Above Water ✔️

15 - beachy keen

I couldn't believe what I was doing.

The only person in this world that could convince me to do something so out of my comfort zone that I questioned my entire existence was my mom. And she did. Many times.

But apparently so could Dallas.

I told myself before I even took the flight to Florida that I wasn't stepping one foot on the beach. As I previously mentioned, there was a traumatic day that reigned in my memory every time I looked at the ocean.

When I was young my mom brought me to a Jersey beach for a fun day in the sand. She packed us mediocre bagged lunches, forgot to pack two towels instead of one, but remembered her six pack, of course. I made a giant sandcastle, complete with a moat and seashell crest on top.

My mom insisted we go in the water for a swim. I was none the wiser and followed her every move, naive and unaware of how unforgiving the ocean was.

She held my hand all the way until we were waist deep, then we dropped to our knees and she held me close. The deeper we went, the tighter she held me. Eventually, I couldn't reach the sandy bottom and I was clinging to her side as she bounced on her tip-toes.

It was fun. We laughed and shrieked when a wave would bring us high towards the sky and then return us safely to surface level.

Then the biggest wave of all came. It moved quick, unexpected from the distance between us and it. Mom held my body as it neared, but soon it towered over our heads, creating a faint shadow on our faces as the sun passed through the breaker.

I remember looking at my mom fearfully while she stared at the wave and in a split second, we were under water. Mom's hand gripped my side as long as she could but she lost me. She probably came back up long before I did.

My body felt like it thrashed and slammed under the water. I remember reaching for my mom but couldn't feel her anywhere. My eyes were clenched tightly closed and I held my breath until I couldn't anymore.

The next thing I recall was squinting up at the sun with dozens of heads looking down at me with a heavenly glare. I coughed water from my mouth and nose and my mom smothered me with affection. It was the single most terrifying moment of my life.

So, yeah–I was afraid of the beach.

Maybe that day was what sent me on my obsessive compulsive spiral through the rest of my life. What made me grasp into control and the fear of letting go, or being let go of.

But my mom wasn't the one to convince me to go back. She never even tried, as a matter of fact. I know she held guilt for putting me in that position, but I never blamed her. I blamed the ocean and its merciless disregard for human life.

I was already in my pajamas and I was laying in bed with my headphones on, jamming out to some old hits from the two-thousands. Dallas walked into the room and stood at the foot of my bed until I looked up.

"Yes?" I asked, dropping my headphones to dangle around my neck.

"Come to the beach with me."

I glanced out the window, though I didn't need to to know it was pitch black outside. "It's eleven o'clock," I said plainly, then added, "and I don't want to."

"Come on."

"No."

"Please?" he asked. I looked back at him and found he'd taken a step or two closer, jutting out his bottom lip like a pitiful baby.

Shaking my head, I started pulling my headphones back on over my head. He reached over and grabbed them. I felt his thumb brush against my jaw and I froze altogether. The pretty blue eyes I'd grown used to seeing these past few weeks bored into mine.

"I love the beach at night," he said softly, not moving his hand from holding my headphones hostage. "Please come with me."

I gulped, praying he didn't see how my toes were curling at the end of the bed or how my breath caught in my throat. Dear God, what have you done to my roommate? Get him away from me before I combust. So in an awful attempt at calming my uneven heart pattern and also to get him to back off, I just halfheartedly nodded and said in a noncommittal whisper, "Okay."

What the fuck?

Leave it to my dick to ignore all red flags waving from my brain about breaking my trauma barriers before I was ready. For fuck's sake, I wouldn't even go with Erick when he asked seventeen times since I'd arrived.

"Great," he said with a big, genuine smile. "Shall I bring beer?"

"Make it liquor," I muttered as I packed up my headphones and left all my belongings on my bed.

We tip-toed down the stairs. It seemed like everyone had retired early tonight. The lights were off in the living room, the only illumination we could see coming from the kitchen. I followed Dallas begrudgingly as he made a pit stop at the fridge to grab a half-full bottle of whiskey. He held it up quizzically towards me and I shrugged, so he closed the fridge and we kept on.

I felt my heartbeat thudding in my chest.

This was so messed up. Everything was wrong. I should have just said no once the fog on my brain cleared up.

We walked barefoot out onto the back deck, then down the long, dark promenade to the even darker beach. I felt my hands shaking at my sides. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck–

"You okay with this?"

I jumped. The whole idea of going to the beach was making me paranoid. It didn't help that the only light paving the way ahead was the moonlight. Dallas stopped walking and turned to me completely, the bottle of whiskey sloshing between our bodies.

"I, uh–yeah. Yes. I'm fine."

He didn't say anything, and I almost missed it, but he held out his free hand. I squinted at it in the darkness, then looked up at his eyes as if I didn't believe what he was doing. His eyes seemed to glow, clear as day from above.

I took his hand. This was going to be the only chance I'd have at doing such a thing, so I figured, Why the hell not?

His hand was big and pocketed mine like an oyster and a pearl. I felt warmth flowing from the veins in my palms, through my wrists and up my arms, flooding my entire body in an instant. We walked in a frightening silence until our feet hit sand, and then we walked some more.

Cicadas and frogs orchestrated a shrill background noise as we sat down in the middle of the beach, the cool sand chilling our skin. I stared out at the reflection of the moon on the rippling waves. It made me irrationally angry that something so monstrous could be so beautiful.

"I almost drowned when I was a kid," I said aloud, surprising myself. "It's why I'm afraid of the beach."

Dallas handed me the bottle. "Well, shit."

I lost the bottle cap in the sand moments after opening it. The whiskey was warm in my throat, much like the breeze on my cheeks. It did feel nice out here. It was a vast opposite to the weather in the day: warm instead of hot, cool air blowing across our skin, keeping us at a perfect temperature.

"Do you feel like an asshole now?" I asked jokingly, passing the bottle back. I watched him take a swig, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed.

He sucked air through his teeth as he adjusted to the taste of the alcohol. "Not really. I think it's healthy to face your fears," he said and placed the bottle down in between us, twisting to create a makeshift cup holder in the sand.

"But I didn't want to."

"If you really didn't want to, you wouldn't be sitting here. I didn't make you."

Damn. He was right.

I huffed and bent my knees, leaning my arms on them as I looked out on the horizon. I was surprisingly okay with being out here. I felt almost calm. I glanced from side to side, noting only one other person far down the beach with a flashlight as they walked with their feet in the water.

"Now I just gotta get you in the ocean," Dallas said and I snapped my head towards him. He laughed and leaned back on his hands, ignoring my glare. I took a handful of sand and tossed it on his lap, making him laugh again. "I'm kidding. Sort of."

He better. Because I clearly couldn't say no.