Sydney’s lips tremble, just barely, then he shrugs one shoulder. “We have Chris as a witness,” he offers, right before he scans the trees once more.
“I know,” James says. He can’t find words to express how unbearably heartbreaking it is that Sydney seems to want to keep it that way—shoo everyone away from the beach, lock the doors. And James also can’t find the words to express how shattering it is that he finds himself agreeing with him. That even the thought of Chris knowing, when he already full-on knew, made James stand dumbly in the corner just a few hours ago.
Sydney cups James’ cheek in his hand, his fingers steady. “But that’s not really what you mean,” he says, with a sad smile.
James mimics the sagging slope of Sydney’s mouth. “No, it isn’t.”
“We’ll see Rob and Lori in September when we’re there for the U.S. Open though, yeah?”
“You realize we’re also there for their wedding, too? Not just for surfing?”
Sydney fake huffs and rolls his eyes. “Fine, and we’ll be there for the wedding too,” he groans.
James grins and fixes the crease of Sydney’s collar one last time. “You’re impossible,” he says.
“Clearly I’m not impossible if you’re promising to stick around.”
“Fine, what are you, then?”
Sydney acts like he’s thinking hard. “I’m nearly impossible.”
James shakes his head and curses under his breath with a soft laugh, then moves to start walking again towards the cliff.
He does feel a little more grounded, the sadness pushed back from the forefront of his mind. He thinks he just might even feel ready now for the first time in three weeks—ready to stand up in front of the sea and the sky and let the edge of the earth see that he’s in love with Sydney Moore. Say the words and kiss him, and at least Chris will be there to witness it all.
Then Sydney sucks in a quick breath behind him, and his hand shoots out to stop James by his wrist. “What if,” he starts, “James, what if we didn’t have to do this alone?”
James frowns, turning back to face him. His mind races for what Sydney could possibly mean. “What, you mean Hank? I thought he was watching the shop for us.”
Sydney bites his lip, glances at the trees, then looks down quickly at the sand, and suddenly a spark of something lights up in the back of James’ mind, burning hesitant and bright. “Hold on, wait a second. Why the fuck do you look so suspicious right now?”
Sydney looks up at him, eyes open and warm, then stares over James’ shoulder back towards the path in the trees without immediately looking away. James’ heart races without him fully knowing why, then he looks over his shoulder to follow Sydney’s steady gaze.
His eyes focus, squinting against the glare of the sunlight reflecting off the sand, and then he freezes, sucking in a gasp.
Rob stands at the edge of the beach with Lori beside him, holding up a hand over his eyes to shield them from the blinding sun. Lori waves back at James from where she stands close next to him, grin threatening to leap off her face and her other hand tucking her hair behind her ear out of the breeze.
James whips his head back towards Sydney and gapes at him with wet and burning eyes. He can barely speak. “What did you do?” he whispers. “How did . . . ?”
Sydney looks at him for a long moment, like he’s trying to seriously study James’ shocked face, then he smiles at him like somehow James just hung the sun. He hesitates for a moment, then leans forward and softly kisses James’ cheek, and James is too shocked to realize that it’s the first time anyone’s seen them kiss.
He doesn’t even flinch. Doesn’t move.
“Go on, then,” Sydney says, pushing James gently forward by the back.
James is terrified that if he turns back around they’ll be gone, faded away like a mirage into the hot sand. “You’re something else,” he chokes out, and Sydney laughs and says, “I know,” as he turns James around by the shoulder and pushes him forward again towards where Rob and Lori still wait impatiently in the trees.
James stumbles forward on numb and shaking legs, then looks up from his feet. They haven’t disappeared. They’re still standing there—standing at the entrance of his home like Los Angeles just plucked them up and dropped them clear in the middle of Oahu.
James wants to run towards them but can’t trust his shocked legs to move. Instead he walks, barely feeling the sand beneath his feet, and Rob finally emerges from the shade to jog out to meet him instead, Lori on his heels.
“Who the fuck gets married without inviting their only goddamn friends?” Rob calls out to him.
James laughs wetly and shakes his head, still blinking in disbelief. “Me, apparently,” he manages to say back. Then Rob reaches out and pulls him into his arms in a thick hug, clutching him to his chest.
They’ve never hugged before—not like this. James holds his breath as his body melts against Rob’s bones, breathing in the scent at the crook of his neck that James suddenly realizes smells just like the sand outside a little red and white seaside mobile home.
“Shit, Jimmy,” Rob whispers. “Missed you, man.”
James can’t bring himself to say anything back. He finally pulls away and holds Rob firmly by the shoulders, staring and staring and staring into the brown eyes he hasn’t seen in over half a year since he and Sydney competed in San Diego. They’d been so busy with setting up the shop, and surfing around Hawaii, and saving every last dollar they had, and James wants to kick himself now for ever letting it get like this, after he’d sat in Rob and Lori’s warm backyard with Josie’s head in his lap and promised them he wasn’t disappearing forever, that they would still have—
“How the hell did you get here?” he hears himself ask.
Rob chuckles. “Well you see they’ve got these newfangled things called planes now. Big tubes of metal that fly you high up in the air over the ocean—”
“Oh, close the shades, you dic—”
“And then there’s these machines called cars that are like mini planes on land with wheels that—”
“You fucking ass, why don’t you ever—"
“Jimmy!”
Lori flings herself into his arms, legs wrapping around his waist, and James holds her up out of the sand with a surprised laugh. Lori kisses his cheek before jumping back down to her feet, reaching forward to smooth out the wrinkles from James’ shirt.
“Sorry, but if I didn’t interrupt that you two would have just had the ‘insult Olympics’ for an hour while me and Danny stood here waiting,” she says. “To answer your question,” and she gives a pointed glare at Rob, “Danny called us a couple weeks ago and somehow pulled plane tickets out of the air, and Rob had some vacation days left and I skipped some class and here we are.”
James looks back over to Sydney near the shore where he waits staring out at the sea with his hands in his pockets, carefully not looking their way. James’ chest expands almost painfully, overflowing with an emotion he can’t even name. “I didn’t even know he . . .” he trails off.
When he turns back at Rob and Lori, Rob wraps his arm around her waist, his eyes turning serious as they lean against each other.
“Really, though, Jimmy, you know you could have told us,” he says, sounding a bit hurt. “You know we woulda dropped everything to come.”
Hot shame creeps up the back of James’ neck, and he fights the urge to run a sweating palm over his tingling face. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I just didn’t . . . this all happened so fast, yeah? And it’s not like . . . well it doesn’t really mean anything official, you know?”
Rob slaps him gently on the arm. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
Lori nudges him with a frown, chiding, “Rob . . .”
“You know what I mean,” Rob adds. He reaches forward to take James’ arm once more, his grip warm and firm in a way that instantly takes James back to that Los Angeles beach right after his backbreaking shift, when Rob had been panting and radiant and dr
ipping wet.
“This does mean something, Jimmy,” Rob says.
James blinks hard and swallows over a dry throat, feeling like a wrung-out sponge. He ducks his head and nods, rubbing his palm over his neck. “I know,” he whispers.
The moment turns thick and heavy, settling between the three of them with a thud. Lori looks over James’ shoulder towards Sydney and forces a smile, speaking lightly into the grey fog of sudden emotion.
“Well come on, then,” she says. “He’s waiting.”
Rob starts walking with his arm still around Lori’s waist, the other one clasped firmly to James’ shoulder. James sucks in a full breath for the first time since turning around and glimpsing Rob Depaul standing on an Oahu beach, and his legs move thickly through the sand like rubber. He walks towards Sydney like a lighthouse in the fog, as if each step he takes is really on a pier in the middle of Hermosa instead of over the soft, private sand of their home. He belatedly realizes Rob is talking and turns his head to hear.
“Yeah, Jimmy,” Rob’s saying, grinning. “Make him wait any longer and he’ll start writing pining love letters to you—send them tied to little bird wings flying across the beach.”
A laugh bursts from James’ chest, and he shoves Rob away from him. “Jesus, between you and him, the only person on this beach who I actually fucking like is Lori,” he groans.
“Well that’s because Lori’s too nice to make fun of you for growing a fucking beard like some hermit living in a cave. I mean, shit, do you eat grasshoppers now and only bathe once a year?”
Lori huffs. “Rob, I swear to God, I’m gonna purposefully lose this engagement ring in the ocean if you can’t just can it for two hours on the most important day of Jimmy’s life.”
“Well if it’s the most important day of his life, he shouldn’t look like he just crawled off a deserted island where he didn’t have a razor for six months,” Rob shoots back.
Just then, they reach Sydney, who’s slowly turned to greet them, hands stuck in his pockets and shoulders slightly slumped, like he’s trying to make himself look smaller in the air. Rob grows oddly quiet as they stop in the sand, and James feels a hot wave of sudden nerves churn in his gut.
He needs to say something—somehow bridge the vast, gaping hole between the two halves of his life suddenly clashing together in the sand. He opens his mouth to try to speak, hands clammy and awkwardly clearing his throat. But Sydney reaches out a hand before James can manage to say anything, and Rob takes it in a firm and silent handshake, sharing a quiet look that somehow makes James’ chest physically ache to witness.
Sydney turns to take Lori’s hand then, and leans down to kiss her cheek. James gapes, mouth wide open. He’s barely seen Sydney shake another person’s hand before, let alone this. He burns the image into his memory, hiding it deep in his mind.
“Thank you for coming,” Sydney says formally.
Rob and Lori immediately echo, “Thank you.”
James has the sudden sensation that Rob and Lori are his parents, and Sydney’s his school principal inviting them down for a formal meeting. The thought makes him want to laugh at the sheer, unbelievable impossibility of it all, then he again notices the look that Rob and Sydney keep sharing with each other, and feels that he’s missing something desperately important instead.
Rob breaks the silence and clears his throat, putting on his usual grin. “Well, someone had to come out here and make sure you weren’t just marrying this old man for his life insurance. You sure as hell aren’t marrying him for his looks.”
Marrying him.
James’ heart stops at the effortless words—a screaming bomb piercing the peaceful sky over the ocean with exploding flames. But nobody even flinches.
Instead, Lori huffs and rolls her eyes as Sydney laughs. It lights up his entire face, and James finds himself staring at him breathlessly for what feels like the hundredth time that day. Without thinking, he reaches out and places his hand on Sydney’s cheek, touching the smile still on his face, and then he stills, realizing what he’s just done right in front of the two other people he loves most in the world.
Some prickling, black part of him waits for Sydney to turn his cheek away with an embarrassed laugh, or to crack a joke and turn to quickly walk up to the cliff, ending the awkward silence and leaving James behind in the sand.
He waits for Rob and Lori to gasp, for them to quickly look away. For them to say they didn’t fly across an entire ocean for this. This isn’t our Jimmy.
But everything is quiet, and the ocean sings, and Sydney brings his hand up to hold James’ fingers against his cheek. He turns his face to kiss the center of James’ palm, plain as day.
The earth stops, and James’ breath catches in his throat.
“Shall we?” Sydney says quietly, speaking only to James.
James has never known the answer to anything more fiercely in his life. He strokes his thumb across Sydney’s cheek, swallowing hard, then whispers, “Thank you.”
~
The wind at the top of the rocky cliff wraps around his skin like soft velvet, shivering across the hair on his forearms below his rolled-up sleeves.
James clutches at Sydney’s hands in his, unable to keep his eyes off Sydney’s warm and glowing skin, swathed in the white fabric of his shirt and bathed in the reflection of light off the waves down below. The wind blows his curls across his forehead, down into his eyes. James wants to rise up on his toes and bury his face in Sydney’s hair, inhaling the warmth of him straight down into his lungs over the floral salt scent of the sea.
Instead he holds on, and looks only at him, and tries to focus on what Chris is saying next to them as Rob and Lori watch on from just off to the side, arm in arm.
“The sky and the sea were once one,” Chris is saying. “A vast expanse of the same unbreakable blue, stretching unbounded for eternity. Hovering over the surface of the earth.”
Chris is speaking very softly beside them, his voice just barely carrying over the sound of the swirling wind and crashing waves below. Sydney shoots James a quick look, eyes nervous with the barest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and James squeezes his hand in return, trying to breathe. Trying to stay rooted in the ground instead of flying clear up into the clouds.
Chris goes on, his voice evolving to a steady, calming hum. “One day, the earth realized that the sky and sea could no longer remain one entity. That they had individual gifts, and individual paths to take. And so she softly divided them evenly down the middle, separating wet from dry, water from air, the waves from the clouds.”
Chris gestures behind him towards the vast horizon line, brilliant and shimmering in the hazy afternoon sun. “But you see,” he says, “they are not separate at all. They are the full sky. And they are the full sea. And yet they are also joined together seamlessly into one by the horizon line you see. And the sea sends its waves up towards the heavens to greet the sky, and the sky sends its wind down to kiss the surface of the water. And in that way, the sky and the sea are still one.”
He looks back and forth between James and Sydney a few times with a somber expression on his face, the breeze picking up strands of his long hair. James feels a slight prickling in the back of his mind that maybe Lori and Rob are finding this all ridiculous—that they’re wondering where the hell Sydney even found this guy, or embarrassed that they’re the only two guests at not-real wedding, like some unsuccessful play put on by a jobless actor friend. James steals a glance towards them out of the corner of his eye, then suddenly grips Sydney’s hard so hard he feels the bones creak.
He’s never seen Rob cry before, but now he is, one tear sliding down his cheek while his arm grips Lori hard around the shoulders. His hand shakes.
The prickling in the back of James’ mind vanishes, blasted away over the cliff and across the waves, and he looks back at Sydney, glowing and beautiful in the sun. Sydney winks at him, softly under the cover of his eyelashes, and James fights the urge to press him down into
the earth and kiss him until the sun finally sleeps.
“Sydney,” Chris says, and James wonders how he even knew the name, “you are the sea. And James, you are the sky. At your horizon line, you meet. It is never broken, and never bent. It is eternal, holding your two souls together at the seam, and you may reach across it to share your gifts with each other, from now until the day you part.”
Chris reaches into the bag at his feet and pulls out a small box. James had nearly forgotten—that morning already seems like years ago. When Chris had passed them each the rough, wooden box and told them to place their rings and the chains to wear them on inside it, and James had nervously slipped his decidedly-not-a-ring for Sydney under the lid, then desperately fought against his curiosity not to peek at Sydney’s ring for him when he passed him the box.
Now Chris opens the small box, shielding the contents from them with the lid. He cradles the box in his hands, and continues in a voice that floats effortlessly on the wind.
“In my hands are the symbols of your love that have each decided to wear over your hearts, chosen by each other as the deepest symbol of your entity as sky or sea.” He reaches in and draws out the dog tags James had placed in there that morning, freshly engraved with Sydney’s full name across the back. July 9, 1976—the date of the International Surf Festival in Hermosa—right beneath it.
Chris hands the chain to Sydney, who reaches up with a shaking hand to cradle the tags, before gasping up at James with a crumbling look on his face.
“Really?” he whispers.
James’ sleepless nerves over Sydney being upset that it wasn’t a real wedding ring vanish when he takes in the shine across Sydney’s pale eyes. He nods. He can’t speak. Sydney huffs out a wet laugh and carefully settles the chain around his neck, then tucks the tags underneath his shirt, dropping them over his chest.
James startles when Chris holds up an object right in front of him, and it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust before he reaches up to grab it with numb fingers.
The Sea Ain't Mine Alone Page 59