The Pacific

How long has it been? A pathetically long time, I finally decide on.

I live a mere 20 minutes from the beach and the last time I've come out to see the sun set here was at least 30 years ago.

Sad, right? I pay the price for the good real estate that is San Diego County. I should be enjoying the perks of it all.

Cardiff is my beach. We all have one here. The families migrate to Oceanside or Moonlight. I remember Cardiff before an El Nino season took away the sand in 1981 leaving big rocks in its place. I learned to surf here, a hobby I gave up after having kids. It’s not like I could bring them and hit the waves and leave them unattended.

Katie hated the sand on her feet; Connor hated the water. Well, he didn’t hate it, he was scared shitless of it, and I’d look at the two the three times I tried bringing them with me and wondered whose kids they really were. If they both didn’t look so much like their dad I’d swear they’d been switched at birth. Growing up here, if I wasn't hanging out in the Pacific, I was skating down at Mission Bay. Or partying in OB at the cliffs.

I started driving tonight with no particular destination in mind, pissed off at being pinged at the entire day by my husband over an inconsequential mistake at work that bled into our home life and ended up here at nearly the perfect time to catch the sunset.

I watch a surfer take his last wave in and put his board under his arm and walk toward me. He stops, looks at me, and says, "You look really familiar."

He looks like a generic San Diego surfer. Still in good shape, probably late 40s, early 50s. Sandy brown hair that was likely blonde back when he was young. I shake my head no. “Sorry.”

“Mike,” he says extending his hand. “Sorry to interfere with your sunset.”

“Cassie,” I say, shaking his hand firmly like my dad taught me to.

He looks at me again closer. “Cassie Schubert.”

I look at him more closely. Not a customer because to most of them, I'm 'Ben's wife', 'the lady who works here' (the lady for short), or for those who bother to process that I have an actual name, simply Cassie. “I’m sorry, I don’t recognize you.”

“We partied together. Your boyfriend threatened to have me arrested. You posted under my dad’s obituary. I know you remember me. ‘Fondly’ as you stated with your condolences.”

“Well, fuck. How are you?” I say with a broad grin.

He smiles back. “Let me get out of my wetsuit and grab a joint. It’s okay if I join you, right?”

“Yeah, that would be great actually.” I’m not being polite. I’m not at work so I don’t have to be polite unless I want to and I’m not rude by nature, but, like my husband points out, I run a bit cold. An introvert, I guess.

I wonder about him sometimes. He’s among the Bored on the Internet list of people to try to spy on but his name is so common that I get nothing.

I was dating a cop at 17 and my friend Sheila set us up. Everyone hated Lance and wanted to get me away from him. I was starting to see their point so when Sheila asked if I wanted to meet her friend, I agreed to meet him. 

Mike and I sat up for two nights straight doing lines of coke and riffing on the world at-large and I saw that maybe Lance and I weren’t a fit. I didn’t know if Mike and I were either, but it kind of showed me there was something different out there, if that makes sense. I mean, we got along those nights, but who doesn’t when coke’s involved?

Noticing my car had not been in front of my place, Lance confronted me asking where I had been. I mentioned I was at a friend's place and pointed out that for the 4th time that week, I noticed his truck in front of his ex's apartment. When I went off to shower, he checked my purse and I came out to an angry man waving around a piece of paper with Mike's contact information. He asked if we had sex and I shook my head no, my face one-part guilty and the other part 'fuck you for going through my purse'. When he asked what we were doing, I said, "Just hanging out." "Doing drugs?" he asked. I'm not much of a liar, so I stayed quiet. He, in full douchebag mode, called and threatened Mike and left in a huff.

I didn’t know what he could do with his number; I was just a stupid kid. I definitely didn’t want to get Mike in trouble just for hanging out a couple of nights partying with me. So I stayed with Lance long enough to get him off Mike’s scent and then broke up with him.

By the time I went back to Mike’s to see if he was interested in getting together to see what would happen, he had moved, and Sheila had moved on from the dry cleaners we both worked at.  

I’m lost in thought watching as the sun goes lower and lower so I can achieve my goal of watching a sunset in my spot at my beach when I hear, “Do you still consider me the one who got away?” It's said half teasing; half amused.

“My husband has a big mouth,” I say good-naturedly. Mike's dad died, something I discovered while looking at the obituaries in the San Diego Union-Tribune online. I knew it was his dad because of the last name combined with ‘of Leucadia’. I posted, ‘Sorry for your loss, Mike. I remember you fondly—Cassie Schubert.’ He found me and called me at work and my husband said, “THE Mike? The one who got away?” to him. My husband says whatever the bunnies in his head tell him to say. It’s one thing I like about him.

He sits down next to me on the rocks and lights his joint and tries to pass it to me after taking a big hit and I shake my head no. He says, “That’s right. I thought it was weird back then—you don’t partake of the demon weed.”

“It makes me…”

“Stupid,” he interrupts. “I remember," he says, nodding a bit and is quiet for a beat and continues with, "I meant to apologize when I called you at work, but I was still reeling from my dad’s death and not thinking clearly. I’m sorry I was such a dick when we reconnected.”

My roommate when I was 19, more accurately, a guy I lived with in exchange for cleaning and cooking instead of paying rent, was his foreman. Bob mentioned his ‘pretty roommate who had been dating a douchebag of a cop’ and they figured out they both knew me. We went on one date. I was going through some shit and wasn’t myself at the time and he didn’t like the new and unimproved version of me; he point-blank said, “You’ve changed and not for the better,” and I took a pass on another date because it hurt my feelings.

“We’re cool. I wasn’t myself. Nineteen was a shitty year for me.”

“I have no idea what your year was like, but it haunts me, saying what I did. I didn’t get it until life kicked me around a bit. I wondered why you remembered me fondly. You looked so wounded when I said that, and I really wanted to give you more time to see which person you really were: The one I met at 23 or the one I had dinner with at 25.”

“For the record, I’m both.”

“We all are. I just…” he starts and trails off looking to phrase things right, “I didn’t get it. Up to that point, life had been pretty drama free for me. I get it now.” He takes another big hit off his joint and we sit there quietly and watch in awe as nature does its thing—the sky is pink and then fades to purple. The sun looks to be sinking into the Pacific where the water will extinguish it for the night. “It was a fun couple of nights, wasn’t it?” he says, a bit amused.

“Most nights involving coke were pretty fun," I observe, looking ahead.

“We laughed ourselves stupid.”

I laugh a little because we did. I think part of the reason neither of us made a play for sex was we were too busy laughing.

“You turned out really pretty,” he says.

I look at him and wonder if he's hitting on me or just being polite and can't tell. "You've aged well as well."

We watch the very last of the sun fade into the Pacific. He asks, “Are you still married? I don’t see a ring.”

“I take it off before I walk my dog, so I don’t lose a finger.”

“How is that going? I mean, me and my wife work together and it’s tough.”

“It’s why I’m here. We had a rough day at work together and I needed a break from him.”

“Me too. I usually hit the water in the morning, but it was a rough day, and some distance helps sometimes.”

It’s like that. When you work for different people, you come home and bitch about the assholes you work with. When you work with the asshole, there’s nothing but side-eye for the rest of the night after a bad day.

“Why do you use pictures of your dog on your social media?” he asks.

Oh, so he’s been trying to spy on me as well. I smile a little at that. “I get less dick pics. Your species is kind of gross that way.”

He laughs and nods. “We really are sometimes.”

“I wonder if any stray woman has gotten a dick pic and gone, ‘Oooo. Oh, yeah. That’s the dick for me’.”

He laughs at that as well. “Do you still surf?”

“Nah. Kids got in the way of that.”

“I taught mine how to surf. I figured you would have done the same.”

“My weirdos hate the beach. Go figure.”

“How old are they?” he asks.

“Adults now—22 and 26. Yours?”

“Twenty and 22. You haven’t hit the water again?”

“I haven’t even been out here in 15 years or so. I sold my boards at a garage sale.”

“You should. I’m not hitting on you, I swear, but I’m out here most mornings at around 7 or so. If you want. I could use a surf partner. My wife isn’t into it.” He laughs a little, and adds, "Besides, I think we get plenty of time together. Maybe too much."

I look him over and there really is nothing there to it other than he could use a surf partner. The 'pretty' was observational, nothing more. No ‘I’m hitting on you’ vibe. I nod a little and say, “The husband expects breakfast.”

He shrugs. “He’s a big boy. I’m sure he can figure out how to cook some eggs.”

I don’t say anything because that’s not a battle I want to take on.

He understands and I realize this when he says, “It was really good to see you and even better to get to apologize to you. It really has haunted me. Think about it. If you’re anything like my wife, you’ve earned the right to reclaim something of yourself," as we both get up, show over for the night, to head to our respective cars.

That haunts me to the point where two weeks later, I’m out searching for a new board and a wetsuit. I have earned the right to reclaim something. I don’t have to be at work or home constantly.

When Mike sees me waxing my board, he nods and smiles a bit while he walks up to me with his own board. “How did he take it?”

“He’s a little nervous that I’m meeting you for this, but other than that, he’s okay. Like you said—he’s a big boy and can cook himself breakfast.”

When I catch my first wave, after the first three or four knocked me off my board and beat the fuck out me, I remember.

The Pacific takes away all your problems. There is nothing that matters when you’re out there other than getting ready as the next swell approaches and I wonder why I didn’t do it earlier. Out of habit? Out of a sense of housewife duty? I don’t know. All I know is I look over at Mike and smile, grateful that someone reminded me that I’m my own person.

Because I forgot that under all the labels I carry--wife, mom, business owner. I forgot that at one point, I was just Cassie.