“Shit,” Nat groaned, reluctantly gathering her beach bags and folding her chair underneath her arm. Her colorful bangles rattled as she picked herself up from the beach, pouting and stalking in the direction of the street access, leaving Mateo half-dressed and scrambling behind.
More rain pelted down as Frankie and I rushed to shake out our towels and slip back into clothes and shoes. Our slow walk to the parking lot turned into a lazy jog through the sand and my shins were screaming as we reached the pavement and the sky opened up, drenching us.
Mother Nature was a temperamental bitch. Thunder boomed and every crack of lightning turned the gray clouds cotton candy pink.
“Let’s go!” Mateo yelled over his shoulder as he caught up to Nat and pulled her along in her dangerously wet sandals. Eventually he stopped and bent into a half-squat so she could jump onto his back and continue.
I turned to request the same from Frankie just as his phone rang, muffled and trilling through the pounding of rain on the pavement. He fished it out of his bathing suit pocket as we fell further and further behind the other two. Frankie stopped walking completely, holding a finger to one ear and his phone to the other beneath the torrential rain.
Nat and Mateo sprinted and I remained in a limbo between the two.
The flimsy cover-up I threw on was glued to my body like silk tulle and my hair was soaked to my scalp. I thought about complaining, but that emotion came out in a sprinkle of laughter instead. I tilted my head toward the sky, spread my arms like wings at my sides, and let the full rush of the storm envelope my senses. The salty brine of the ocean sweeping under my nose, howling wind at my neck, goosebumps sharpening on my body as cold rain met warm skin. With my eyes closed I was submerged; the world outside those receptive walls didn’t exist.
I couldn’t remember the last time I stopped like that, to let myself become overwhelmed. When I was a kid, maybe. In the snow on the mountain, like I’d told Frankie. Wispy flakes of fresh powder dancing onto my nose. Snow angels in the moonlight, dark skies, Ursa Major, Orion, the Little Dipper. The crunch of cold, packed earth beneath my head, the frozen lick of melted snow dripping down my neck. Pink, tingling fingertips, icicle eyelashes, the puff of hot breath gone into the air as quickly as I breathed it.
Life flashed like reels in an old film between the two, molding the feeling of each core memory into one grounding, starkly human experience. Standing in the rain, lying in the snow, letting myself be elementally taken over for a brief, pretty moment.
I’d been standing there for several minutes when two strong hands braced against my biceps and pulled me into a solid, soaking wall of muscle. “Hey, you.” Frankie smiled down at me. Raindrops dripped from the bill of his hat and landed on my cheeks.
“All good?” I looked him up and down, searching. “Everything okay?”
Frankie’s grin extended up his cheeks, those fine lines of age crinkling the corners of his eyes, and his grip on me tightened as if full of energy he needed a place to exude. “That was the base in Colorado.”
“Oh?” I herded my response like wild animals into a pen as my stomach tightened into a nervous knot.
“Yeah,” he breathed. His cotton T-shirt was drenched straight through and I curled my fingers into it right at his chest.
“And?”
The real possibility of Frankie moving to Colorado was exhilarating—and terrifying. It seeded a hope inside me that I could have him, all the time. I wouldn’t have to waste my time looking for a person to replace what he was to me, in whatever unsatisfying way they would attempt to, because I didn’t see it possible. We could continue on this unusual and magnificent friendship, see it bud into something more relationship-shaped. Water the soil.
What was terrifying was doing all of those things, hoping for something beautiful and being crushed if it didn’t come to fruition. The more my heart was willing to take that chance for him, the more my head pushed back rationally. Still, optimism took precedence.
“They want me back at the end of January for another interview.”
We couldn’t see two feet in either direction through the rain. It dripped down my lips, and wet my teeth as my mouth bowed into an animated smile. My heart lurched against my chest as I squeezed him harder. “That’s good?” I nodded. “That’s fantastic, right? This is amazing.”
Frankie’s arms cradled my lower back briefly and then dropped to my thighs, scooping me off the ground and bringing us face-to-face. My fingers wound through the wet hair at the nape of his neck.
The answer was in his eyes, tracing me in a pointed triangle. Pupil to pupil to parted, waiting lips. The gesture felt like a promise—a cross your heart, or mark the spot, or write your name in blood dramatically promise.
Frankie nudged my nose to the side, angling our mouths, and then he kissed me.
We spun in a slow circle, rain pouring down, expressing every emotion in a hard, sensual, never-ending clash. Frankie’s tongue swept through my mouth, playing with mine, the tip of his nose digging into my cheek as we both tried to feel one another deeper. Dull fingernails caressed my ass, holding me tightly against his stable body.
His hat cascaded to the blacktop, the thunder a glorious and fitting backdrop as I nipped and licked at his plush lips. Satisfaction rumbled out of him through every short, shared breath we took.
We were a spinning, doting, devouring spectacle and I would have drowned with him like that. Or let the tide rise up and kick our already unsteady feet out from underneath us and carry me and Frankie into the brutal surf. Swept away was the perfect metaphor.
But like taking a fork to an outlet, a horn chirped several times, and headlights shone toward us through the rain. It was too late to feel embarrassed; we’d been caught hilariously and ostentatiously red-handed.
“You can touch each other in the back seat!” a familiar grating voice called out of the driver’s side window as Mateo rolled it down a smidge. Frankie bowed his forehead into mine and exhaled as he lowered me to my feet. “And you’re lucky these seats are leather!”
33
I am inherently a decision maker.
Or I’d taken on that title as an unfortunate circumstance of the life I was both given and then the one I chose out of primordial obligation.
I didn’t love being faced with options. I liked having one, and that option being the right one, and then everything else just effortlessly falling into place behind it. If you gave me a conflict, I would likely spend no more than five minutes finding a solution, ingesting the red or blue pill, and then following the expected map of events until I was faced with another crossroads of metaphorical medication.
My father died and I swallowed the responsibility pill. That looked like early mornings, paper routes, teaching myself how to use a pair of pliers, how to tie my own tie, blood trickling down my neck as I stared in the mirror with a dull, forgotten razor I’d found in the medicine cabinet in my hand. It was shoes that didn’t fit right, answering the door to strangers, suspending belief in things like the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus so that Adriana didn’t have to.
It was cutting my finger open with the utility knife and needing stitches, but wrapping it up in paper towels and electrical tape and shoving it into the pocket of my one, too-small sweatshirt because that was a medical bill we had no business paying.