Page 71 of Summer, in Between
‘I’m stuffing this up,’ he says, ‘just for a change.I don’t mean slumming it, of course that’s not what I mean.All I’m saying is, Cat, this summer?Being with you?’He breathes deeply, his eyes on the horizon.‘You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’He grins and shrugs.‘That’s it.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yep, that’s it.’He folds his arms across his knees, gripping each elbow.‘I’m about to choke on all this vulnerability bullshit, so enough with the D and Ms.Time for me to go back to being the strong and silent type.Whatcha got there?’He bites his lip and nods at my hand.In my shock, and utter humiliation in essentially objectifying Paul I’d completely forgotten the stash I’d been collecting.
I open my palm and reveal half a dozen shells, different sizes and shapes.There are shell fragments there too, crushed, and some tiny pieces of aquamarine sea glass.He picks through them and separates two, laying them on his board.‘Perfect,’ he says.‘Wait here.’
He jogs down the beach to a fisher, talks briefly to him before they crouch down to peer into a tackle box.
‘Thanks, mate,’ he calls out as he returns to me.He brandishes fishing line, his eyes shining.He threads a shell onto a piece of line, then the other.
‘Which one?’he asks and ties it around my neck, kissing the top of my spine.‘My turn,’ he says, and I do the same to him.It sits at the hollow of his throat, and as he touches it, the knot unravels, the shell slips down his chest and lands in the folds of his wetsuit, the fishing line curling.
‘Sorry!I’m really bad at knots.’
‘That’s a relief,’ he says.‘I was thinking it might be symbolic, but much better that you can’t knot a fishing line.Here, you take care of mine until we sort it out.’He ties it around my neck and the shells nestle against my chest.
‘Thank you.’I brush my fingers over them.
‘Don’t get too attached; I want mine back.’He stands and lifts his board.‘We good?’
‘We’re good.’I’m beaming, my face feels as lit up as the summer sky above me.Not for the first time, I’m eternally grateful that my braces came off before I started constantly grinning to the point that my cheeks ache.
‘I’ll come around later?’
‘I’ll be the one wearing two shells.’
‘I’ll be the one asking your old man to knot a shell around my neck.That won’t be awkward, at all.’
32
‘UGH, Tommy, can youjust stop?’I put my hand over my brother’s to still it.He’s been playing the drums with his cutlery against the table for the past two songs and the incessant sound sets my teeth on edge.
‘He’s all right,’ Dad says.
‘He’s not all right, he’s embarrassing,’ I say.‘We’re in public.Would it kill him to act like a human and not a cartoon character?’
