[June 21, 10 NE, Saturday]
Carol stretches her legs out on the beach blanket, her hands behind herself, glances at Daryl beside her, and chuckles.
"What?" he grunts.
"I've just never seen you in sunglasses before."
"Like 'em. Ya can't tell 'm staring at yer tits."
"Oh, I can tell." She's wearing a light, low-cut v-neck t-shirt and, for the first time since before the apocalypse – maybe for the first time since she was a teenager - a pair of shorts. She leans over and kisses him on the cheek.
The sun feels good beating down on her, and the ocean breeze is cooling. Henry is at play with Sweetheart in the surf while Rachel and the baby are both back at the cabin napping. Henry's been teaching the little girl to swim – somewhat. He's had her on her back in the gently lapping waves, and once he even got her to put her face straight down in the water. Sweetheart's not afraid of it, which is a relief.
The kids are taught to swim starting in preschool at Jamestown. They have to be, with the town situated on a river. Water safety, boat safety, and gun safety are all part of the preschool curriculum, and they're considered even more crucial than letters and numbers. But Sweetheart will have a head start on a few of those things.
"How did you learn to swim?" Carol asks.
Even though she can't see Daryl's eyes behind the Raybands he found abandoned on a bench in one of the old cabanas, she can feel them dragging from her breasts back to her eyes. "Merle threw me off the fishin' pier into the lake when I's five. 'S either swim or drown. Laughed the whole damn time he was watchin', too." He shrugs. "But I swam."
"I had lessons at the community pool. I took the swim test in 5th grade so I could go to the pool alone."
"Big stuff," Daryl murmurs.
She smiles. "I had a crush on one of the lifeguards. Who was your first crush?"
"You."
She laughs. "Be serious. Who?"
Daryl sits up slightly and picks at some sand under his thumbnail.
"Dadeee!" Sweetheart cries from where she now stands near the shore, water lapping at her bare feet. She's in a swimsuit of sorts – a toddler swim shirt a woman in Oceanside found in storage in one of the old camp's closets and handed down from her own daughter – and a pair of tightly tied athletic shorts that have already almost come off once. "Dadee! Come! Come sim!"
"Guess I better come swim," says Daryl, and soon he's jogging toward the shore, sweeping Sweetheart up, and swinging her, laughing, like an airplane.
A young man, about 14, stops by Carol's blanket and hands her a rum drink in a heavy mug. "There you are, Lieutenant-Governor Dixon," he says. It feels like just yesterday the young man was a little boy, running with excitement around the Kingdom's fairgrounds, stopping to ask Queen Carol where he could find the dunking booth. "Thank you, Grayson, but you can call me Carol."
"Yes, ma'am," he says.
"Put it on our tab and add for yourself a round of ammo as a tip."
He smiles. "Thanks."
"You like tending bar for my son?"
"It sure beats scaling fish." He walks off back to the tiki bar.
Daryl has by now set Sweetheart on her feet and is glancing back at Carol. She raises her mug to him in salute, and he grins. This is her second drink, and Daryl hasn't had a single one. He's probably expecting to get something out of it later, and he probably will. Sweetheart has a playdate with a new Oceanside friend later. Seaman Reedus and Melissa are off on the crabbing boat, Aaron and Mitch don't arrive until tomorrow, and she and Daryl will have the whole bed and breakfast to themselves.
Once Daryl is in the water, Henry strolls over and sits down on the blanket next to Carol and drapes one arm over his knee. He discarded his shirt before going into the Ocean, and his chest and back and arms are a light, golden brown from the summer sun. "You don't burn anymore?" she asks.
"No. I've gone full native. I was a lobster the first three years I was here."
"I remember."
"We keep Zeke covered up. He's even more fair than I was."
"Ezekiel wouldn't recognize you." It's not just the tan. It's the extra inches he grew after he turned fourteen, and the muscles he's gained from doing his forms with the staff and building his own cabin and whatever other work he does. Henry might be barely 19, but he's a man now, a father. "He'd be proud of you. Of your pub and your tiki bar."
"Dad didn't drink."
"Well, he'd have drunk this." She takes a sip of the rum cocktail.
"You like it? It's one of my own inventions."
"You invented lemonade and rum?"
"I didn't?"
She laughs. "It's very good. Although it could use more rum."
He chuckles. "I have to consider my bottom line. Although the lemon is pretty expensive, too. I'm going to help plant a second lemon tree. And then help build a second greenhouse just for sugarcane. I have enough Old World bottles of rum from that supply ship to last another year, probably, but they'll run out eventually. So I'm going to make my own. Jamestown has beer. Alexandria has Candyshine. The Hilltop has wine. But Oceanside…we're going to be known for our rum."
They sit quietly for a while, enjoying the sun and the breeze and the sounds of the surf. Henry nods out to the water-dark shore, where Daryl appears to be helping Sweetheart dig out at a shell. "Daryl's different."
"Different how?"
"I don't know. He's a dad."
Carol smiles. "So are you, Henry my boy."
"Which one surprises you more?"
"You. Because one second I was teaching you to trap walkers, and you were up to here on me," She puts a hand a little below her shoulder. "And then I turned around and you were a business tycoon with a wife and a baby of your own." She shrugs. "I saw Daryl with Judith when she was very little. I always knew he'd make a good father and that he'd enjoy it. He didn't know. But I knew."
She looks out at her daughter running along the sandy shore, and Daryl running after her, scooping her up, and setting her on his shoulders before walking with her into the Ocean.
[*]
Carol curls her fingers in the hair on Daryl's chest, kisses his bare shoulder, and hums in the afterglow of love. They lay naked and tangled together atop the bedsheets, the window open, the sounds of children running and laughing through the campground drifting inside. Sweetheart is among them somewhere, with her little three-year-old Oceanside friend Jenny and Jenny's mother. It's good to be able to trust someone else to watch your child for an hour or two of afternoon lovemaking, Carol thinks. Her head is still buzzing ever so slightly from the rum, and her flesh still tingling from Daryl's caresses and the power of her orgasm. "That was nice."
"Mhmhm." Daryl is lazily stroking her bare back when his hand freezes. "Shit."
Carol raises her head to look down at him. "What?"
"Forgot yer birthday. Told me las week it was gonna be yer birthday. When is it?"
"It was yesterday."
"Shit. Sorry. Was gonna get ya somethin'."
She laughs. "You did get me something. You got me this vacation. It's the best birthday present I've ever had in my life."
His dopey grin warms her heart. "Yeah?" he asks.
"I don't want it to end," she admits.
[*]
Aaron arrives by stagecoach after super, as the sun is setting and the Dixons are lounging in the living room of the Bed and Breakfast, Sweetheart on Carol's lap in the rocking chair reading a book, and Daryl in the arm chair sharpening his hunting knife.
Daryl stands, twirls his knife, and thrusts it back into the sheath on his belt. He greets Aaron with a backslapping hug and then tussles Gracie's hair. She jerks her head away and smooths it out, saying, "Really, Uncle Daryl? I just brushed it yesterday."
Sweetheart gasps upon seeing Gracie, throws her book violently aside, and slides out of Carol's lap. She must remember the girl from the trade fair. "Come!" she says as she runs to Gracie and grabs her hand. "Come! Come look! Look!" Sweetheart tugs the older girl toward the coffee table, under which there is a stack of board games. Sweetheart plops down on her knees, pulls out the checkers, throws off the box top, and dumps the checkers with a clatter to the cabin floor. She then begins stacking them in a tower.
"Yeah…" Gracie says. "That's not how you play. Let me show you." Gracie gets down on her knees and unfolds the board.
"I think Gracie wants a little sister," Aaron says.
"Pretty sure that's not happening," Gracie replies. "I've had biology."
"I don't know if you know this," Aaron tells her with a wink, "but some kids are adopted."
They haven't told Sweetheart she is, Daryl thinks, but he's guesses Aaron's told Gracie. He's not sure if Sweetheart remembers anything before seven months, if there's any thought of her biological parents left in her head, if that's even possible.
Daryl follows Aaron into his rented room as he goes to unpack. As Aaron drops his pack on the bed and unzips it, Daryl leans back against the dresser. "Just to warn ya, there's a sailor and his girl 'tween our rooms."
"Great." Aaron pulls out a stack of clothes and lays them on the bed. "Which one?"
"Reedus. 'N Melissa."
"Melissa's not exactly a girl. She's forty-something."
Daryl shrugs.
"Isn't Reedus in his late twenties?"
Daryl shrugs again.
Aaron glances at the cot against the wall. "Think when Mitch comes tomorrow, we could help Gracie and Sweetheart build a blanket fort in the living room and sleep in that?"
"Sure. Could do it tonight too." He might get laid a second time in one day, though he kind of doubts it. Carol's not usually much for two nights in a row, let alone an afternoon and a night in a row. Still, it would be nice to have the bedroom to themselves. Just in case.
"How long are you staying?" Aaron asks.
"Leave Monday."
"We leave Tuesday. Back to Alexandria. But Mitch is coming with us and staying for a week."
"Mhmhm. Know." Daryl wonders when it won't be a week…when he'll get some letter telling him Mitch isn't coming back to Jamestown at all, and he better find another permanent hunting partner. "Don't steal 'em from us."
"What?" Aaron smiles. "Oh. Uh, yeah, it's not there. Yet."
"Could move to Jamestown. You 'n Gracie."
"Gracie has a lot of friends in Alexandria. And I'm on the Council. In fact…I'm Chairman now. Michonne stepped down."
"Really?"
Aaron nods. "From being chairman. Not from the council." Daryl moves out of the way as Aaron heads toward the dresser to pull out a drawer and throw in Gracie's clothes. "Want to go to your son-in-law's pub?" he asks. "Grab a drink? I mean, if Carol will watch the girls?"
"Yeah."
[*]
When Daryl and Aaron come back from the pub, it's after ten. Seaman Reedus and Melissa are with them, and when they open the door and see the bedsheets that are drawn from rocking chair to couch to armchair to coffee table, bricked in place by stacks of books, Seaman Reedus says, "What the hell is that?"
"Shhh!" Daryl insists. "Girls're sleepin' in there."
"Oh," Reedus whispers. "Sorry." He takes Melissas hand and then tip toes – in exaggerated, half-drunk, stretched leg slow motion – to their bedroom. They slam the door behind themselves, and Aaron shakes his head.
"Daddy?" Gracie pops her head out from beneath the fort.
"Go back to bed, honey," Aaron tells her. "It's late."
Gracie vanishes beneath the tent. When Daryl's in the bedroom, he shuts the door softly behind himself, pulls off his boots and socks, sheds his t-shirt, drops his pants, and then crawls into bed next to Carol in his boxers. She murmurs and rolls toward him. "Did you have fun?"
"Mhmhm."
"Drink much?"
"Nah. Just one. No whiskey dick. So uh…if ya wanna a ride…"
She splutter laughs. "I was asleep when you came in."
"Yer awake now."
"I suppose I am. And it is vacation."
"Yeah?" Daryl asks. He was expecting to be shot down.
Her hand skates across his bare chest. "Yeah."
"Fuck yeah!" He flips her on her back and assaults her neck with tiny kisses.
When they're drifting off to sleep later, he rubs her back gently with his fingertips and murmurs, "Gonna take ya on vacation twice a month now."
She chuckles, her warm breath tickling his shoulder. "Maybe twice a year."
"Mhmmmmmm." And then, muscles all unwound, the lights go out in his mind, and the morning comes with chirping birds and children laughing.