Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Iwas the first one to wake, my eyes fluttering open to faint bands of light capturing the tiniest specks of dust. Kai was still surrendered to deep sleep, facing toward me with his cheek pressed against the pillow and his hand resting low on my stomach under the cover.
I imagined threading my fingers through his hair, imagined him stirring under my touch, his strong limbs stretching, his dark eyes meeting mine.
Hello. But he looked too peaceful to disturb, so I slinked out of bed, threw his huge blue sweater over my nightgown, and tiptoed my way out of the room, shutting the door behind me.
In the living room, the air smelled of kindling and burnt candles, and the floorboards were cold and creaky beneath my bare feet.
All the windowpanes were fogged with condensation, and when I cracked one open, a glacial mist whipped into the room and sparkled over my face.
For a long time, I sat there on a chair by the window with my knees drawn to my chest, not moving, not thinking, not even needing to smoke.
Just staring out at the half-hidden view of the beach, the colors soft and glittering, blotting into the cold dawn sky.
It was starting to get really cold, but I didn’t want to close the window and be deprived of all the fresh air, so I attempted to rekindle the fire, which took a few tries before a lovely enveloping warmth lapped over my face.
There were so many things to worry about I ended up worrying about nothing. I just leaned back until I came flush with the rug, letting the radiating heat lull me back to sleep.
After several moments of half-conscious stillness, I felt the floorboards shudder beneath my limbs, and Kai’s morning voice sounded in the room, low and affecting. “Hello there.”
He appeared over me like a handsome apparition, sleep-tousled and gentle-eyed, dressed in sweatpants and a cable-knit sweater.
“Good morning,” I replied with a little yawn.
Without hesitation, he joined me on the floor, lying down next to me with his face upturned toward the beamed ceiling. Five minutes passed, maybe ten, before he asked, “So… what are we doing exactly?”
“Nothing,” I murmured. “Just waking up.”
“Right, right,” he hummed humorously. “I usually have coffee in the morning, but this is pretty cool too.”
I let out a trembling laugh, feeling deeply soothed and not caring at all if this feeling was superficial. I just gave in to it. The simple human need to find consolation even when things were terrible.
I turned and burrowed to his side. He wound both arms around my neck and cradled me to his chest, his mouth moving soft and hot over my forehead. “This is nice.”
“So nice,” I agreed.
“Are you hungry? I can make cinnamon rolls.”
I grinned against his collarbone. “You can make cinnamon rolls?”
“Yeah, if you don’t mind waiting for a bit.”
“No, I don’t mind. I rarely eat in the morning, anyway.”
“Good to know.”
“But I think I’ll go out for a bit,” I said. “Leave you to your morning rituals.”
“Okay,” he breathed out. “You mind if I join you in a bit, or do you want to be alone?”
Dreamily, I glanced up at him. “Please join me. We can make the cinnamon rolls later.”
After I washed and dressed, I slipped into Kai’s spare rain boots and made my way to the beach. It was still quite early, and a thin fog had settled over the gray-blue slate of the sea.
Behind me the reeds whistled with high wind, and before me the saltwater worked the coastline sleek, nearly translucent. When I stepped closer, the sea spray dampened my clothes, the water lapping over my boots, rinsing them clean of particles of sand.
For several moments I stood alone and still, breathing in and out and listening to the hissing of the waves and the wail of the albatrosses lifting themselves higher in the sky.
Then Kai emerged next to me, looking refreshed and fully awake, dressed in dark wash jeans and the same sweater from earlier.
“Here,” he said, extending a cup of coffee toward me. “Some warmth.”
I accepted the cup gratefully, my frozen palms throbbing hot against it. “Thank you.”
He took his cigarette pack out of the pocket of his jeans and offered me one. In companionable silence we smoked, drank our coffees, and watched the horizon clear, long, golden sunbeams piercing through the blanket of clouds to paint the water glitter-yellow.
Inexpressibly moved by the beauty of this place, the splendor of the sky, and the grandness of the sea, I threw my cigarette in the portable ashtray Kai had brought for us, set it down on the wet sand along with my cup, and announced, “I want to go swimming.”
Kai raised his brows, surprised. “It’s going to be awfully cold.”
“I don’t care,” I claimed, already slipping out of the boots and my socks.
“Wait,” he laughed, touching his fingers to the crook of my elbow. “Now?”
I shrugged as I continued with unbuttoning my jeans. “I don’t have a swimsuit anyway.”
In my tank top and underwear, the air felt razor-sharp, the sea spray brutal. The water slid over my bare feet and crawled up to my ankles, so aggressively cold that I began to shiver, my heart striking shocked in my temples.
“Oh fuck,” I heard myself gasp.
Kai chuckled, pulling the clothes off his body—sweater and undershirt and jeans.
In his plain blue boxer shorts, he looked significantly more bare than I felt, the muscles of his chest and abdomen glistening as he pranced in without a second thought, used to the feeling of it.
He submerged his thighs and stomach and arms until finally the water closed around his neck.
“Come on,” he called out to me, his breath labored and his face flushed from the cold.
Little by little, I let the tide drag me in, my nerve endings shrilling from the sting. Panting, with my nose streaming already, I pushed through until my tiptoes were barely able to touch the seabed.
Then a terrible fear came over me: Do I know how to swim?
Keeping my eyes wide open, I immersed my head fully. Clear, black nothingness encased me. There was only the faint refracted outline of Kai’s body and the muted hum of the sea, its pressure building inside my ears.
Fossilized in saltwater, I tried moving my legs and arms to circulate my blood and keep myself afloat, but they’d become too stiff, too uncoordinated, like they didn’t entirely belong to me anymore.
For a pain-stunned second, I imagined that this was exactly how the lost version of myself felt inside my head without an exit to the world.
You would think her numb from the brutal cold and the pure physical exhaustion of trying to rise to the surface.
But she wasn’t numb. She was in quiet, slow agony.
Horrible, horrible feeling to think of her—of me—like that. Trapped, alone, desperate for something I couldn’t articulate even in the privacy of my thoughts.
I could feel a scream pushing up the siphon of my throat, but then something sleek brushed against my stomach. Kai’s hands, I realized, and surrendered to them completely.
The top of my head broke the surface, just to have another, fresher rush of wind lash over me. I heaved for breath, salt stinging in my ears and burning in my sinuses. With the little movement I had left in my limbs, I reached for him, touching my fingers to the tightened skin below his navel.
“You okay?” he asked, brushing the wet hair from my eyes.
His face, almost pearlescent in the sun, was floating a mere grain of sand from mine, his lips purple, his dark lashes dripping seawater down his cheeks.
“I can’t feel my limbs,” I panted, not only hearing the chatter of my teeth but also feeling my skull grinding under the fragile skin of my face.
“Give it a moment,” exhaled Kai, his hands beneath the surface skimming up my sides.
Nervously, I licked my bottom lip, tasting the salt. “You can swim if you want. I don’t think I can. It’s too cold for me.”
Shaking his head, he said, “I’m not leaving you.”
So much contentment I felt at these words that even the pain dulled, the water growing bearable. He’s not leaving me.
Under my fingertips I could feel the enduring movements of his muscles keeping us afloat even as the wind picked up and the abrading waves pushed us toward the shore, our twined bodies having no choice but to oblige.
I became increasingly aware of our smallness compared to the vastness of the sea, our docile existence, our flower-like impermanence on this earth, which had grown very quiet in that moment. Very quiet and very large.
“I feel like we’re all alone in the world,” I whispered, pressed to him, our legs tangling underwater.
Our lips almost touched when he answered, “Maybe we are.”
Another gust of wind ruffled the surface, and a sort of fog descended over us. I felt my eyes tear up, the inside of my nose scalding.
“I think we’ve had enough,” decided Kai, and so we made our slow and laborious way back to the beach.
My body felt so rigid and heavy I could have been made out of stone, an ancient statue washed ashore after years of being lost at sea.
Inside, the fire was still going strong, and it was so warm that I nearly cried from relief.
Kai rushed to the linen closet, leaving a trail of wet footsteps behind him, and fetched us a couple of towels.
He draped one around my shoulders and threw the other over his head before he returned to the kitchen to plug in the heater.
“Why are you still standing there?” he asked, laughing, shaking still.
I glanced down at my bare feet, drenched and dusty with particles of sand. “I’ll make a mess.”
“I’ve already made a mess. Come on.”
In front of the heater, I slowly reclaimed the coordination of my body. Kai grabbed another towel and patted my hair dry with it, standing so close to me that I could only see the refined bone of his clavicle, moving as he moved.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice as light as I’d begun to feel.
“Yeah. I feel amazing, actually.”