Cause she’s the sea, Nate #2
“Mine,” Nate yells back, without taking his eyes off the television. “Bring me one too, baby.”
My phone lights up on the arm of the chair.
Leon: Cap, if you’re not claiming home court, does that mean open tryouts?
I turn the screen facedown and seriously consider whether murdering a teammate would count as poor leadership. Fine. Another round of suicides in our next practice would do. And my attention returns to whatever black-and-white tragedy Nate has put on the television.
The movie is not actually terrible.
I still have no idea why everyone onscreen looks shocked whenever someone experiences an emotion.
Maddy returns carrying three bottles between her fingers.
She tosses one to Nate, keeps one for herself and stops in front of me with the third. “I want to watch Pirates of the Caribbean.”
That gets my attention. Excellent choice.
“Fuck no,” Nate disagrees immediately. “Absolutely not, baby girl. We agreed on classics.”
Maddy ignores him and tilts her head at me. “What do you say, Will?”
I take the cold beer from her and betray my closest friend without hesitation. “Pirates.”
Maddy makes a sound of pure victory and jumps once in place.
The beer goes with her. My heart jumps and my hand is out before I have authorised it.
This is embarrassing. Because Maddy catches the bottle against her chest without any assistance from me and is already laughing at herself. Possibly at me.
I laugh too. I have never seen anyone this emotionally invested in a movie about wet pirates and maritime curses.
Maddy holds her unopened beer towards me. “You’re not opening mine?”
My eyes rise to hers. Why would I? Her blue eyes remain fixed on me, bright and expectant. Because apparently I am still incapable of resisting an opportunity to behave like an overconfident asshole in front of a pretty girl wearing tiny shorts, I take the bottle.
Maddy watches me hook the cap against the edge of my own and knock it loose in one clean movement. I hand it back without breaking eye contact. She snatches it from my hand and bounces back towards the sofa.
Gremlin.
Within seconds, she has reclaimed her place beside Nate and pulled the blanket over both their legs. Golden retriever and rabid woodland creature clink their bottles together.
If I had not known Nate for years, I would already be preparing a wedding speech. The guy once offered to cuddle me because I looked “too tense to achieve REM sleep.” He did it twice last year. Once this semester. There is photographic evidence I intend to destroy before graduation.
“There are three people here. Democracy has spoken.” Maddy points her beer towards the television. “I need to see Will Turner. I miss him.”
I smirk. “The fictional character?”
She turns slowly towards me. “No, Will. The nineteenth-century blacksmith I’m secretly seeing on Thursdays.”
Ten minutes later, the three of us are watching At World’s End.
Twenty minutes after that, Maddy has kicked the coffee table three times, spilled beer on Nate’s blanket and announced that Cutler Beckett has “the face of a man who reports children for having lemonade stands without permits.”
Then Will Turner appears, looking wet, serious and unrealistically heroic. Maddy sits up so abruptly that Nate nearly loses the chips. She grips Nate’s arm instantly.
“Oh my God.” The sound leaves her halfway between a groan and a moan.
Jesus.
“He has the whole sweet-guy-who-could-still-kill-you thing. The hair. The voice. That face when he’s trying to be honourable while everyone around him is committing crimes.”
I try to watch the movie.
Instead, I watch Maddy respond to every appearance of Will Turner as though Princeton has failed to provide a single attractive man capable of forming a sentence.
Every time Will Turner draws a sword, rises dramatically from the ocean or looks at Elizabeth with tortured devotion, Maddy clutches her chest with the same “Oh my God”.
She points excitedly at the television. “He’s about to say something hot.” Then immediately delivers the line with him, perfectly timed.
Nate looks between her and the screen. “You’ve seen this before?”
“Obviously. It’s the best movie ever made.”
“Then why are we watching it again?”
Maddy slowly turns her head. “I missed Will.”
“Again,” I take a drink of beer, “you have two basketball players sitting in this room, and your dream man is an unemployed blacksmith.”
“The most heroic, romantic blacksmith in cinematic history,” she corrects. “Who can sword-fight.”
“I can fight.” My voice dips in sarcasm.
“Can you sword-fight?” Maddy challenges.
“Maybe.” Nobody has ever offered me a sword. That's a supply problem, not a skill problem.
Nate reaches for the chips. “I thought you didn’t believe in committed relationships, Maddy.”
“I believe in other people having them. They’re entertaining.” Maddy eyes at the chip between his fingers.
A few scenes later, Nate points at the television. “So Calypso is Davy Jones’s lover?”
“Yes.” Maddy answers him at once.
“Then why does she hate him?”
“She doesn’t hate him.” She steals the chip directly from between his fingers. “She wants to destroy him.”
Nate looks at me for help.
“But he loves the sea more,” I say.
Maddy scrunches her nose at me. “She is the sea.”
“Exactly. And she wasn’t there when he came back.” I add.
Nate frowns at the screen. “So she abandoned him?”
“She missed one appointment,” Maddy waves her hand. “Men become so dramatic when people are not where they expect them to be.”
“It was once every ten years.” I can’t help but point out the flaw in her logic.
“Fine. Important appointment.”
“He waited ten years,” I make my point clearer.
Nate stares at the screen. “No wonder she seems angry.”
“He was supposed to come back to her after ten years,” Maddy talks faster now. “She wasn’t there when he returned, so he decided love was fake, cut out his own heart and became an ocean nightmare. And then betrayed her to a group of pirates instead of having a conversation.”
“But why wasn’t she there?” Nate asks innocently.
“Because she’s the sea,” Maddy says, as though that explains everything. “She’s wild. She doesn’t belong to anyone. He knew that when he loved her.”
Nate raises a hand. “Wait. Who put her in the human body?”
“The pirate lords,” Maddy and I answer together.
She turns towards me. I look back at her. Onscreen, Davy Jones is doing something violent and tentacled.
“He gave her his heart,” I return to the screen. “Then got angry when she didn’t treat it the way he expected.”
Maddy turns towards me. “That’s not the problem.”
“What is?” I turn back to the couch.
“He gave it to her, then punished her for being exactly who she’d always been.” She argues with her hands and passion.
“She still didn’t show up.” I shrug.
“Missing one appointment doesn’t entitle you to become a tentacled dictator.”
Nate looks between us. “So now she hates him?”
“No,” Maddy and I answer together again.
Maddy points her beer towards the television. “She still loves him.”
“She just wants him to suffer,” I add.
“Exactly.” She agrees.
Nate slowly nods. “Women are terrifying. And confusing.”
“Only if you give one your heart,” I tell him. “Actually, no. Only if you give it to her, decide you don’t like what it costs and try to steal it back.”
Maddy’s head whips towards me.
Her entire face lights up. “Exactly!” She points at me with both hands, nearly spilling the beer again. “Yes, Will. That. You understand.”
Then the end music swells through the living room. Maddy jumps off the sofa as though personally summoned by the orchestra and begins conducting with her beer bottle, all previous seriousness erased. “Listen to this part!”
Nate ducks before she can hit him.
“Sit down,” he tells her.
“No.”
I lean back in the armchair and watch her nearly strike the lamp with one dramatic sweep of her arm, hair flying while she shouts instructions at instruments that cannot hear her.
Five seconds ago, I was explaining the emotional consequences of giving someone your heart.
Now the gremlin is barefoot on our rug, swooning over fictional pirates and threatening our security deposit with a bottle of beer.
I don’t tell the gremlin to sit down either.