Christened as the 'Lady of the Beach' by the townsfolk, Maka spends her summer days on the lookout for those who need their souls saved from the ocean. Sunblock protects her pale skin from the sun's relentless glare when she's not under the observation tower's awning - not that she ever ventures out onto the sand without her floppy hat. She's known as a rule-stickler, a hawk, a nervous Nellie. Standing on the balcony with a whistle in her mouth and a no-nonsense attitude towards rowdy vacationers hasn't earned her endearment from anyone, but in her opinion, it's better to be safe than sorry.
That's why she had jumped in after him. Even if he hadn't needed her help, doing so bridged a gap she didn't know she wanted closed that badly. After all, summers bring sunshine and the warmth of people and takes both when it recedes like the tide. Nameless faces come and go, and the process repeats because that's life - ever changing and flowing. Living by the sea guarantees an influx of tourists and passersbys she may never see again, but she's had enough experience with her traveling mama to know that hello and goodbye come as a pair.
Still, though - his solitude seems sweet and melancholic, and that's the first thing about him that had caught Maka's eye a few days ago while she had been on duty, studying the crowd. Shark patterned swim trunks had made her smile, and by nine o'clock at night when most of the beach goers had retreated to their hotels and he was the only left sitting on his towel watching the waves, Maka had memorized the dimples on his back.
And he must have felt her staring, because he kept glancing her way, too.
A true optimist at heart, Maka decides not to believe too stringently in the fleeting stranger theory as she watches him amble toward the tower almost shyly. Hours after their handshake finds them together again as they discussed, Maka having offered him a tour of the town.
"'Kay, I'm back now," he announces, hands behind his head. Though she misses the daylight gracing the expanse of his back, his plain t-shirt fits him so well she can't complain. "Is your shift over yet?"
"Yeah, and I've been waiting for you," she says, busying herself by adjusting her hat and focusing on her toes. She doesn't need it now, under the semi-there stars, but it's useful for hiding a blush. "You're fashionably late."
"Got held up by my brother. Had to explain why the pigtailed lifeguard pulled me out of the water and gave me CPR."
"I thought you were drowning," she shrieks and squares up to him, red face probably glowing in the early darkness.
"That's what I told him," he says easily. The two stare at one another before bursting into simultaneous laughter - bashful on his part, brave on hers.
Maka clears her throat. "Well, I never kiss anyone without spending time with them first - not that I go around kissing people, and even if I did, there's nothing wrong with that! ...Stop giving me that look! Anyway, let's go."
Sand sticks between her toes as she waddles across the beach, tote bag bouncing against her hip. The sound of her solitary footsteps makes her think she got her hopes up too fast - until frantic scampering starts abruptly, trailing after her.
"What an assertive lady," he drawls, bravado in full force.
She shrugs, resisting a smile for her own sanity. "I know what I want."
Though she's only seen his face up close a couple of times, she can already envision expressive brows hiking up, his interest sparked. "Oh yeah?"
Stopping dead in her tracks and spinning on her heels so quickly her pigtails whip through the air, she leans dangerously close. His eyelashes are whiter than the clouds that roll by everyday. "Yeah, and that might just be you."
X
There's a certain calm that washes over the town at night. The lanterns lighting the boardwalk look like constellations from afar, and the faint music and chattering coming from the restaurants' patios sound almost otherworldly. Though the heat is dry and still during the daytime, the wind blowing through their hair right now has a chill, making Maka wish she had brought along a cardigan.
"This is Death Bucks, your one stop shop for anything sweet and caffeinated," she says, pointing at the skull logo looming above their heads.
"I don't remember this shop," he says, going over to lean against the railing, taking in the other shops.
"Oh! You've been here before?" Maka thinks fast for a brief memory of him walking on the boardwalk or laying out on the beach, but comes up with nothing. In the past five years she's been a lifeguard, someone as reticent and alone would have made an impression on her, and she's kind of mournful she hasn't met him before today.
"Parents own a beach house here," he drawls, shrugging, and Maka joins him in admiring the horizon, where the inky sky and reflective water meet. "I haven't been back in nine years. Before this, we would come every summer, but we stopped when my brother Wes moved away for college… Anyway, do you know the house at the end of Lotus Road?"
She squints into the black waves lapping at the boardwalk's support beams and pretends she's focused on thinking instead of distracting herself from looking at him in her peripheral. "That's in the the Crescent Estates, right? Lots of vacationers rent there because it's a few blocks away from the beach - ohhh, you mean the house with the white picket fence and big windows?"
"Yeah, and the patio overtaken by beach balls, thanks to my brother."
Feverish under his captivated gaze, Maka can't help but be hyper aware of how slowly the realization dawns on her. "OH, the one with its own beach?"
"Yeahhhh, but it doesn't look so great now, what with all the crap that happened to it when it was broken into." An eye roll punctuates his disdain. "So my brother… we're, uh, fixing it. And we're gonna sell it."
What Maka remembers of the chic house at the end of Lotus Road is splotchy and vague. It sits in its own little world, separated by shrubs and sand from the other gleaming and upscale condo homes that look like a TV ready neighborhood, a slice of lavish summer heaven where nothing goes wrong and everything exists in perpetual perfection. Though the house stands equally as grand as the others, what with its sleek shingled roof and modern design, it's been vacant and quiet, the air of recent abandonment making it seem more faraway.
A flashback of seeing him sitting on the beach this week by himself catches up to Maka, and it fits. Of course he's living there, isolated but near.
"Your brother sounds like quite a character," she says, chin in her hand.
"He's a mess. Yesterday he went to Home Depot and flirted with the workers so they could teach him how to use powertools. Because, y'know, he told our parents I could fix the beach house, with my own two hands, and sell it without thinking that I obviously don't know shit." He sighs, dragging his hands down his face. "And of course he's trying to say it's brotherly bonding."
"But I've seen you at the beach a lot, how can you have time for repairs?" she starts without thinking, pulling her hair into a high bun to shield her rosy cheeks from his view. Lord, if she keeps unintentionally dropping hints that he's interesting, the color might become permanent.
"Procrastination determination," he laughs, and its unexpected charm has Maka suppressing a cry for help by curling her toes and raising her shoulders to her ears. Stopping herself from shivering has never been so awkward. "I'll avoid him for as long as I can - hopefully until he's done."
"Maybe! I could always hide you."
"Please and thank you."
Now she's just an open book, searching to fill silences she would like to use instead for marveling at him. White hair already a divine contrast against the starless sky, the distant glow of the lantern lights coats it with a certain lucidity that challenges her restraint. Reaching out to run her fingers through it would be the only way to make sure he's real and not a mirage her exhausted, sun-drenched mind has imagined.
Beside her, he goes from slouching over the railing to standing tall, throwing his arms overhead in a long stretch, contracting his shoulder blades together before yawning and turning to face her. To say that it's an instinct to face him would be an understatement, and it would be more than a white lie if she tried to claim his wrinkled nose and silly expression don't endear him to her.
Cute, that's the word to describe him. Sleepy eyes, lopsided smile, and sarcastic wit aren't characteristics she thought she'd find engaging, but then again, she never believed in instantaneous, inexplicable connections before this summer.
She's in trouble. She doesn't even know his name, but his voice has a nice, deep rumble to it when he says hers: "Okay, Maka, where to next?"
X
They're sitting on the beach, a canvas of deep nothingness above, and the wide, open sea stretched out in front of them. It's hypnotic, the way it moves and bubbles and inherents any color that fills the sky.
"I miss my mama." The illusory four am hour finds her hugging her knees closer and trusting him with a certain vulnerability she's never exposed before. No graceful way exists to sufficiently articulate how she aches to spend a day with her mama, but she can try. "I don't get to see her often because of her research - she does send me letters, and we video call sometimes, but that's never enough."
On his own towel next to her, he's been digging his fingers into the sand, collecting sea shells he spots nearby, and listening. There's no denying that she's been admiring his quietude from her periphery. By now she's familiarized herself with his mannerisms - furrowed brows when he's worried, carding a hand through his hair when he's thinking, slumping forward when she's sharing something particularly hard, as if resonating with her pain.
Now he's still, so still, careful not to break her train of thought.
"I was going to do an internship with her research team in Australia, but that fell through..." Growling might not prevent tears, but it does relieve a fraction of the sorrow steeping in her chest, and she does it so discreetly she doubts he hears it. "And then it was too late to find somewhere else to get that credit, and I don't know, I decided to take some time off from school, until… further notice. So here I am, back home with my papa."
He curses under his breath like he's been punched in the gut, sympathizing. "If that doesn't feel like you went backwards and that everything you did amounted to nothing, then I don't know what would do it."
"Exactly!" Excited that she's finally understood, she forgets she's a flushing fool around him and twists to thank him, cheeks pinched.
He blinks, enthralled. "Is that how you smile?"
She purses her lips and thinks, but sleep deprivation has turned off her brain and all she unearths is a stupid, passive thought about how striking he is and how she should be the one asking that question. "I don't know. Stick around and you'll find out."
He doesn't skip a beat. "So, you feel horrible, but you're smiling," he sums up, nodding.
"What? Oh - yeah, yeah! My papa's afraid I'm going to drop out, can you believe that? I'm not, I'm just… I'm tired. I put all my hope into seeing my mama, and I was trying to graduate early…"
"Grad school can wait," he reassures. "There's nothing wrong with taking a break, no matter how long it is. I get it. The burnout is real."
"Is that how it felt for you?" If it didn't feel like she's known him for years, she wouldn't probe such a sensitive topic. "When you dropped out."
"College was this... disaster I let happen to me. And it's not like it was hard. I just didn't have the motivation to major in something my parents picked for me. What if I make the family business go into bankruptcy? Real estate is for people with can-do attitudes and charisma, and I just don't get why they think I can do it."
He starts engraving lines in the sand, his rant becoming more disjointed and distressed, but she connects what he's not saying anyway. The iciness that washes over her when he explains that he's not good enough to function under high expectations has nothing to do with the temperature drop.
"So...you're really not going back. To college, I mean."
"No, and my parents practically disowned me when I told them." Guffawing like a madman, he throws a rock into the sandy abyss in front of them. "They said, how can I run a business if I don't have the education, lala. So everything's riding on selling the beach house, because they're testing me. Wes is helping me, but… but I don't know what's going to happen."
This time, Maka allows herself to stare at him, to admire the slope of his nose and curves of his lips, his strong jaw line. It's the profile of a model, really, and even with his lucrative parents' high statuses, obnoxious egotistical tendencies passed him by, having inherited only rickety confidence. The urge to hold his hand in solidarity is overwhelming, and Maka quiets it by holding her clenched fists by her chest.
"You'll be fine," she says, but it seems bland, unhelpful, and she's not well versed in feeling useless, even though that's becoming the norm as of late. "We can figure out when, what, how you'll do everything, and we can make a plan in case-"
"You're an angel, Maka, but you don't have to go out of your way for me," he says, but he has a rejuvenated air to him, like he's less alone. The way he irons out the round in his posture gives him away, and he brightens more when her skin heats up like it's been sunburned.
"But that's what friends do." She doesn't break the eye contact, however intense and honest and soul searching it might be. But she does try to lighten the mood: "And they also tell each other their names."
"Well, people like me run away from their problems and sit around on the beach and keep their secrets to themselves." One brow quirks up, escalating his cuteness to a level that should be illegal. "And get saved by lifeguards in a Baywatch getup."
"Hmph! I like my bathing suit, thank you very much! It makes me stand out. And - and, and, your swim trunks are the ridiculous 'getup' here, if we're going to be passing judgement on each other."
"It's pure science, Maka! As a future marine biologist you should know that the sharks on my shorts will scare away other sharks."
"N-no? You've only been in the water once." Cue the inward berating: stop sounding like a creeper, stop saying weird things, why am I like this, why do bad things happen to good people?
"Truth is… I don't know how to swim." He rubs the sleep out of his eyes lazily. "Wes tried to teach me when I was a dumb six-year-old, but all he did was carry me to the deep side of our pool and leave me there when Dad yelled that the barbeque was ready." He drums his fingers on an imaginary table in front of him, one, two, three, four times before meeting her gaze again, this time with hopeful bravey. "Think you could teach me?"
She doesn't respond right away. Lulled by the sound of his calm voice and the whoosh of waves blanketing the shore on and off, she's startled by the question, elated that he's asking to see her again and hopeful, hopeful, and she tries to box those feelings away as she says, "Sure - but how do you know I won't up and leave you if I get hungry?"
"I trust you with my life - my soul - since you did save me when I didn't need saving." He raises his arms to block her sheepish arm flails at being reminded of his chapped lips and how they contorted as he squirmed away. In retrospect, that should have been the first sign he wasn't unconscious,and that he didn't need CPR, but in her defence, she had chalked that up to the irony that panic tends to rob a drowning victim of their judgement.
That, and it had been waist-deep water, but she was doing her job. Something about the adrenaline rush of diving in after him and meeting his mouth must have short circuited her brain, because she doesn't think she'll be able to concentrate on anything else for a long time.
Beside her, he gulps before talking, this time with a timidness that melts her doubts away. "Maybe tomorrow? Uhm." He scans the horizon, the sunrise's watercolors painting the sky. "Later today, I guess?"
"Yeah, and I can show you my favorite snow cone stand after," she says, never one to be outdone, even when it comes to flirting.
She's rewarded with a relieved smile, teeth and all.
X