Chapter Six
Marty
The silence is nice. I know I should reach for a better word than that, but I can't, and honestly, I don't want to. Nice is underrated. Not everything in life can be amazing or wonderful or incredible. Life gets uncomfortably full when it's lived like that, not to mention the struggle that comes with always wanting it to be all those things when it just can’t be. I should know. Awesome was my default mode for most of my life and although I didn’t think it at the time, it was exhausting and not at all sustainable.
Nowadays, nice and fine, and sometimes even just okay are more comfortable to me, cherished even, because a few years ago my perpetual optimism was flipped on its head and I was forced to experience the superlatives on the other end of the scale; body-crushing pain, devastating loss, bottomless grief.
So, even though I just promised her some outrageous flirting and even though I itch to look at her again and to ask a million questions so I can find out more about her, I also want to enjoy the niceness of this silence too.
I want to sit with this new feeling that’s bubbling up at the end of a day that has felt so hard and so sad.
A hard and sad day that concludes three hundred and sixty-five hard and sad days.
That being said, there is nothing just nice, fine or okay about the sunset. The sunset really is spectacular, even though I have to squint to look at the edges of it because I stupidly didn't include sunglasses in the bag I rushed to pack.
“Are they always this beautiful?” I ask because I suddenly want to know. I want to know if I have to prepare myself for this kind of beauty every night for the next six days, the kind that Arnie would have given his right testicle to enjoy.
Jenna turns to me and looks a little confused.
“The sunsets here,” I explain. “Are they always like this?”
She turns back and nods. “Yeah, they're pretty special. My brother says sometimes it can be cloudy or stormy and that makes the view a bit different, but we’ve had clear skies the last two evenings.”
“When do you go home again?” I ask. Did she tell me already? Come on brain, retain information, please.
“Friday,” she says. The sunset is reflected in her sunglasses and I notice we don’t have much longer until the bottom edge of the sun dips into the water.
“So, five more days.”
“Five more sunsets.” She rolls her head to the side, her chin staying low, her gaze on me. She reaches for her glasses. “Do you want to borrow them? You'll hurt your eyes if you keep looking at it without.”
“No, I’m fine,” I say, waving away the offer.
“I'm not looking directly at it, and neither should you be, by the way, even with sunglasses. I actually prefer looking at the sky around the sun and its reflection in the water. It almost looks like there’s glitter in the sea, or maybe a million fireflies buzzing away on the surface. Do you see that?”
Looking back at the water, I watch her swallow before replying quietly, “I see that.”
“I love how far the colours stretch out into the sky, all those different shades of pink and red and orange, constantly changing. I know fuck all about art but it’s kind of like watching a painting in real-time, don’t you think?”
She nods.
When she doesn’t say anything, I keep talking. “It’s hard to believe that what we’re looking at is this almighty ball of burning gas hanging in the middle of our galaxy. A lump of mass so big we’re all committed to circling it forever. It’s mad, isn’t it?”
Jenna is still, eyes straight ahead but something tells me she’s listening to every word.
“It’s a prompt, I guess, to look at what’s happening away from the sun,” I continue. “It reminds me to look at the other smaller things surrounding the big thing.”
“That's kind of profound,” she says, her face back on mine. She slides her body down a little and rests her head against the back of the lounger. “And there I was thinking you were going to whisper more filthy cocktail names in my ear.”
I bend one of my legs and bring my hand to rest on it so I can lean a little closer to her. “Oh, I can do that. I'm just waiting for the sun to go down because, as you rightly pointed out, there's no way I can compete with this kind of a performance,” I say, nodding in the sun's direction.
We don’t talk for a few moments after she also turns her attention back to the horizon, but eventually, she speaks, “It blows my mind that this happens every single day.”
I nod. “You don't watch the sun go down often?”
“Not often enough. I think the last time was on my last holiday, which was... shit, nearly three years ago.”
“On my gap year, after school, I watched the sun go down almost every single night.” I pause and take in a quick, necessary breath. “We sort of made it a rule.”
“Sounds like one of the better rules I've heard of,” she says. “So this gap year... Was that last year or the year before or...”
“I'm twenty-four,” I say, knowing what she’s really asking.
I watch her side profile to check for shock or panic or something more subtle like a flinch or maybe even a flash of intrigue. But there’s nothing on her face. Eyes fixed on the sunset, her mouth is slightly open like it can’t decide what to say, and her face can’t decide whether to smile or frown.
“Twenty-four,” she says, and she does this cute little wriggle in her chair before un-crossing and re-crossing her legs, drawing my eyes again to their curves, their golden glow and that sexy anklet. “Interesting.”
“Interesting how?” I ask.
“Just... interesting,” she says, and a broader smile grows on her lips.
“Well, are you going to put me out of my fecking misery and tell me how old you are?” I demand with a laugh.
“I'm...” she starts, but then presses her lips together and squints at me, looking very, very mischievous.
“I was going to say I want you to guess, just to have a bit of fun with you, but now I'm petrified you're going to say something ridiculous, and it could be ridiculously old, or it could be ridiculously young.
Either way, it won't make me feel good.”
“Why? Growing old is a privilege,” I say without thinking. Feeling, yes, but not thinking.
She blinks at that and has no response.
“So, how about I don't guess,” I offer, because I feel like I owe her this much. “And instead, you tell me what does make you feel good.”
She laughs. “And you're back. I was worried the flirting spirit had left you completely.”
“Never.” I smile, shifting my body so I'm more on my side, facing her.
“Will you survive if I don't tell you how old I am? Like maybe we could just stick to flirting and watching the sun go down and then... well...” She looks down at her drink, and then up at me, her eyelids still low. “I don't know what happens next.”
“Nobody knows what's going to happen next, cupcake,” I say and all I get back is a full-body sigh.
I turn again to look at the sunset even though her side profile with her full lips, freckled cheeks and long neck is a view I could look at just as long.
The bottom of the sun is now just seconds away from sinking into the sea and I feel a flood of memories rush in, all of them tinged with a persistent melancholy that I wish I could avoid, just once.
“It's happening,” she says, her voice low.
“I know.”
“It feels so much more epic than just the end of a day,” she says, and I know what she means, why she's saying it, but I can't help but question if she's only talking about the sun.
“I know,” I say again, and then, without speaking, we watch the sea start to swallow the sun.
The bar DJ’s song choice – a soulful, chilled-out dance track - matches the sunset’s climax perfectly and I am glad I don’t recognise the artist. I wait until the sun is almost completely submerged and then I finally look at the space it took up just a minute ago.
“You know, someone once told me that immediately as the sun goes down, sometimes you can see a flash of green light.”
“Really?” she says in a voice that's more air than anything else.
“Yeah, an optic phenomenon. Apparently, it’s when the sun’s light gets dispersed through the Earth’s atmosphere, like a prism,” I say, almost hearing Arnie’s voice in my ear. “Look out for it.”
“Wow, science is so sexy,” she says and my smile comes easier than I expect. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her head lift off the back of the lounger. Her lips pull into a pout and her chin pushes out, studying the view.
“Did you see it?” I ask, after a minute.
“No,” she says but still she looks.
“Yeah, I'm not sure it’s true. I never saw it and we watched like three hundred sunsets together that year. It's probably complete bollocks,” I say and that earns me a soft swipe on my arm as she laughs.
“So, who did you go travelling and watching sunsets with?”
I close my eyes as if the sun is still there and still shining too bright. When I open them again, I'm happy to see all of her face again as she’s moved her glasses back to the top of her head. Her eyes are big and the colour of wild honey.
“If you're not going to tell me your age tonight, then I'm not going to tell you about that,” I say.
Her head jolts back a little in shock. Of course, it's not the answer she expects. Who says something like that about someone they went backpacking with?
“Okay,” she says simply and then turns back to the horizon. “Wow, look at the colour of the sky now.”
“Nah.” I turn my body to the side once more. “I think I'd rather look at you.”