Page 26 of How to Say I Do
I grabbed two pairs of goggles and Noël, and we followed Liam and Jason, swimming from reef to reef.
The world beneath the waves was a sun-soaked turquoise dream, and we were suspended in the thick richness of its center. Everything had slowed. Bubbles rose softly around us. Noël had taken his shirt off on the catamaran, and shifting patterns of sunlight now crawled along the angles of his shoulders, the smooth line of his back, and the delicate valley of his spine. His hair, longer on top than on the sides, floated around his face in golden threads.
I took his hand. There was no reality down here. Underwater, I could take his hand and it could mean something, as long as we were cocooned in this world. It was just us and this deep silence. We hung there in the blue, outside of time and consequence. His hand squeezed mine.
We swam lazily from reef to reef. He led me first, steering through our joined hands, and then I led him, drawing him close to my side as I pointed out a yellow fish or a bright splash of coral or a lumbering ray gliding along the sea floor.
Half a mile away from our sandbar, I spotted a pair of sea turtles swimming at the edge of the indigo ocean shelf. One kept the other under its flipper. I guided Noël to where they swam, and I, too, kept Noël inside the shelter of my shoulders.
Noël and I were the last to swim in when we reconverged for lunch. We’d gone the farthest, and everyone was watching as we hiked through ankle-deep waters to our lunch spot. Noël looked damn good with water sluicing down his chest and sunlight beading off his pale skin. His resort-branded board shorts showed off his slender waist, flat stomach, and his happy trail making a run from his belly button to his waistband. I wanted to swim him back out to the shallows, where we could hold hands underwater again, and maybe get a little bit closer, close enough where I could feel his thighs and his chest and his hips move against mine, and he could nuzzle his cheek against the side of my face as I ran my fingers through his sea-soaked hair.
“Uncle Wyatt!” Liam let Jason sprint through the shallow water, running as fast as his little legs could carry him. An eight-year-old barreling toward you putsthosekinds of thoughts away in a hurry. I kneeled down and held out my arms. Jason took a flying leap, misjudged the distance, and belly flopped, soaking Noël and me with a boy-sized tsunami. Savannah and Liam laughed so hard they nearly drowned.
We ate in a lazy circle, Savannah’s parents on the back of the catamaran as the rest of us lay in the shallow waters whispering over the sandbar. Noël and I shared a sandwich, and he got the jump on Liam and Savannah this time, taking charge of the conversation and asking all the questions.
Liam kept shooting me sappy, warm looks as he tried to feed Jason baby carrots, even though Jason thought it was way cooler to hurl the carrots and watch them float away. I rested my head against Noël’s and left it there, and we watched another round of Liam versus Jason and his lunch. Noël passed over the last of our shared sandwich. I took two bites, then held out the final piece for Noël. He ate it out of my fingers.
Eventually, Liam got two entire carrots into Jason, which was a victory, and a break from Jason’s steady morning diet of sugar, sugar, and more sugar. He’d been amped for hours, vibrating at the speed of a fructose high.
Before lunch was finished, it was official: we were all best friends. Savannah looked like she was planning my and Noël’s wedding, and Liam had moved on from Cheshire grins to heart-shaped eyes. He wanted to get everything for Noël, too. A beer, a vodka seltzer, more sunscreen, or a noodle to float on. You know a Texan likes you if he holds out the helping hand, and Liam fit that stereotype like a glove.
Digestion gave way to another round of sunscreen applications. Noël and I traded off rubbing each other down, which earned me a long look from Liam and a cartoon bounce of his eyebrows. Noël paid very careful attention to my neck and the backs of my ears and both of my shoulders, and I tried not to give into the urge to massage him as I swept titanium dioxide down his sides.
Okay, I gave in a bit. Noël was more than fully capable of putting sunscreen on his own arms, but I did it for him, rubbing the lotion into his elbows and his forearms and his wrists before massaging his hands and each of his fingers.
With digestion and sunscreen complete, it was time for the trampoline.
During lunch, the boat crew had inflated an eight-foot inner tube with a trampoline stretched cross the center, and they’d tied that to the bow and positioned it over the deeper waters. There was an X and an O on the trampoline’s top: O where someone sat, and X where another person jumped. Done right, the jump would launch the sitter like a rocket.
Liam looked at the trampoline like it was Christmas, and Jason had pogo sticks for feet.
Somehow, Liam convinced Savannah that it would be the safest, most parent-wise course of action for them to go first. “Mom and I are going to try it out,” Liam told Jason. “Once we know it’s safe, you can have your turn.”
Savannah climbed down and crawled out to the O. Liam rubbed his palms together. “Can you launch Jason?” He leaned in to me, lowering his voice. “Or do you need to give Noël a ride?”
He got an elbow to the ribs for that. “Careful out there, Liam,” I told him. “You were way too hard to raise to take reckless chances.”
He shot me a devil-may-care grin, flung his hat into the catamaran netting, and let out a whoop as he leaped onto the X, launching the love of his life thirteen feet into the air. Savannah screamed, rising up and up and up before she began to fall. She splashed gracelessly into the sea, at least remembering to tuck her knees and hold her nose before she hit the water, but her bikini top ended up coming undone and floating free.
She broke the surface laughing while Liam rescued her bathing suit, and we all heard her promise Liam she was going to absolutely murder him when it was her time to jump. He laughed. She splashed him in the face and kissed him on the nose.
We launched each other all afternoon. Noël shrieked louder than Savannah had when he went on his first ride, courtesy of my elephant-sized leap. All of us took turns carefully bouncing Jason into the water while another adult waited to collect him. Savannah’s parents kept to the back of the boat, well clear of our splash zone and shenanigans.
Hours later, waterlogged, dizzy from our journeys into the atmosphere, sunbaked, and exhausted, we lounged on floats tossed into the water by the crew, drifting inside a rope-tied swim zone strung around the catamaran. Savannah and Liam had hooked their elbows onto a boogie board and were playing underwater footsie while Jason spun in barely-holding-on-to-awake zoomies in an inner tube. Trish snored in the catamaran’s hammock.
Noël and I were flat on our backs on two rafts, holding hands so we’d float together. He passed me a frozen daiquiri in a squeeze tube. I drank from our shared straw and passed it back. Warm wind tickled over our chests, and the sun dropped gold streamers over every inch of our bodies.
“I’m glad I came,” Noël said.
“I’m real glad you came, too.”
Our sail back to the resort was more sedate than the ride out. We coasted instead of raced, and Liam and Savannah snuggled up together as Jason fell into unconsciousness with his arms over his head smack in the middle of the net. Noël and I lounged across from Liam and Savannah, loose and happy with our legs outstretched and Noël’s ankle crossed over mine. Noël leaned into me, and I traced hearts, waves, and smiley faces on the outside of his arm with my finger.
When we got back, Liam carried a still-sleeping Jason off the boat while Noël and I unloaded the empty coolers and bags.
Buoy bells dinged. Water slapped against the catamaran’s double hulls. On the beach, the first of the fire pits were getting lit. Tiki torches and globe lights meandered across the resort like falling stars. My hand brushed against Noël’s waist as I helped him down to the dock. We stayed like that, swaying on sea legs as we grinned at each other.
“Thank you forinsistingthat I tag along,” he said.
