Chapter 33 #2
That hits all of me. Hard. I think of the day I found out our money was stolen and my mom had a tumor. The sky was clear blue. It didn’t seem possible that bad things happen on days with good weather. Life doesn’t last forever, Mom said that day, and I feel those words on this beach.
The impermanence of life’s good days. How one second there’s one truth and the next turns that truth to a lie.
We’re fine then we’re broke.
We’re healthy then there’s a brain tumor.
It changes, and every minute not spent doing and saying and being with the exact people we should be with is a minute lost that will never be found again.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Sunny continues, “you sure as hell dug you some kinda pit to sit in.” She purses her lips to emphasize how disapproving of my pit she is.
“But if there was one man on earth other than James I’d trust to reach a hand down and drag my big Black ass out of it—” She points a finger down the beach. “It’s that one.”
Nash carries one of the kids under his arm like a football, and the simple act makes heart press against bone. Any doubt I have regarding what he would be like with Bennie vanishes. It’s evident he loves these boys who don’t belong to him; he’d be wrapped around her finger.
“He likes kids.”
“Likes ’em?” She scoffs. “Man loves ’em. How you think I’m able to keep all them jobs?” Her brows are sky high. “He watches ’em for me the nights I work—no charge. Damn unicorn, like I told ya.”
He watches her kids.
Every missing piece of him falls into place.
His late-night absences, the kid’s voice in the background.
He was watching Sunny’s kids so she could work, and it takes my breath away.
Like everything else I’ve learned about him, it makes me see him anew.
He’s who he was and so much more. He will love Bennie.
Even if he isn’t there all the time—even if he and I can’t make it work after I tell him—he’ll be there for her.
And I can’t not spend another second without being able to touch him.
I grab my phone and stand, watching him and the boys and Cap, all of them laughing in the distance. This isn’t the way I wanted to do this, but I can’t wait. I won’t give another second away with Nash that I’ll never get back.
When Jonathan’s familiar voicemail picks up, I say everything I haven’t.
“Jonathan, hey. I’m so sorry—I know the timing isn’t right and I’m doing this on your voicemail, but I .
. . I can’t do this. We can’t get married.
It’s not you—not really. It’s us. It’s Nash.
” I pause to watch him pay for the ice creams, the boys beaming around him.
“He’s here. He’s, I don’t know, surprising me and driving me insane and—” I’m not making any sense.
“I’m sorry. Really.” Nash is walking toward me now, licking his dessert without a care in the world.
“You’re great. Better than great, really.
I just—I’ll call you when I get back.” I pause for any second thoughts to find me; they don’t. “I’m really sorry.”
When I end the call, my eyes meet Sunny’s, and she pops a shoulder. “’Bout damn time your skinny white ass done did somethin’ right.”
I want to run to Nash, but I don’t—running is something Remy would do, and I refuse to stoop to her ridiculous level of romantic antics. I walk—speedwalk—homed in on him as my feet fight the soft sand with every step.
I want to kiss him—right here on this beach in front of all these people.
“Got you something, kiddo,” Cap says, stopping me before I pass him. He hands me a wrapped treat. “Ice cream sandwich.”
My focus on Nash breaks long enough for me to look at my dad.
“Okay . . .” I blink at him, confused.
“You said your dad never surprised you with one,” he explains. “I don’t know much about car loans, but I love ice cream.” He gestures with the ice cream sandwich in his hands. “Thought you might too.”
And just like that, I forget about Nash and look at the cheap dessert in my hands like it’s the pile of Anson Burns gold. It ties knots in my throat. My feelings for Nash are one thing, but the appreciation I have toward this man who never wanted me to begin with takes me by complete surprise.
I hug him and he grunts. He doesn’t return it, he just stands there, holding his cane and his ice cream.
“Thanks, Dad,” I say, pulling away.
“Least I could do.” He takes a bite, some of the ice cream and chocolate clinging to the wild hairs of his beard.
I’ll never forget this. My dad, buying me an ice cream sandwich in the middle of the afternoon for no reason.
At the emotion written all over my face, he grumbles, “Only cost a dollar. Nash paid.”
He limps away, leaving me smiling at his retreating back as he does.
Nash steps in front of me, swirling his tongue all over his ice cream like the overgrown child he is. “I was thinking,” he says. “We—”
I shut him up by kissing him.
He hesitates, like he isn’t sure what to do, before laughing into my mouth and kissing me back.
It’s the kind of kiss where one of our hands is on each other and the other is holding on to our ice creams. Where he grabs my hip and I grab his neck, and he tastes like sweet vanilla and I taste like spicy rum.
The kind of kiss where the world stands still and the beach doesn’t exist and a million words are spoken though not a single one of them said.
It is unexpected and abrupt and as perfectly placed as an old table in a new house.
When I pull back, he says nothing, staring at me while touching his mouth.
“You asked what I would do if I wasn’t engaged.” I roll my shoulders and lift my chin. “I would do the other stuff, but I would do that first.”
I turn away from him just as a slow-to-grow smile creeps across his lips but before he can see the same one on mine.
On my towel next to Cap, my insides fly like a kite in the ocean breeze as I take the very first bite of the very first ice cream sandwich given to me by my dad.
I’ll never forget the taste of it or the way the ice cream gives me brain freeze and the cookie wafer sticks to the roof of my mouth. I hope some memories are strong enough to transcend space and time and live in our tissue and bones, no matter how much time passes.
I hope this is one of them.
I grin at Cap; I want so many more moments like this with him. Now that I know him, we will. I’ll keep a box of ice cream sandwiches in my freezer for us to eat every time he visits.
When Nash settles next to me, Sunny’s three boys look at me like I’m a new life-form.
“Boys,” Sunny snips. “This ya Auntie Rue.”
I look at her, shocked at her use of Auntie, but the purse of her lips tells me to keep my trap shut.
“Auntie Rue, this is Jayden, Justin, and JJ.”
“Hi.” I smile at them. “How’s the ice cream?”
With tongues in various stages of licks, they say some version of good, making us laugh.
“Auntie Rue is a pain in the ass, but we gonna put up with her for Nash, ya hear?”
Her and I exchange another look.
“You live here?” Justin asks.
“No,” I say. “Just visiting.”
“You have kids?”
“I do.”
“How old?”
“Mind ya business!” Sunny barks. “Go play and leave the questions to the grown folks. You drown and I’ll kill ya then your daddy will kill ya again when you get to the other side.”
They’re as scared of their mother as I am because they obey instantly. I tuck my chin to my shoulder, looking at Nash. “Hello.”
Sunglasses perched on the top of his head, his eyes squint, lips taking a playful shape as he licks his ice cream. “You kissed me.”
Butterflies are everywhere.
“I did.”
“And you aren’t engaged.”
“I’m married actually.”
“See,” he says with a crooked grin, “I already knew that because I threw away the divorce papers you gave me on day one.”
Of course he did.
“Do you want kids?”
He stops mid-lick. “I love kids. Always imagined a life with them.” He shrugs. “You come with one, that might be good enough.”
Little does he know.
“I do.”
I absorb his perfect answer like a sponge on the ocean floor, not saying anything else as I busy myself with finishing my ice cream sandwich. Now isn’t the time to tell him the rest. There’s no sense ruining this perfect day with a conversation that can wait.
He takes the last bite of his cone, his face smiling even though his lips aren’t. The ice cream smeared on his cheek makes me grin as I wipe it with my thumb.
“You ready to talk about the gold?” he asks, bumping my shoulder with his.
“Only reason I’m here.”
“We’ll see about that.” We exchange smiles before he continues.
“In 1865, there was nothing at Folly.” He slides his sunglasses down his forehead until they settle on his nose.
“Union troops occupied it for the last couple of years of the war, but other than their military supplies, there was nothing. The foliage was harsh—thus the name Folly—and the area really didn’t get developed and draw tourists until the early 1900s.
Some Charlestonians would have visited, but it likely would have been by boat. ”
“Anson may have never been here?” I ask, crumbling the paper of my ice cream.
He nods. “And if he were, there wouldn’t have been anywhere to leave any sort of clue or part of the money that wouldn’t have been discovered or washed away.”
“You know that when you read the letter?”
He hesitates; he did.
I drag my hands down my face. What a waste. Again.
“Hey,” he says. “We’ll find what you need.”
I notice he doesn’t say “we’ll find the gold.”
“This really is a beach day?”
“Really a beach day.” He scrunches his nose. “You mad?”
Around us, kids make sandcastles, kites are flying, and the sun is shining. I wish Bennie was here. I wish everyone was. I think of what Sunny said about her husband dying and life changing in an instant, and a sense of peace washes over me. A beach day-induced sea change.
“Not even a little bit.”
He leans toward me, and in a voice only for me says, “You know us being married means you sleep in my bed, right?”
I fight a smile, not looking at him. “Is that so?”
“We have a lot of time to make up for.”
I laugh, elbowing his ribs so he grunts. “Pervert.”
“You always liked it.”
“Eight years?” I look at him sideways. “You’ve probably lost your edge.”
“Ahh,” he says with a knowing drawl. “I knew I had an edge.”
Behind me, my dad grunts from his seat several times. When I look, his prosthetic leg is in his hands, revealing a scarred nub of a leg.
“How about you bury me in the sand, kiddo?” he says. “Never had my kid at the beach before.”
I laugh at the absurdity of it, but he’s serious.
Jayden, Justin, and JJ take one look at his half leg and scream.
“Cappy baby,” Sunny says. “You gotta get some sun on that thing. Looks like a damn peeled potato comin’ out ya shorts.”
It really does.
I look at the boys. “Y’all wanna help?”
They nod, and together, we bury my one-legged dad in the sand. I prop his tank of oxygen on a makeshift sand pillow and affix his captain’s hat on his head. Sunny hollers that we’re missing spots while Nash sits next to her, sipping a beer with his patented smile a permanent fixture on his face.
More than once, I feel Nash’s eyes all over me; more than once, I meet them with an appreciative gaze of my own.
With Cap packed under a mound of sand and lined with seashells, the boys play with his prosthetic leg.
Sunny takes a picture of me kneeling next to him to send to my mom and sisters.
In it, I’m smiling wide, my skin and hair covered with salt and sunshine, and Cap, who insists that his gold necklace and charm lie on top of the sand, looks about the same as he always does.
My mom responds instantly: I knew it.
I’m still mad at her, but I know what she means.
“Say,” Cap says, still tucked under sand and shells. “What say we go flounder giggin’ tonight?”
My answer is instant and without thought. “I’ve always wanted to learn to gig.”
Sunny doesn’t come gigging. After what happened to James, she told me she never plans on putting one big toe on a damn boat for the rest of her life.
When the sun sinks and with gigs in our hands—long forked spears—and on a small boat called a skiff, Nash and I stand awaiting Cap’s instruction.
Nash is just as bad as I am. Over and over, we jab our gigs into the water just to pull them out empty.
“Missed a damn doormat, Nash,” my dad barks.
Eventually, we each spear a flounder—me screaming through it all, my dad grinning between coughs and hits of Penny, and Nash laughing the way he does.
As we shine flashlights into the dark, shallow water on the edge of the marsh, Cap repeats “Crazy sons of bitches,” along with “You’re as bad as your mother was.”
At forty-two, I feel like a child on an adventure, no clue what to expect or what’s going to happen next.
In Nash’s kitchen, my dad cleans the fish and cooks them up, looking almost as at home there as he did behind the helm of the boat.
Even having experienced it, even as good as the flounder tastes, I don’t get his obsession with the damn things. That’s how quirks are, I guess. Nonsensical layers of likes and dislikes to make people become exactly who they are.
“You think we’ll find something downtown tomorrow?” I ask as the fun of the day is slowly replaced by the harsh realities of my life. Today was great, perfect even, but perfect days aren’t why I’m here. Perfect days don’t pay for laptops, surgeries, and roofers.
Cap says, “I think we’ll find it where we least expect.” When he catches Nash and me giving each other heart eyes, he barks, “Now take me back to my damn boat!”
Nash does just that, giving me a wink as he strolls out the door.
While I’m in the shower, Jonathan calls twice.
This time, I don’t call him back.