna do. For a job.”

  Sydney closes his eyes and rubs his hand along James’ arm. “You forget you’re a professional surfer now. You’ll have money coming in. Competitions are every few weeks, plus you got Val’s backing you. And there’ll be more.”

  James sighs through his nose. “I know, but . . . I can’t live off hoping I’ll somehow finish in the top three all the time. I’m not like you. I’m not—I don’t have assured wins. And I can’t,” James swallows. “I can’t go back to a job at the docks. I don’t think I could do it. Not anymore. Not here—”

  “Who the hell told you that you need to go back to the docks?”

  James shrugs. “Well, besides standing up and balancing on a slippery board there’s jack shit else I’m good at. It’s not like I went to college—finished it, I mean.”

  “You’re speaking to a high school dropout.”

  “Yeah, but you’re you. And I . . . it’s all I have.”

  In his mind, Sydney sees the man he’d seen that day on the docks, angry and embarrassed, reaching out to snatch back the bullet and shove it into his pocket, looking like a corpse walking around in broad daylight.

  Sydney can feel James’ weariness bleeding through his back and straight into his chest, and Sydney wants to turn around, and kiss James’ frowning lips, and tell him that he can live in a jobless paradise forever now that he’s here. That everything is perfect now that they have each other, and that he doesn’t have to worry or sweat through his work shirt or be sore.

  But Sydney isn’t an idiot. And he begrudgingly knows as well as he knows the timing of the tides that James is one-hundred percent correct—that a man like James Campbell wouldn’t ever feel right about living his life trusting unpredictable surfing wins and sponsorships to pay for plane tickets to competitions and food in the fridge.

  And he also knows that a man like James Campbell would rather die than accept some sort of hand out from Sydney trying to find a job for him. Unless . . .

  Sydney traps that thought and hides it away in his mind to look at later. He traces the veins on James’ hand with his finger where it rests against his chest. The soft heat of the bed is quickly growing stifling against his limbs, and his sore muscles itch to get up and stretch instead of lie motionless with a gnawing ache.

  “We’ll figure out something,” he finally says, lamely. James squeezes him with his arm, and sweat prickles along Sydney’s back when he considers what he’s about to say.

  “That isn’t all you have,” he whispers, for some reason embarrassed at the shaking in his voice. “You’re not . . . James, you’re not nothing.”

  James’ entire face is pressed into his back, and Sydney feels the trace of his lips when James finally says, in a defeated voice, “I know.”

  Sydney wants to say it again, again and again and again until James says “I know” like he really means it, but instead he taps on James’ forearm. “You know what you don’t have, though?”

  James hums in question, but it sounds like a moan or a sigh.

  “You don’t have long enough bones. How can you even breathe back there all smashed into my shoulder blade?”

  James huffs and shoves him forward, and Sydney closes his eyes in relief, a silent sense of pride, when James laughs.

  “You’re impossible,” James groans. “Swear to God I’m gonna get an eye deformity from rolling them at you every five minutes.” He leans up on his elbow and pats Sydney’s hip. “Come on, you want breakfast?”

  Sydney stretches out the length of his body, then catches James’ arm, stilling him before he can stand up from the bed. “Later. Come swim with me.”

  James shoots him a look. “Seriously. You want to go swimming. Right now.”

  Sydney fights down the grin at the corner of his mouth as he shoots up from the bed and starts to head, fully naked, towards the door. He notices James’ eyes quickly trace down his back.

  “Come on, old man. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little cool water.”

  James shakes his head up at the ceiling even as he starts to follow him out into the kitchen. “You’re not tired? Sore? Hungry?”

  Sydney just shrugs.

  James dramatically sighs. “What the fuck did I ever do in life to get saddled with the most irritating dick on the planet?”

  Sydney holds up a middle finger without looking back, filling a glass of water in the sink. “You sure as hell didn’t think my dick was irritating a couple days ago. Now stand there and argue all you want, but you know you want to.”

  He slams down the empty glass and heads out the door without waiting, grabbing his board from the side of the house as he goes.

  James halts in the doorway. “What the—Sydney put some shorts on, you can’t just—!”

  Sydney hefts his board higher in his grip and looks back. “Name one random stranger you’ve seen come on to this beach since you’ve been here.”

  James sighs, averting his eyes from Sydney’s naked body and instead looking out across the waves, still peeking out from the doorway. “We’re still in fucking public . . .”

  “Grab the extra board laying by the hammock, will you?”

  Sydney grins to himself as he hears James finally stomp out the door and down the stairs.

  “There’s no way in hell you can surf here,” James calls from behind him. “The water’s totally flat.”

  “I’m aware.”

  Sydney runs his hands through his hair to loosen out the curls, then bends over to drop his board in the sand and quickly stretch. He shivers down his spine when he looks between his legs to see James following with the extra board, naked under the rising sun, his beautiful cock swaying down between his thighs, and his golden hair, and his eyes tracking the length of Sydney’s bare legs, pupils black.

  He straightens upright and turns to the sea, letting the salt spray fan out across his skin, covering him in goosebumps and settling deep in his groin with a thud. He takes two steps out into the foam with his board, wanting to run forward and laugh up towards the sky that he is at home, with James, and that he will wake up tomorrow morning all ove
r again, with James.

  He wants to glide out into the waves with James beside him and tell him everything, spilling words out across the surface of the calm, quivering ocean. He wants to pull James’ bare body into his arms in the waves they call home and tell him that he hopes James realizes that Sydney’s pretty sure he’s in this for good. For life. He wants to hold James’ hand in front of the endless sea and make a declaration in front of heaven and earth that he is finally the man he was always meant to be with James Campbell—with and because of and alongside him. He wants to celebrate and kiss him and not feel naive or afraid, the same way all the other couples get to do in fancy chapels with a three-tiered cake and expensive photographer. And James had mentioned it that one day, right after winning, about the wife and the kids and the house and the nice car, and maybe he’ll wake up one day in a year and realize he actually still wants that, the wedding and the rings . . .

  No, Sydney shakes that thought out of his head with an affronted grunt. The morning is too beautiful for thoughts like that. The ocean too calm.

  He thinks of something else, anything else . . . Ah, right. He wants to lick the saltwater as it drips down from the hairs covering James’ chest. That’s what he wants.

  He hears James hiss from the cool, early morning bite of the water as he wades in behind him. Sydney looks back over his shoulder as he holds his board up high above his head, the tiny swells slapping softly against his stomach and thighs, cradling his skin in foam.

  James stands naked and beautiful and grounded in the shallows. Sydney licks his lips, throat bone dry, as his eyes roam over James’ body in the rising sunlight. James halts where he is, the water just up to his knees. A breeze blows Sydney’s curls over his eyes, and by the time he brushes them back with his palm, he’s shocked to see that James’ eyes are glistening and wet.

  Sydney summons his best grin and tilts his head. “You coming, Captain?”