Chapter 18 #2
I’ve been alone so long I almost forgot there was another way to be.
“At least you have your crew,” I tell him, shrugging off the uncomfortable feeling. “The only people I see on a daily basis are surly nineteen-year-olds.”
Saw, I remind myself.
“In an art studio?” Caleb asks genuinely, and I laugh.
“I’m not an artist. I’m a teaching fellow,” I tell him. “Or, I was.”
“Right. The dreaded suspension.”
I groan. That’s one tidbit from our day at the beach I wish he had forgotten.
“Are you happy there?” he asks. “With your fellowship?”
I screw up my face.
“It’s one of the most competitive programs in the country,” I tell him.
Caleb laughs, and I visually trace the lines of his Adam’s apple as he cocks his head back.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I open my mouth to answer back, but realize I’m not sure what to say. Do I… like it? It’s what I’ve built my whole life around. It’s all I’ve worked towards since I was twenty-one years old. I don’t know how to be anything without my work. When did I last stop to consider if I actually enjoy it?
“Before you start lecturing me about following my bliss, or whatever,” I protest, “I don’t hate my job. I’m just going through a rough patch. I know you’re madly in love with the sea, but not all of us have the luxury of getting paid to follow our dreams.”
“Relax, Olsen,” Caleb chuckles. “I didn’t say any of those things.”
“Ya, well. You insinuated them.”
Caleb groans.
“Are you always this defensive?” he asks.
Yes.
“All I meant was that I think it’s a shame you don’t get to focus on your art when you’re clearly so talented.”
I look back at him, hoping he can’t see me blush in the half-darkness. I don’t have any bratty response for that. If he can still compliment me after I drew him as an angry troll, maybe I’m not as rusty as I thought.
Caleb and I don’t speak for a while after that, and all I can hear is the gentle whoosh of his paddle in the sea.
But he’s moving us faster than three of me put together.
There’s something about the way the kayak’s nose splits the black water so effortlessly that tells me its more than just strength.
I saw it the first time we swam together in the way he dove down and disappeared beneath the ridge of honeymoon reef.
It’s like the tides part for him. Caleb understands the water the way I understand paper and charcoal.
I can practically taste the salt running through his veins.
Great. Now I’m thinking about tasting Caleb.
Two rocks on either side of us appear as if from nothing and my hands tighten on the edges. For a moment, I think we’re about to slam straight into them.
“Head down,” Caleb tells me, and I bend as far as I can into the kayak.
There’s an opening I didn’t see—a hole in the rocks just big enough for us to glide through.
When we come out the other side, we’re alone in a small lagoon surrounded by craggy, algae-slicked rocks.
I look around. I don’t see another way out.
Ok, I’m definitely going to get murdered.
“Ca—“ I start to say, but I lose my train of thought as I turn back to him. Scratch that—the train is obliterated. Caleb’s arms are above his head, his muscles flexed as he lifts his shirt off of him and drops it into the kayak. It’s everything I do to keep my jaw from literally falling open as I take in the length of his half-naked form in the dusky moonlight.
“What are you doing?” I ask, and it takes all of my concentration to make sure the words come out in actual English.
“Taking off my shirt. You can go in with your clothes on if you like, but it’ll be a chilly ride back.”
“Go in?” I ask incredulously. “There’s no way I’m swimming at night! You promised no sharks!”
“Sharks are crepuscular.”
“Cre-what now?”
“They hunt mainly at dawn and dusk. Besides, you’re a pro now! What are the chances of running into a tiger twice?”
Higher than the chances of letting Caleb see me soaking wet in a sheer white bra.
“What about eels?” I counter. “I’ve seen Planet Earth. Those are definitely nocturnal.”
“Look, you can keep naming the potential dangers of the ocean all night if you want to. But I’m going for a swim.”
The sliver of moonlight glimmers off his teeth as he smiles at me before tipping backwards into the water. I squeal as the kayak rocks, splashing me in the thigh, but as soon as Caleb hits the water his whole body explodes in fluorescent light.
What the…
This isn’t a shark feeding. He’s taken me to a bioluminescent lagoon.
Just like my memory with my dad. He was listening.
I watch in awe as he glides across the water, his powerful arms trailing ribbons of light across the lagoon. He pops up a few feet away and for a second, his face illuminated by the glowing plankton.
“Change your mind yet?”
Pajamas be damned. There’s no way I’m missing this.
I don’t wait for Caleb to dive under again before stripping off my t-shirt and, nervously, my shorts. Thank God I didn’t change out of my bra and underwear after dinner. I take in a deep breath before launching myself off the edge of the kayak.
I have to keep myself from gasping as the world around me explodes into a galaxy of phosphorescent light.
My hands glitter against the darkness—my feet glow as I kick tiny luminous bubbles in every direction.
When I come up, my whole body is racked with laughter: a joy that radiates through me like the glow of the plankton themselves.
“This is unreal!” I shout, spinning in the black. Caleb pops up like a dolphin and splashes me with the sparkling neon water.
I barely recognize the man before me: the otherworldly plankton that shiver across his arms and shoulders are eclipsed only by the white of his smile.
There is something in the way he glides into the dark, the way he wears the water like a second skin, that is more than comfort.
More than familiarity. It’s as if every cell in his body is suddenly alight.
Caleb is more alive here than I’ve ever seen him on the decks of the Vela Bianca. He belongs to this water the way the tides belong to the moon.
He glides past me, and I clamp my hands together to keep from reaching out to touch him. Something in me is begging me to slide my hands across his arms, to watch the tiny lights dance between our skin.
When he pops up in front of me, we’re almost close enough to touch. I watch, mesmerized, as little beads of glowing water slide down his nose and cheekbones.
“Can I ask you something?” Caleb asks, and I nod.
“What does the D stand for?”
“D?”
“On your notebook. The initials are SDO.”
I cringe, wondering whether not to answer him truthfully.
“Would you believe me if I said Danger?”
Caleb laughs. But when I don’t laugh with him, he narrows his eyes.
“Wait, you’re serious?”
“Unfortunately, I am.”
Caleb scrunches his eyebrows into his ‘very serious captain’ expression.
“Your middle name is literally Danger?”
“Apparently it was my mom’s idea,” I tell him.
“My dad didn’t talk about her much—she left us before Jules was even two—but for some reason this story stuck around.
Her dad was obsessed with Westerns, and he used to read her some book when she was a kid learning English–I think it was a play actually.
The Cactus Wildcat. Guess that line always stuck with her.
She probably didn’t count on her daughter being such a wimp. ”
Caleb chuckles.
“Dunno about that. Would a wimp be swimming in a dark lagoon in the middle of the night?”
“I guess not,” I say.
“Would a wimp have kayaked into the black with no paddle, no phone, and no idea where she was going?”
No. And someone with a lick of sense probably wouldn’t, either.
“Ah!” I yelp as something distinctly slimy brushes against my calf. “Oh my god, oh my god something touched me.”
I flail in the water, sending shimmering neon splashes every which way. Caleb pushes towards me with a single kick.
“Relax,” he tells me, and close as he is I can see his eyes are full of laughter. I keep thrashing. “Nothing’s going to hurt you.”
I feel something rest against my waist: Caleb’s hands.
He’s barely touching me, but the panic drains from me in an instant, replaced by something else.
Surprise. His hands are smoother than I thought they would be; holding me steady in the water.
Keeping me still. My legs stop kicking and I lean my full weight into his strong grip.
He shifts his palms against me and I feel heat race from my stomach to my thighs; back up to my chest.
I wait for him to let go now that I am calm, now that I’m no longer afraid, but he doesn’t.
“See?” he says, and for a second the world goes still. My body is screaming with instinct. Put your arms around him, it demands, but I don’t dare. I might as well be a caught fish.
He lowers his chin as if daring me to come closer; to taste the salty water that gathers in beads on the edge of his lip.
“I’ve got you.”
I let him hold me up as he treads water, and for a few moments, we exist out of time, out of the bounds of reality.
Above us, more stars than sky mirror the twinkling plankton surrounding us, holding us in our own constellation.
Here, Caleb isn’t my enemy. He is a body glued to mine—some strange and beautiful creature from the depths of the sea.
I watch almost helplessly as my fingers trail across his submerged arm, striking it like a match.
He shudders beneath my touch as his skin alights with phosphorescent glow.
Suddenly, I’m conscious of all the places our bodies aren’t touching. The gap between our chests. The impossible distance between my mouth and his. I want to zip it closed. To discover if he’s breathing as hard as I am.
“Caleb,” I mean to say, but all that comes out is a breathy sigh, an echo of a name that just a few days ago felt sour against my tongue. He pulls me closer, and I feel the muscles of his chest tighten as I wrap one leg around his thigh.