In Five Years(32)
I look to David. “Problem solved,” he says.
“Okay,” I say to Aaron.
I stand up and brush myself off. I’m wearing board shorts, a bikini top, and a wide-brimmed hat I got at a resort in Turks and Caicos on a trip with David’s family three years ago. I tighten the string.
“East or west?” he asks me.
“I actually think it’s north or south.”
He’s not wearing sunglasses and he squints at me, his face scrunching against the sun.
“Left,” I say.
The Amagansett beach is wide and long, one of the many reasons I love it so much. You can walk for miles uninterrupted, and many stretches are nearly deserted, even in the summer months.
We start walking. Aaron loops his towel around his neck and pulls with each hand at the edges. Neither one of us speaks for a minute. I’m struck, not by the silence but by the crash of the ocean—the sense of peace I feel in nature, I feel here. I don’t think I realize, living in New York, how much light and noise pollution affect my day-to-day life. I tell him this now.
“It’s true,” he says. “I really miss Colorado.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
He shakes his head. “It’s where I lived after college. I just moved to New York like ten months ago.”
“Really?”
He laughs. “Am I that jaded already?”
I shake my head. “No, I’m just surprised whenever someone has spent a good portion of their adult life somewhere else. Weird, I know.”
“Not weird,” he says. “I get it. New York kind of makes you feel like it’s the only place in existence.”
I kick up a shell. “That’s because it is. Says its insanely biased inhabitants.”
Aaron threads his fingers together and stretches upward. I keep my eyes on the sand.
“David’s great,” he says. “It’s been nice to spend some time with him this weekend.”
I look down at my left hand. The ring catches the summer light in sudden, brilliant bursts. I should have taken it off today. I could lose it in the water.
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s great.”
“I’m jealous of your relationship with Bella. I don’t have that many friends from high school I’m still that close with.”
“We’ve been friends since we were seven years old,” I say. “I barely have a childhood memory she’s not a part of.”
“You’re protective of her,” he says. It’s not a question.
“Yes. She’s my family.”
“I’m glad someone is looking out for her. You know, besides me.” He tries for a smile.
“I know you are,” I say. “It wasn’t you. She’s just dated people who didn’t really put her first. She falls in love quickly.”
“I don’t,” he says. He clears his throat. The moment stretches out to the horizon. “I mean, I haven’t, in the past.”
I know what he’s saying—what he’s hesitant to say now, even to me. He’s in love with her. My best friend. I look over at him, and his eyes are fixed out on the ocean.
“Do you surf?” he asks me.
“Really?”
He turns back to me. He wears a sheepish expression. “I thought I might be embarrassing you with this bleeding heart.”
“You weren’t,” I say. “I think I brought it up.” I walk a few paces down to the water’s edge. Aaron joins me. “No,” I say. “I don’t surf.” There are no surfers out there right now, but it’s late. The real ones are usually gone by 9 a.m. “Do you?”
“No, but I always wanted to. I didn’t grow up around the ocean. I was sixteen before I went to the beach for the first time.”
“Really? Where are you from?”
“Wisconsin,” he says. “My parents weren’t big travelers, but when we went on vacation it was always to the lake. We rented this house on Lake Michigan every summer. We’d stay there for a week and just live on the water.”
“Sounds nice,” I say.
“I’m trying to convince Bella to go with me in the fall. It’s still one of my favorite places.”
“She’s not much of a lake girl,” I say.
“I think she’d like it.”
He clears his throat. “Hey,” he says. “Thanks for earlier. I don’t really ever talk about my mom.”
I look down at my feet. “It’s okay,” I say. “I get it.”
The water comes up to greet us.
Aaron jumps back. “Shit, that’s cold,” he says.
“It’s not that bad; it’s August. You don’t even want to know what it feels like in May.”
He hops around for another moment and then stops, staring at me. All at once, he kicks up the retreating water. It lands on me in a cascade, the icy droplets dotting my body like chicken pox.
“Not cool,” I say.
I splash him back, and he holds up his towel in defense. But then we’re running farther into the ocean, gathering more and more water in our attacks until we’re both soaking wet, his towel nothing more than a dripping deadweight.
I duck my head under the water and let the shock of cold cool my head. I don’t bother taking off my hat. When I come back up, Aaron is a foot from me. He stares at me so intently I have the instinct to look behind me but don’t.