Big chapter for our Alex, poor guy. It's worth it in the end, though. Hope you guys all enjoy. Thank you so much for the continued support, I say it every chapter, I know. But, really, it does mean the world to me, I'm so fortunate to have such great fans that chat with me and write heartfelt reviews on each chapter. You guys are amazing... Shadow, I love that you picked up each of the threads of reference I laid down in the previous chapter, I always hope that my readers will find them and you do time and time again. See y'all soon!
I woke up as I felt the car slow on an off ramp and sat up, uncurling myself from fetal position and pulled the lever to sit the seat back up. I took off my sunglasses and rubbed my face. John held the steering wheel loosely, one hand still on my leg, drumming along to the music he was listening to. A campy imitation of the music we'd danced to played by the band in the street last night.
"Hi, sleepyhead." He giggled, flicking on his blinker.
I cleared my throat and sniffed, trying to regain some humanity, "what are you listening to?"
"Princess and the Frog." He said, pleased with himself.
"The what?"
He let out an exasperated noise, "The Princess and the Frog. Disney movie from like ten years ago?"
"Sure… Whatever you say. Why?"
"Because it takes places in New Orleans, I mean, I have to listen to it while we're down here, right?"
"I guess. Oh… Wait… I've heard you singing this song before… when you're cooking, I mean you sing all the time when you're cooking, but I recognize this."
He held a hand up between us, "that is because when I'm cooking I'm imagining that I am Tiana in her restaurant and I am running the damn show."
"I think that's the gayest thing you've ever done."
"What?" He whined.
"You gave me the 'talk to the hand' over a Disney movie in regards to a scenario in which you pretend to be the princess."
"Pretend? Bitch, I am a princess."
I rolled my eyes at him and looked around outside, he pulled up to a Target, the large freestanding building a shock to my system.
"It's just in the middle of nowhere… well nowhere and McDonald's."
"That's the south for you, okay game plan, get in, get out, we need towels, an umbrella, I've got the sunblock, you need something to wear, and drinks and snacks."
He parked the car and we got out, "towels, umbrella, trunks, drinks, snacks." I repeated.
"Good."
The shopping trip was easy and were were loaded down with everything that we could hope to have for the day. The ride to the beach only took another twenty minutes of John singing along to Disney showtunes. I shook my head at him.
"How much worse are you going to be when we actually have a baby?" I asked lightheartedly.
"So much worse." He laughed.
"Oh, boy. Can't wait." I really can't.
We paid the parking fee at the little hut and found parking, it was almost empty. John sprayed us both down with sunscreen and we hauled all of our stuff across the white sand to the beach.
"Look!" John exclaimed.
"Yup. It's the ocean. Still there, you know we have one of these back home, too, right? Also, we're only here for one day, maybe we brought too much shit?"
"Nonsense. We brought everything we need to be comfortable."
We found a spot and claimed it, laying out our towels and propping open the umbrella. It wasn't quite a big enough umbrella for the beach, more an oversized regular umbrella, but leaned down into the sand it provided enough shade to have our faces and chests covered. I lie under the umbrella on my towel, took my shirt off and balled it up under my head, and drew out my book.
"You want to come get in the water?" John offered, stripping down to his bathing suit, cut like his boxer briefs, navy in colour, clinging to all the right parts of him.
"Nah, I'm good. Go have fun." I started my book and he went down to the water's edge.
I watched him swim in between turning pages, his body long and lean, confident in the water, made for swimming. He returned when I was a few chapters in, his hair pulled straight from the water. I was already a quarter of the way through the fifth of rum we bought.
"Nothing like hair of the dog, huh?" He teased, taking his own drink of it.
"Hey, that nap I took on the way out here was glorious. I'm right as rain now."
"Aren't you hot?"
"Did you forget where I grew up? This is plenty comfortable."
"How's your book?"
"It's pretty good."
John sprayed himself down with more sunscreen and pulled his phone out, on Instagram.
"Hey, look! Theodosia had her baby, a little girl." He showed me the screen.
"Oh, wow. That's neat," I looked through the pictures, one of the three of them in a hospital bed, another just of the baby, "damn, it's like looking at Aaron."
"It's the eyes, she totally has his eyes."
"What's her name?"
"Theodosia, like her mom."
"That's a rough name."
"It's not great."
"Hey, what are we going to do about last names?"
He answered a little too quickly, "Hamilton. Let Laurens die out with me, my brothers can keep it alive if they want to, that name's no good to me."
I nodded and brushed his damp arm with my finger, "okay. We can give them my name."
John grinned at me and rolled onto his stomach, still on his phone. He fell asleep without me realizing. I got through a few more chapters of my book and wanted to stretch. I left John sleeping and got up to go for a walk.
I edged just to the fingers of the waves, staying on dry sand. Wringing my hands, I walked along a secluded sandbar staring down at my feet, losing sight and sound of any other beachgoers. I made it to the end where the sand dipped below the water and sat down, dipping only my toes into the ocean, knees tucked up to my chest, arms hugging them. I stared and stared, scowling at the water.
"I hate you." I told it, quietly, but it heard me all the same.
The waves lapped, a gentle lull, the sound of power, it didn't care.
"You ruined my whole fucking life. Every bit of it. You almost killed me, you killed my mother. I fucking hate you. How can you do that? Destroy homes and families. Reckless, mindless power? Just destroy everything, run lives? My life..."
The tide rolled higher, water covering my feet as the waves reached for the sand. I felt that I was crying but couldn't make myself care.
"You took everything away from me. My mother, my family, my home. Almost fucking killed me, but you couldn't, I couldn't drown, sent pestilence for me, but that wasn't enough to kill me, either. Maybe you took my mother away and my whole goddamn life, but not me, you couldn't make me die, motherfucker."
I took inventory of my life, No hurricane, no America. No America, no John. No Eliza. No Hercules and Lafayette, no Aaron and Theodosia, no Columbia, no law school.
Everything happens for a reason, paciencia y fe, no mistakes.
I stared into the water and let the memories lick at my mind the way the waves lapped at my feet, I could hear my mother's voice in my mind, feel her arms around me.
"Why are you sick, mami?" My voice was so small, so sad, I longed to hold and comfort the child that was.
"I don't know, Alex, love." She held me, she sounded scared.
"Will you get better?"
"I hope so, but we don't know. We can't know, but everything happens for a reason, God doesn't make mistakes."
"I'm scared, mami. The doctors will give you new kidneys, right? Ones that aren't broken? Ones that work?"
"I hope so, paciencia y fe, Alexander."
"I don't want to be patient, mami!"
Her smile, so big, taking up so much of her face, the feeling of her kiss on top my head as she held me to her, "you never do."
I came back to the present, letting the gulls and wind and waves dispel the memories and drug my hand across my face and sniffled hard. I rocked onto my feet, still crouched and gritted my teeth, "fuck you," I told the ocean and arched my hands over my head, fingers steepling and dove into the water off the deep side of the sandbar.
The ocean welcomed me home, the weightlessness that came from being submerged hiccuping panic in me. I scrambled, flailing in the water, panicking for a moment. I hated it on my face. This isn't drowning. This isn't drowning. This isn't drowning. I came up for air and dove back down, feeling calmer, the muscle memory of years spent in water took over and I settled into a front stroke, pulling myself though the water, the salty taste so reminiscent of home.
I swam back down the beach to where we'd set up and walked out of the water. John was sitting up, his hand a visor over his eyes, watching me, his grin evident even from twenty yards.
"You swam!" He cheered when I got close enough.
"I did." I squeezed out my hair onto the sand, loathing the dripping down my spine.
"You're really good at swimming."
"Grew up on an island, you never forget how to swim when you do it every day."
"But you were so little when you left."
"Some things just get ingrained in you."
I sat on my towel beside him and lie back, he welcomed me into his arms, the dry ocean water made him sticky.
"I can't believe you swam."
"Better face my fears, right? I was afraid of you and look how that turned out."
He grinned at me and pressed a kiss to my cheek. I retrieved my book and kept reading, he read over my shoulder, no concept of the plot as I was a third of the way into the book already.
"I'm hot, come splash with me?" He offered.
"Just for a little bit."
He nodded and we walked to the water, we waded in until it came to my chest.
"You good?" he asked.
"I'm okay." I am okay. I am safe. The water is calm.
"I would have never known you could swim like that. I woke up and you were gone, never imagined I'd look out and see you just gliding through the ocean like some sort of sea creature."
"I know I play the 'jaded New Yorker' role well, but I'm an islander at heart."
Still not drowning. Safe. Safe. Safe.
"You're beautiful in the water, look at you, glistening." He waded to me and plunged his hands into my tangle of wet hair and kissed me.
I planted myself to him, arms wrapped around him, returning his kiss where we stood in the water.
"You need more sunscreen." I told him, looking at how pink his cheeks were.
"Your cheeks look a little red," he observed.
"I'm not worried about it."
We waded out a little farther and my feet lost purchase thrusting me into the depth, my limbs flapped, trying to find sand where the ocean floor dropped off. I gulped a swallow of ocean - I'm drowning, this is drowning - and started to panic. You can swim. You can swim. You can swim. I calmed down and treaded water, spat the ocean water from my mouth. Coughing and closing my eyes against the sting of the salt, John was still standing behind me, right on the ledge. I moved back over to him, clinging more tightly than my pride would ever allow me to admit out loud. He rubbed my back under the water.
"You okay?"
"It just gets really deep right there all of a sudden."
I let go of him and straightened myself out, trying to repossess a shred of dignity.
"We can go back to the beach."
"I'm fine." I told him, convincing us both.
We stayed shallower and waded back toward the beach, looking for shells and curiosities. He proudly handed each nice shell he found to me and tossed the imperfect ones back in the sea.
"Hey, look, a crab!" I put my hand on his back and pointed, guiding his line of sight to the little crab burrowing in the sand up the beach fifteen feet.
"He's so cool! He's so cool, Alex." John leaned to see him better.
"Go look at him." I patted his rear to encourage him to go make friends with the crustacean.
"I don't want to scare him, he's just doing his thing, but he's so neat."
We gathered a few more shells until the pockets of my trunks were full and went back to our umbrella. I gulped at our rum, it's been a big fucking day for me, take the edge off, put more sunscreen on John's back for him and under my eyes and retrieved my book before we sat in the edge of the surf. I sat between his legs, back against his chest, elbows on either of his his thighs and read. He alternated between playing with my hair and doodling in the sand, the water coursed over our legs and I occasionally had to move my book to keep it dry from a particularly aggressive wave, the air was wet and despite all my attempts my book grew damp and swollen. I kept reading, by this point almost done with it.
I closed my book once I'd reached the far cover and looked back at John who was staring out at the sun, just starting to dip below the clouds, his tongue flicked out between his teeth, like when he was concentrating, eyes focused.
"What are you doing, amante?"
"Trying to remember this. Want to draw it later."
"Should have brought your sketchbook."
"Didn't want it to get ruined," he looked pointedly at my book, "you hold it so damned close to your face, we're getting your eyes checked."
"No, I don't," I argued on the losing side, "it was just really sunny."
"Sunny?" he giggled, "that's your best case, lawyer-man?"
He flipped to a page and held it out as far as his arm could reach.
"What are you doing?" I protested.
"Read." He instructed.
I leaned forward to see the text and he pressed his hand, fingers spread, on the breadth of my chest and pulled me back to him.
"Read from here." He clarified.
I craned my neck forward and willed the pages to move into clarity, but was never one to give up a challenge, I tried anyway, eyes squinted, shut one, then the other. He interrupted me by reading the first paragraph on the page without any trouble from even further away.
"Fine. I'll go to the doctor."
"You read and write too much to not take care of your eyes." He kissed my head and set my book back down where I had.
"Sun's starting to set, they're gonna kick us out soon, one more dip then you want to get out of here?"
"Sounds good. You up for it?"
I nodded and moved my book back with our stuff. I caught sight of his shoulders on the way back and poked the flesh there with my finger, watching it go white and sink slowly back to red.
"You're gonna hurt later." I told him.
"That bad?" He whined.
"Oh yeah."
"But I put on sunblock."
"Yup. Not enough I guess. Worse on your back, I guess from when you took your nap."
We went for one last swim together, I actually swam in earnest this time and then we packed up our things and headed back for the car.
"What do we do with this junk?" I asked.
"I dunno, get back to the hotel and figure it out from there." He got in the driver's seat and I took my own place and pulled open the mirror on the visor, looking at my cheeks, finding myself darker than I'd been in years, just a kiss of red under my eyes.
John settled us on the highway and I watched him wince.
"You alright?" I tucked a curl behind his ear, the salt in the ocean making his hair look more beautiful than I'd ever seen it.
"Sunburn."
"Let's stop and get you some lotion or aloe or something."
"Usually I'd fight you, but holy shit this hurts. Are you burned?"
"Little on my cheeks."
He looked at me in the dying light, "damn, you're like Laf dark."
"Islander." I reminded him.
"Seriously, you just tan like that?"
"Yeah, my skin's used to it, made for it. Should have seen me as a kid when I still lived there, playing outside all the time, I was dark."
"Do you… do you have any pictures?"
"A couple."
"Show me sometime?"
"I will."
"Ugh, it's not fair, I'm Puerto Rican, too."
"And white." I chuckled.
"Not anymore, now I'm just boricua de langosta."
I laughed at this, "you're a cute lobster, though. A sexy lobster even."
"Ugh, no sex. Hurt too much for sex, maybe beer and food, though."
"Done. I bet after a cool shower, some food, I rub some aloe on you, you'll feel worlds better."
"Hope so." He sighed.