Float On

Float On

by Robert S. Chew IV

The keg broke loose from someone’s grip and rolled out across the street like it had a mind of its own. It hit the curb, jumped a little, and disappeared into the sand like it belonged there. Nobody yelled. Nobody ran after it. One guy — shirtless, hair like dried kelp — jogged behind it with a half-smile, but the thing already knew where it was going.

That’s how it was here. Everything had a rhythm. Even the chaos knew the choreography.

I was standing on the corner — same one I used to wait on for rides that never showed up and girls that never stayed — and I was just watching. It had been nearly twenty years. I hadn’t meant to come back. It was a layover, technically. A connection gone wrong, a delayed flight, an old itch that never healed. But there I was. In sandals that didn’t belong to this version of me. In clothes that said dad-on-a-weekend instead of guy-who-knows-how-to-let-go.

And yet, it fit. Like the breeze had held my scent all these years and recognized me before I even crossed the street.

The sun was folding itself into the Pacific — that warm, reckless orange that Southern California always pretended was exclusive. It wasn’t, of course. But the way it landed on the water here, the way it stretched its fingers across the faces of strangers on the sand — it made you believe in the Green Flash.

I could hear the planes overhead, lower than memory remembered, drawing lines in the sky like someone was editing the past. You never forgot that sound if you lived here. It cut through conversations. It marked time. The beach crowds never flinched. You learned to speak around the roar.

Sunday in Pacific Beach. That still meant something. Not in the church-and-brunch way. In the sacred, unspoken ritual of pretending life didn’t restart tomorrow. Out here, Sundays stretched. The tourists had melted back into their cars. The locals lingered. The twenty-somethings — or those pretending to still be — made gods of golden hour.

There were categories. You could still tell. The freshly dumped, freshly graduated, freshly lost. The Trust Fund Boys with their sweat-free brows and board shorts that never saw water. The 3-Day Nurses, high on adrenaline and low on apologies. The unburnt dreamers still wearing their old college hoodies, hoping someone would ask about it. And the lifers — the beach bums and bartenders who’d long since surrendered to the tide.

And me. Ghost with a carry-on bag, a Taylor 314CE guitar, and a life that didn’t quite fit in his shoulders anymore.

I walked across the sand barefoot. The grains burned a little — old punishment for leaving, maybe. There were blankets stretched out like tapestries, coolers half-buried, a portable speaker hiccuping out a Modest Mouse song I hadn’t heard since college. Float on, alright. That one always got me. Still did.

I sat down near the edge of it all, not really part of the crowd, not far enough to forget I once had been. The laughter washed over me, low and easy, like a language I’d once spoken fluently but hadn’t practiced in years. I took a pull from my funny cigarette and exhaled.

Some girl spun in a circle with a sparkler, her hair catching the last of the sun. A guy tried and failed to start a handstand, collapsed, and laughed at himself in a way only people without real regrets could.

I used to be that guy. Or maybe I just thought I was. Truth is, I don’t remember the details anymore — not the exact nights or names or whose bed I woke up in when the tide turned. I remember how it all felt. Like time wasn’t real. Like heartbreak hadn’t been invented yet. Like you could choose a different life every weekend and nobody would hold it against you.

There was a girl once. She wore anklets and stole my sweatshirts. She said things like, Everything you love is temporary, but that doesn’t make it less real. I told her she sounded like a fortune cookie, and she laughed and left the next week. Or maybe it was the other way around. Memory edits for pride.

The keg had settled now, half-dug into the sand, surrounded by solo cups and new memories waiting to be forgotten. Some kid strummed a guitar nearby — poorly — but no one corrected him. That was the rule: you don’t interrupt the becoming. There in the passing went Actor Pauley Shore.

I closed my eyes for a minute. Not long. Just enough to let the sea air press into my lungs like it was trying to tell me something I’d forgotten.

You don’t realize how much weight you carry until you stop moving. That was the thing. I’d spent so long proving I’d outgrown this place — building a life, a career, a bank account, a set of responsibilities so heavy they had their own gravity — that I never asked if I wanted to. It made me smile.

Now I wasn’t sure. Maybe the version of me who stayed would’ve been burned out or bankrupt. Or maybe he’d still be here, handing off solo cups and pretending not to look when the planes flew overhead. Maybe he’d be happier. Maybe he’d just be lighter.

The sun finally disappeared, slow and smug, like it knew the show was over but wouldn’t rush the curtain. A cheer went up from the beach — something about someone doing a backflip or a shotgun or a marriage proposal. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the sound of joy, unpolished and true.

Eventually, I stood. My knees popped. My shirt smelled like salt and someone else’s bonfire. I didn’t take a picture. Some moments don’t want to be captured. They just want to be carried.

I crossed the street again. My electric scooter blinked back at me, bland and apologetic. I got on, popped in the AirPods, and sat there for a second, letting the hum of the beach fade like a song you love too much to replay.

Before I drove off, I glanced once more toward the shoreline. The party was still going. The planes were still landing. The keg hadn’t moved.

And I thought: maybe you never really leave the places that shape you. Maybe they live inside you, waiting for layovers and breakdowns and excuses to be remembered.

I turned the key.

And floated on.