Between the Water and the Sand

The first thing I noticed about him was his name.

Our first names started the same way. Our last names went off into two different directions as if they never even met. I never wanted his name like I wanted his haircut, but I wanted his approval as much as I wanted to dance with him. 

We were on a beach somewhere, he wouldn’t tell me what part of the country we were in, even though I didn’t like the sand. 

“Just take your shoes off,” he told me.

“That doesn’t help”.

He often had advice that sounded simpler than it was, as if my problems were inconveniences and all it took was a smile to solve them.

“The sand won’t feel so bad with your shoes off”.

It didn’t matter that he was right or that the sand wrapped around my feet like a hug, I couldn’t let him know anything. He could run faster than I could but I didn’t feel bad about that. He did track in high school while I did chess, and we only ever crossed paths when I would step out of the cold chess room to get a drink of water. Running makes you thirstier than chess does, so he’d be there most of the time I went out. 

I started to know that the fifth time I got thirsty.

“Hey.” I said blankly.

He looked up from drinking but didn’t say anything, taking me in as a stranger. 

“I’m done. Your turn.”

He walked away and I drank. The sixth time we met he laughed when he saw me, and said, “You stalking me, man?”

I didn’t like that. “I’m just thirsty.”

“Yeah, me too.” He gestured at the fountain as if I was supposed to drink while he was so close to it. “Go on.”

I stepped up carefully, staring at his hips, one of them leaned against the cold metal of the fountain. 

“You play chess?” he asked.

I finished drinking. “Yeah, sometimes.”

“I’ve never played. You ever run?”

I had never run. “Running away maybe, but not like you do.”

He smiled, “Who are you running from?”

“Guys like you usually.”

It was a bold thing to say. I could tell he liked that.

The next day we bumped into each other after chess, and after track, and we stood together waiting for something. A word or an expression, a message to make something of this. 

“Wanna get a drink?” he asked.

“Water?”

“Or something stronger.”

I nodded and smiled, not really knowing where we planned on going for something stronger. He had a car, nothing fancy, and in the trunk he had an old bottle of whiskey. I knew it was old because he told me, as if he was ashamed of it. We drank it in silence for a bit, but then he started to squirm, so I tried to help him.

“What do you like about running?” I asked.

He thought for a second, and then said, “It feels good to know you’re going somewhere, even when you're not.”

When he saw that I didn’t quite understand, he tried to elaborate, “Like, I could be running in the smallest circle ever, a track worth 100 meters or less, and I’ll still feel like I’m running towards somewhere. It makes me feel like I have a future, somewhere that wants me, if that makes sense.”

It made enough sense so I nodded. 

“What do you like about chess?”

I didn’t like it all too much, but I told him that I liked puzzles, which was true, and that chess made me feel smarter than I am.

“Do you really not think you’re smart?”

“I’m smart at one or two things”.

He laughed like it was the craziest thing he’d ever heard.

“I don’t think that’s true,” he told me, and it was honest. I drank the whiskey and thought about where else we could go other than in his car. Then, it was right then, when he asked, “Wanna go to the beach or something?”

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t like the sand, but he wanted to go somewhere, and I wasn’t about to ruin that. 

“I love the beach.” 

I lied and lied about it the whole time. He told me everything he loved about the beach and I nodded and nodded. I wouldn’t say it was a real good beach, only about a block long and dirty like a dumpster, but he found it charming. 

“The waves here are better than you’d expect, if you surf,” he told me, although he had terrible balance.

“I’ve never surfed.”

He looked as if that surprised him, which I took as a compliment. 

“I don’t have many friends.” I said then. Not on purpose.

He nodded solemnly, “Yeah me neither.”

I wondered if I made sense to him, and if that was why we were on that beach. He wasn’t a singular thing; you couldn’t describe him in one word or put him in a place where he belonged. He was just him and he made sense like that. 

For the next few weeks, as it got colder and colder, we went to the beach less and less. Instead, we often found ourselves in the houses of acquaintances, wishing we were alone. He would give me long looks, and I would nod, and this meant it was time to leave. Our friend Baby always got offended when we left without her, but she knew that she wouldn’t like where we were going or what we were going to do. Baby was a year older than us and often let us hangout with her cool friends. Whenever we would leave she would say something like, “Off to do something better, eh?”, and we’d nod, because to us, it was true. They didn’t mind that we thought that, because to them we were weird, and possibly queer. 

Sometimes chess would run late and I’d tell myself he wasn’t going to wait for me. I’d get my stuff, grab a drink of water, and walk down those marble stairs I knew so well, not looking behind me. He’d call my name whenever I did that, and my chest would strain.

“Where ya goin?” he’d ask, but he knew. I was going wherever he was going. 

When it got warmer, we went to the beach more. Sometimes we’d swim and sometimes we’d talk. The day before graduation we took a walk on the line between the water and the sand.

“I’m staying here for college” he said flatly, nothing behind his eyes.

“I’m not.” I said similarly, refusing to meet his gaze.

“I know you’re not.”

He looked like he was about to cry before his eyes closed and his head turned down, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

It took me a month in college to realize that he meant without me, and by then, I didn’t know what I was going to do either. I graduated college with a Business degree, although I didn’t know what I was going to turn that into yet. I had a girlfriend and she wanted to move in together, so we did. Not that it matters really. 

I spent a few hours a day at my job, a few hours with my girlfriend, and sometimes at night, I’d let myself think about my past. I couldn’t think about him, but I could think about chess and wonder if I wanted to start playing again. I could think about track and wonder if running really does make you feel like you have somewhere that wants you. I thought adjacent to who he was, and who I was, and I felt perfectly fine in doing that. A few months after my son was born I received a call. His voice was deeper than I remembered, and it took me a second to believe it was him. He told me to meet him at a train station near where I lived, and if I wanted, I could bring my family because he wanted to meet them. When I arrived alone, he didn’t say anything, which said enough.

We rode the train for thirteen hours, as he told me about where he ended up and what he was doing.

“Do you still run?” I asked carefully.

“My daughter likes to take long walks,” he said laughing.

“Ah, my son thinks chess is stupid.”

We laughed for a moment, but it faded to silence pretty fast. This wasn’t easy to talk about. We got off of the train and the wind hit me, not hitting him off his balance as it used to. 

“I smell the ocean,” I said smiling.

We were on a beach somewhere. He wouldn’t tell me what part of the country we were in, but I had a clue. I don’t know why I did, but I told him that I didn’t like the sand. He looked at me like I was new, and he was old, and he didn’t know what to do with that. 

“All these years.” he said instead, “Just take your shoes off.”

In our clothes, we walked on the line between the water and the sand, and without them, we swam in the waves. I noticed caring about my adult body, and how it was different. He dove in the water first, and I went after, shivering from the cold. His arm was touching my arm and his leg was touching my leg, but we were not touching like we were supposed to be. We swam side by side until our arms were tired and we longed for the warmth of the sand. 

“You’ve gotten rusty”, he grinned, and the moon shone through the cracks in his skull, the gaps between strands of his hair.

“You’re lit up nicely”

He didn’t understand really, but he smiled like he did. It was the darkest part of the night when we put our clothes back on, and the world was quiet in all but the waves. 

And then he spoke.

“I don’t know if this is what you wanted me to do.”

I looked at him, eyebrows furrowed, so he continued, “You always hated the touchy stuff.”

I shook my head, “Not with you.”

He looked back at me, memories filling his smile, “Still.”

I looked past him into the ocean, waves coming in and out before us and after us. I looked at the sand touched by our running feet and our sweaty hands. I looked at him and his hair, I saw his face and how his eyes had sunken.

“I can’t say it.”

He tilted his head, “Can’t say what?”

I closed my eyes to open them and touched my pinky to his thumb. “I can’t say goodbye to you.”

His head moved in a way that could’ve been a nod, but I didn’t look long enough to know. The moon was bouncing off of us, my pinky and his thumb, the something that lingered between us. In the moonlight you could see it.

“My daughter would love you.” He said then, hurting in the same way he did when I left for college.

I smiled, my lips burning, “Does your daughter like puzzles and the way Whiskey tastes?”

“Neither, no, but she would love you.”

I didn’t feel much of anything anymore. “I would love her too.”

In the moonlight, you could see it.