Chapter 8
Black Sand
From the deck of the Midnight Mercy, the beach looked close enough to touch and impossibly far away.
Nathan stood at the stern rail with both hands wrapped around the metal.
The tender slid across the cove without an engine, Dane using a single oar to guide it through the still water.
Marissa sat facing the boat, the blanket around her shoulders, her blue dress visible beneath it like a piece of night that had learned to move.
She did not look away from Nathan.
That steadied him and undid him in equal measure.
The tender kissed the sand. Dane stepped out first, water curling around his rolled cuffs. He pulled the boat higher with one smooth tug, then turned and offered Marissa his hand. She accepted. Her sandals touched the black sand, and she laughed at something Nathan could not hear.
Distance made the scene dreamlike. The moon made it worse.
Nathan wanted to hear every word. He was relieved he could not.
Dane walked beside Marissa along the curve of the beach, leaving two sets of prints where the tide had polished the sand.
He did not crowd her. He kept his hands to himself unless the uneven ground required a brief touch at her elbow or wrist. Somehow that restraint was more intimate than possession would have been.
It let Nathan see Marissa choose each step beside him.
Nathan poured himself half a glass of champagne and did not drink it.
He had imagined this kind of thing in fragments before.
Never like this. His fantasies had been blurry, theatrical, almost silly in their extremity.
The real version was quieter and therefore more dangerous.
His wife walking with a man under moonlit cliffs.
A conversation he could not control. Her laughter carried faintly over water.
His own body responding not to what was happening, exactly, but to the fact that he had allowed it to happen.
He was not absent.
He was witnessing.
The distinction mattered.
Marissa stopped near a tide pool. Dane crouched and pointed at something in the water.
She crouched beside him, the blanket slipping from one shoulder.
Nathan could see the pale line of her neck, the tilt of her head toward Dane's voice.
He had known every inch of her for years, but from this distance she became mysterious again. Not less his wife. More herself.
His phone sat on the table, useless without service. He touched it anyway, then withdrew his hand.
No distractions. No escape into messages, scores, markets, bills, anything that could make him feel like a normal man on a normal night.
He was on a boat in a hidden cove watching his wife discover what his honesty had invited.
He whispered, "You're all right."
The words sounded unconvincing.
On the beach, Dane rose and offered Marissa his hand. This time she did not need help. She took it anyway.
Nathan's breath caught.
They stood facing each other by the tide pool.
Dane said something. Marissa looked back toward the boat. Even from the distance, Nathan felt the moment like a hand on his chest. He lifted his glass slightly, a small sign he hoped she could read as permission, trust, surrender, terror, love. Perhaps all of it.
Marissa lifted her free hand in return.
Then she looked back at Dane.
The captain released her hand. He took one respectful step away.
Nathan almost laughed from the intensity of his relief and disappointment.
The beach walk continued. They moved toward the far curve of the cove, where the cliffs formed a shallow alcove shadowed from moonlight. Nathan could still see them, but less clearly. The darkness softened the edges of their bodies.
He found himself remembering the first time he saw Marissa flirt.
It had been at a friend's rooftop party before they were married.
A man with a guitar had leaned too close to her, full of himself and cheap cologne, and Marissa had handled him with such amused confidence that Nathan had fallen harder by the minute.
She had looked over the man's shoulder at Nathan as if to say, Are you seeing this?
Are you strong enough to enjoy me being alive?
Back then, Nathan had been.
Then marriage, routine, bills, and quiet disappointments had trained them both to be smaller.
In the cove, watching Dane point toward the cliffs while Marissa listened with her whole body, Nathan understood that he was not losing the woman from that rooftop. He was seeing proof she still existed.
The tender shifted in the shallows.
A small wave slapped the hull of the yacht.
Nathan finally drank the champagne. It had warmed, but he swallowed it anyway.
On the beach, Marissa turned and began walking back.
Dane walked beside her, close now. Not touching. Close.
Nathan stood straighter. His fear changed shape again, becoming a question with no safe answer.
What would she bring back with her?