Ch. 18: The Beach

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
He held my hand all the way to his car and opened the front passenger side door for me. It felt really intimate and old school. But really sweet. We were now driving down, out of the student parking lot. He had his signal on to make a left turn, and after a break in traffic we turned onto the street. He glanced over and smiled at me. My palms started to sweat, I had been so excited for this and now suddenly I was overcome with nervousness. He made another turn and turned up the radio in the car, some song by The Weeknd was playing and he started singing along to it. Scratch that, belting along to it. And his voice was awful! It somehow made him more real to me, like not everything about it was totally perfect. His comfort singing like this in front of me, not holding back was really endearing. It made me smile, and I tried to hold in a chuckle.
“Excuse me?” Sean asked, in a teasing tone, “Are you laughing at moi?”
I just laughed him off and started singing along with him. A few more turns and we made it to the pier. I hadn’t come down here in years. My dad used to bring us here to go crabbing off the pier. We would get up early, set up camping chairs, get the radio going, and spend the day outside near the chilly ocean. I would bring a book, and my sister her handheld gaming system, and we would squeal when the wind would pick up and cover us with sea spray. The memory pulled at my heart.
Sean continued past the pier to the nearby parking lot, looking for a spot. It was pretty busy today, but he slowed the car down to a crawl and before I knew it we saw a man rushing to his red Toyota. Sean put his hazard lights on as we waited for the man to pull out of the spot.
“Well that was lucky,” I happily mentioned.
Sean mumbles something and when he notices I am looking at him in confusion he says briefly, “Yeah.”
There was a weird atmosphere in the car all of a sudden, Sean didn’t seem like himself. I shifted in my seat. Sean looked over and smiled, then grabbed my hand for a good minute before the car was fully out of the way. The contact relaxed me. I looked around, taking in the scene of people at benches and walking by in wetsuits with surfboards. Seagulls flying above. Waves hitting the sand. Sean pulled in, turned off the ignition, and popped the trunk.
“Ready?” he asked, energized. His eyes are magnetic.
I nodded vigorously and he opened his door which automatically unlocked the other doors. I stepped out of the car and heard the sand crushed under my shoes. Over by the trunk Sean grabbed a cooler and blanket. I was really impressed, and must’ve had a very readable face.
“What?” he said happily, “I told you I would bring snacks, Sunshine.”
He closed the trunk and I followed as he walked over to the left, towards the beach and away from the pier. I could smell and see barbeque from the cafe at the base of the pier. I remembered how they barbeque around lunch every day. We continued on past joggers, an older couple walking the adjacent trail, and a family with little one’s. We headed towards the third staircase that connected the adjacent trail to the sand. Right next to it was a small patch of grass, it looked like that was our goal. Sean started opening the blanket, and I helped him open it all the way.
“Pretty good out today,” Sean noted.
We laid it down and he added the cooler on top to help weigh the blanket down from the wind. I sat down first, left leg bent under my right, right leg outstretched. I leaned back and closed my eyes, taking in the sunshine that had thankfully come out. The wind blew my hair forward and across my face, which triggered my hand to automatically come forward and try to hold it down and out of my eyes. Sean sat down, hood up, and tightened the hood from the wind. While the sun felt toasty between gusts of wind, the wind itself was fairly constant and chilled the extremities like noses and ears.
Sean opened the cooler and grabbed two drinks.
He held up both options and asked, “Which one do you like?”
“Strawberry lemonade please,” I said after a moment.
I took mine and we opened our drinks and took our first sips in silence. It was comfortable. Like we had known each other for so long we didn’t need to fill up every second with chatter. We watched the waves break on the sand for a bit. I took in the sights, sensations and sounds. After getting hit in the face with my hair long enough I wrapped my hair together and shoved all my hair into my hood as I pulled it up. Sean looked over at me as I did so.
“Cold?” he asked.
“Nah, I’m fine, my hair is just getting everywhere…” I explained.
I turned to him when I finished, and he laughed. A big hearty laugh.
“My god, you look adorable so bundled up like that!” He gave me a thousand-watt smile. “Man,” he took a sip of his plain lemonade and turned back to the ocean, “I am one lucky guy.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was warmed from the inside by his comment. He turned his whole body back to face me and opened the cooler again.
“Okay, I know I promised snacks. I brought a few options and I hope at least one of them will work for you…” he rifled through the cooler and started lining things up between us on the blanket.
There was a small can of Pringles, a bag of Muddy Buddies, and a box of assorted berries.
“I know, how lucky am I about the strawberries thing?” he taunted lightly as he opened the container of berries and waved it in front of me. “I rinsed them when I was waiting for you after school, don’t worry.”
I didn’t say a word, just grabbed the container out of his hand, and popped a raspberry in my mouth.
“Okay, does this mean I did good?” he asked me, eyebrows raised in question.
I looked back at him, and also grabbed the Pringles and Muddy Buddies and put them over on my side of the blanket before saying, “So what are you going to have?”
It got him laughing, which was my intention, and I smiled in pride that I got my turn to tease him back. He tried to reach over me to grab the Muddy Buddies and I playfully swatted his hand away.
He looked up at me feigning shock, “My lord girl, did no one ever teach you about the value of sharing?”
I thought for a moment, twisting my mouth in mock serious thought, then simply said, “Nope, I don’t think so.”
This really got him laughing, and I dropped my bit to laugh a bit, tossing him the Muddy Buddies he had reached for. We snacked a bit and Sean told me about how he used to come to this beach a lot with his family, all together, when he was very young. I shared my crabbing on the pier stories with him, including the way my sister would name and play with the crabs we caught, but never had a problem putting the crabs in the boiling pot of water when it came.
“Holy s-,” he held his hand to his chest, “Your sister is brutal! What was she, like 5?”
“Something like that, six or seven I think,” I stop in thought, “well right before seven anyway. We were seven and eleven years old when our parents separated. I remember because we always said we were Team 7-11 that summer.”
Sean hummed in thought. I knew he knew the weight of those memories, having had a really similar childhood. It was really nice not having to explain all of it. He already knew, his empathy was based on something tangible. I’m glad I could be there to listen to him open up about those times too. As separation and divorce becomes more common, or at least more commonly talked about over the years, it’s like the children it affects aren’t as allowed to feel the pain of it. It’s like society acknowledges that it’s sad, but quickly moves on. Not that I look for deep, hurting pity. It’s more like I wish we would give each other the space to feel how we feel without comparing our hurts. Just because someone deals with different pain in their life, doesn’t mean it disqualifies anyone else’s pain. I think we both understood that about each other.
We spent the rest of our time snacking, laying in the sun, and talking about things. I told him about how Ally and I had become friends back in middle school, and he talked about some friends who went down a bad path after going to P.H. that he had to cut out of his life. He talked about how hard that was, especially since two of them had been his best friends since preschool. They had helped him so much, but after getting involved in the party-drinking-and-drugs lifestyle at P.H. He just didn’t recognize them anymore. I understood that more than he knew at that point.
“That’s-” I started, “That’s something I know a good deal about…”
“What do you mean?” he asked me, trying to prompt me to elaborate.
“Well, I don’t tell a lot of people this. Pretty much no one,” I paused, “I don’t want to get too detailed about it right now, but that’s the main reason my family broke up. Drug use. Remember how I said things got complicated for my parents when we moved to Belmar?”
Sean nodded. He held my hand and it renewed my strength, and my urge to share this with him.
“Well, my dad got involved again with some old friends from ‘the neighborhood’ and he started disappearing for days. He invited weird people over when he was home. And for some reason I happened to be with my mom when she was talking to my dad’s brother on the phone as he gave her instructions on where to look in his car and in his dresser. There were clear bags of this big rock salt looking stuff. He told her what it was. It broke her,” I recounted.
My mind filled with memories of my dad passed out in the garage. The first time I found him there after he had been missing for nearly two days, I thought he was dead. I closed and opened my eyes, hoping to reset the images coming to the front of my thoughts. Sean just sat there, holding my hand, rubbing little circles on my palm.
I sniffed back tears, all of this was still too fresh, even years later. I barely spoke about this and tried not to think about it much, meaning I didn’t deal with it.
I took a big breath in and let it out slowly, centering myself, and took my free hand to catch a stray tear before it fell.
I sniffled and said, “Ugh, sorry. I got so heavy like that.” I tried to smile, my eyes still glistening as I forced air deep down into my lungs trying to get ahold of myself.
“Don’t apologize,” Sean simply stated. “That is horrible for any kid to go through. I’m honored you shared that with me.” He gave me a small, reassuring smile.
We sat for a bit just listening to the waves and he held tight to my hand, still making circles. It was soothing.
Some time later I changed the subject back to snacks and spent some time pretending to interrogate him on how he knew to bring some of my most favorite snacks. It lightened the mood again, and we talked a little more about Pacific. Sean gave me some funny opinions and advice for working with each of my teachers, well other than Ms. Del Rios who was new this year. The discussion reminded me that while we had a lot in common, we were still very different. One year isn’t much in the adult world, but at my age? I couldn’t help but think maybe we were pushing it? I watched Sean as he talked animatedly about a silly prank he tried to pull on Mr. Yoo once, and I thought about what Sean was like before I got to Pacific. Has he ever dated anyone else? He certainly seemed confident about all this. Maybe he had. I thought about asking Maxine and Marsha about it, and decided I would ask them tomorrow. I didn’t want to ruin anything about today.
Around 5:15 we packed up our stuff and walked back to his car. I gave him my address and off we headed towards Melbourne. As he drove, he belted out to music in his car and I thought about checking my phone. Sure enough there were a few messages from Ally. How had I not felt my phone buzz this whole time? She had left four separate messages, and I texted her back that I was heading home and would call her when I got there.
<< Ally to Rachel: Alright, alright. But I want some details! I don’t need everything, just something to tide me over in the Sahara Desert that is my love life >>
I almost texted her back about Simon, but decided that was better to explore in person. Was she still in such denial?