Chapter 29
Apparently, all I have to do to have a magical time at the beach is announce my intention to leave.
Saturday morning, I park my bike—my bike!
—in the shady parking lot of a public park.
I’m meeting up with Amanda and a group of her friends to kayak through the mangroves.
I’ve never been kayaking before, but Amanda didn’t seem worried about that.
She’d invited me last night when I stopped by her bar for a drink after a few hours of painting.
I told her about how I’m living a bucket list of sorts in the less than two weeks I have left, and she invited me to join her and her friends without hesitation.
I didn’t even consider the physical exertion required when I accepted, I was so excited to be included.
It’s eight thirty on a weekend, but there are quite a few people milling around the park, walking or schlepping paddleboards over to the dock. I take it in my stride when strangers call out hearty good mornings to me.
A mini van pulls up and Amanda waves to me from the passenger seat.
She and a guy she introduces as her brother, Francis, jump out and unload two kayaks.
One of them is a double. As we deposit them in the shallow water by the dock, we’re joined by her other friends, three girls and one guy.
It’s a lot of kayaks. After a round of introductions, we’re off.
Amanda instructed me to join her in the double. I didn’t argue. I’m seated in the front, Amanda behind me, and we glide easily through the clear green-blue water of the bay. I have a feeling it wouldn’t be quite so easy if I were trying to paddle myself.
After a few minutes, we find ourselves in a tunnel of mangrove trees.
“Wow,” I breathe. It’s so otherworldly, I’m speechless. Tree roots rise out of the water, crisscrossing in midair. Above us, the tree branches form a leafy green canopy. It smells incredible—mossy and verdant and alive.
I turn around to shout at Amanda, “This is so cool!”
She grins. “I couldn’t let you leave without experiencing this.”
“You guys do this a lot?”
“At least once every month or two.” Amanda’s arms look intimidatingly strong as she dips the oar back and forth.
“Come on, slowpokes!” Her brother, Francis, cruises past us. I face forward again and add my paddle to the water.
We skim through the glowing mangrove tunnels in near silence, the only sounds our oars sloshing through the water and the calls of birds, frogs, and some chittering creature I can’t name.
A sense of peace settles over me, so profound I don’t know if I’ve ever felt anything like it.
I think I came close to it after that first day of ripping out carpeting—but that was a sense of calm caused by physical exertion.
This is more like a calm bestowed on me by the environment itself.
I can’t stop grinning, and I already know I’m going to go overboard with how many times I thank Amanda for inviting me.
We turn back into open water for a while, the sun beating down on us, before turning into another thicket of mangroves.
“Alligator,” one of the girls calls matter-of-factly.
“What? Where?” I shriek and clutch my paddle to my chest.
Amanda points it out: There’s not just one but two alligators lounging among the tree roots.
“They’re just chilling,” Amanda says.
“Chilling to save up the energy required to eat us?”
“Don’t worry, they only eat people stupid enough to swim in these parts,” Francis calls back. This must be an inside joke, because everyone erupts in laughter.
“What?” I ask.
“It was me,” Amanda says. “I swam here one time. It was really hot. And I didn’t see the gators.”
“Until it was too late,” Francis says in a menacing voice.
“Oh my God, what?”
Amanda shakes her head at her brother. “Quiet, fool! He’s just messing around. I mean, yeah, I didn’t see the gators until after I’d jumped in. But they didn’t actually try to eat me. I got right back in my boat.”
“That is… terrifying.”
We glide past the alligators, who don’t even open their eyes, and continue on for another half hour or more. Time doesn’t seem to behave the same way in the quiet of these watery tunnels. Suddenly, one of the girls up front is calling back, “It’s eleven. Shall we?”
“Yes, please,” Amanda says.
“Shall we what?” I ask.
“You’ll see! I can’t ruin the surprise.”
“Does this involve swimming? I didn’t bring a towel.”
The others just laugh.
“Did you bring your appetite?” Francis asks.
Wondering if they somehow packed a picnic without me noticing, I nod eagerly. “I could definitely eat.”
But they don’t stop on a sandy bank and reveal a picnic basket; we keep paddling toward some small buildings on the water’s edge that I never would have looked at twice.
They’re ramshackle, to say the least. One of them appears to be a boat repair place, which makes sense given the location.
It looks like these places can only be reached by boat, but that wouldn’t make sense, would it?
I am so confused. But still optimistic. There used to be a famous poke bowl place in Seattle that was hidden inside a gas station, so. Anything could happen.
Francis is the first one to tie his kayak to the dock and hop up the ladder. “Honey, we’re home!”
“Does he live here?” I whisper.
Amanda bursts out laughing. “No, he’s just a clown.”
We all follow Francis inside the place. I’m expecting an office building or something, but it’s a restaurant.
A tiny, hole-in-the-wall restaurant. (Maybe hole-in-the-marina would be a more apt description.) It smells vaguely of Lysol and fish.
But I decide to put on a brave face and be game for anything.
An older gentleman who towers above all of us, with a mop of thick gray hair and a face that’s never been touched by sunscreen, gestures to a table by the window.
For all Francis’s familiarity, the man doesn’t seem particularly familiar with the group as he hands around some menus and lists the two daily specials.
Until Francis asks about the weather, and his eyes animate.
“Seen the storm forecasts, have you?” he asks in a gravelly smoker’s voice.
“I know you have, Buddy.” I internally cringe at Francis calling him buddy—seems a little too try-hard—before I realize that that’s his actual name.
They trade a few back-and-forths about the likelihood of seeing the season’s first hurricane this weekend. I’d forgotten about hurricane season. That’s one rather large silver lining to my situation: leaving town before hurricane season starts in earnest.
Before we have time to look at the menu, let alone discuss it, one of the other girls—Melissa—orders for the table. I’m a little shocked, but also a little relieved. I’m not expecting much, so I’m fine with whatever other people are eating.
A few minutes later, Buddy drops off a veritable feast of seafood.
A shrimp cocktail, fried scallops, a huge platter of raw clams, and a whole crab surrounded by piles of steak-cut fries.
He returns with a dozen little silver cups of ketchup, mayonnaise, and tartar sauce.
And maybe I’m extra hungry from the kayaking, or maybe it’s because my expectations were so low, but this is without a doubt one of the most delicious meals I’ve ever had.
“Oh my God,” I say repeatedly, slurping down clams topped with vinegary hot sauce, and dredging morsels of crab through melted butter.
“I think she likes it.”
“Don’t they have seafood up in Seattle?”
“Of course, but it’s different. We don’t have clams like this, that’s for sure. I’ve never had clams, actually.”
This gets some appreciative hoots, and Amanda asks Buddy to bring us another dozen.
As we demolish the food, I’m awash with the group’s easy conversation and laughter.
I haven’t asked how Amanda met these friends—I’m not even positive about a few of their names—but that doesn’t seem to matter right now.
It’s just the atmosphere. The easy way their chatter flits from kayaking, to triathlons, to family drama, to a concert they saw recently, to Fourth of July plans.
There’s nothing stilted: no awkward pauses, no introductory questions, no effort to catch up on recent events in each other’s lives.
It’s just easy . I wonder if—not like this would ever happen, but if —I lived here, whether I would be part of this friend group.
Amanda seems to like me enough to invite me to hang out with them.
I imagine it for a minute: what my life would look like.
Catching up with Amanda at her bar, spending weekends doing outdoorsy things with this group, being invited to their birthday parties and barbecues.
I see myself riding my bike to work in the perennial sunshine—to some hazy, imaginary job—and returning home in the evenings to drink a glass of chilled rosé in the sunroom of Pebble Cottage.
Okay, Mallory. I straighten up, wipe my mouth with a paper napkin, and chug my tall glass of lukewarm water. No point going down that imaginary road. I’ll just enjoy the moment now and not worry about the fact that it won’t be repeated.