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Everything ached as she sat down, perched on the makeshift steps by their beached and wounded ship. Her extremities felt tense and chilled while her torso was warm and loose and sweaty from the morning's labors. Carol rolled her still tender shoulder, took a swig of stale canteen water and eyed her sullen companion. The fixed, inexpressive lines of his face, the contained yet manic movements of his body. Light laughter and Spanish expletives drifted on the wind across the sand from their languidly lunching helpers. Meanwhile, Daryl refused to take even the shortest of breaks, working with uncharacteristic unfocus on the aged, barnacled hull of their vessel. Carol sighed, rubbing her neck and attempting to hold her tongue. As Daryl switched tasks for the third time in two minutes, her mind once again recalled the conversation she’d overheard between him and Roberto a few days prior. Roberto’s words had stuck in her mind, and Daryl’s single-minded rigidity worried her, his resistance to all appeals to his usually large, usually accessible heart.
“Maybe Roberto was right about you,” she murmured before deciding to speak her thoughts aloud. “Maybe you're just too old to remember what young love feels like.”
Daryl barely paused in his concerted attack on the clingy crustaseans. “That's a low blow, comin’ from you of all people.”
Carol peered around one of the buttresses at him. “Me of all people, what's that s’posed to mean?”
Daryl stopped, looked at her briefly, blankly. His jaw twitched. Then he continued working, his breath sharp with effort and his sentences clipped by ire. “Was pretty young when I met you. Maybe not as young as Roberto, but I was just as stupid. Impulsive. Hotheaded.” He seemed to decide suddenly on the inadequacy of the blunt spatula he was working with, flinging it to the sand and heading to the toolbox for something better. He jumbled around in it for a noisy beat, choosing an equally inadequate tool, which he scowled at before applying it to the underside of the boat. “I remember,” he said, between laboured pants and grimaces, “what it was like…Sweaty palms. Grand gestures. Layin’ awake at night, countin’ the hours ‘til…” He stopped and faced her, dropped the tool from overhead and held his hands out at his sides. “But things happen. You know? Life. The world...” he gestured vaguely, impotently at the sea and the sand, “...bein’ what it is. People get taken away. They move, they marry. They–”
“Leave,” Carol interjected, drawing his scattered gaze.
Daryl’s eyes met hers, anger flaring within them, along with something more covert. “They leave,” he repeated after a moment. He shuffled across the sand to her, handed her his crowbar and held his hand out for her canteen. “But if you're lucky you find your way back to each other again. Right? I mean, how many times have we had to do that?”
She watched him drink, her brow collapsed in confusion. “You’re comparing their road to ours?”
Daryl handed back the canteen, took back the crowbar. “Hearts get broken every day,” he told her, his tone stubbornly unrepentant as he retreated under the boat again. “If they really love each other, they'll figure it out.”
Carol twisted the cap back on the canteen, set it aside. “I think they really love each other, Daryl.”
“Yeah, well…” He hacked at a barnacle cluster a few times, “we'll see...”
Her brows rose, her concern deepening. “We'll see…?”
He cut a look at her, not stopping as he twisted a large clump free. “If it's enough. Sometimes it ain’t.”
Carol blinked a few times, surveying their surroundings before rising to her feet. Across the sand, their Spanish friends were eating from open jars and sharing a joke that didn’t reach their ears. She descended a few steps, tilting her head so she could get a better look at Daryl’s half-hidden, closed-off face. “Did I do the right thing, comin’ out here to find you? Maybe you needed to be alone. Get some space. Find someone, someone like–”
He interjected with a scoff. “Ugh c’mon. You know I could never be with anyone else.” He flung a wad of seaweed to the ground, shook the salty residue off his glove and pressed on before she could form a response. “S’why I left. Saw the way the wind was blowin’. Back home with Ezekiel–”
Carol opened her mouth on a rebuttal, but Daryl didn’t let up.
“Couldn't do that again,” he muttered morbidly, pausing to gesture with his free hand in the direction of Solaz. “And now I gotta sit around and watch Antonio fall for you–”
“You were talkin’ about me?”
Her voice was low, but her tone – half question, half statement – stopped him. Her face was fixed in an expression of shock as her mind caught up with his previous words, his jumbled admission. “Sweaty palms. Grand gestures. Layin’ awake at night,” she repeated, rehashing their conversation from an abruptly altered perspective. “You were talkin’ about me.”
Daryl’s arms dropped from overhead. “Don't pretend…” he mumbled, looking anywhere but at her, “you didn' know.” He let the crowbar fall to the ground then plucked off his gloves, tossing them down with a muted thwack. “Dogs on the fuckin’ street knew…” He stood there a moment with his head bowed, finally still and silent. The wind blew his hair in his face while every muscle in his body radiated shame, bone-deep discomfort.
Carol dropped down another step, but the second her boot met the sand, he turned and bolted, heading for the sea. “Daryl–” She couldn’t tell if her voice reached his ears or was carried away by the wind. But she hadn’t known what she was about to say anyway. So she just watched him stalk determinedly through the shallow pools trapped by the rocks and climb back up onto his lonely stone perch.
She should probably leave him alone, give him space. She should probably never have said anything to begin with. She should probably not have followed him to France, showing up the way she did, when he was in the middle of some deeply essential personal journey that she didn’t understand. She should probably have just let him come home in his own time. He always did. Except that not going with him when she had the chance was one of the biggest mistakes in a life littered with big, dumb, destructive mistakes. She just didn’t know it until after he was gone and she was too late.
Carol turned her gaze from Daryl’s distant form to their friends, hanging out in the tray of a parked truck. Valentina’s silver hair and vibrant scarf flapped in the wind as she threw her head back and laughed. As she did, one of her consorts kissed her neck. The other poured her some wine, seemingly without a worry about what time of day it was. To Carol, she seemed like a perfect image of unfettered femininity, one she couldn’t imagine emulating. She wondered what Valentina would advise, what she would do in her position. Leave her brooding companion to stew alone in peace? Or tackle the situation head on?
Carol dropped her head and headed for the ocean. She wasn’t Valentina, and she wasn't sure she was doing the right thing. But as she headed across the sand and into the salt water puddles, she remembered the scrawny, grubby young man who brought her a Cherokee Rose, the surprising eloquence of his husky voice. The strength and certainty of the arms that held her in the worst moment of her life. The gentle touch of a hand to her chin when she thought she would die breathless and alone. The uninhibited joy that swept her up off her feet and made her laugh when she never thought she’d laugh again. The way her heart stopped then expanded when she opened a door she thought she’d closed for good, only to see him. Curling into him on a dock, under stars. And in a cave, her chest tight with anxiety and fury and loss.
Carol stopped, ankle deep in water, her shirt billowing on her frame, the wind making her skin pimple with cold. She gazed up at him with his back turned, his legs panted wide and his hands shoved deep in his pockets. And she recalled the sinking feeling in her gut as she watched him ride away from the Commonwealth alone. She recalled the one thought in her mind: Wrong. It was all wrong. She’d known it then. She’d known it before then. She’d known she was meant to be on the back of that bike, her legs bracketing his, her arms holding tight to his body and her voice in his ear as he moaned about her constant, cheerful chatter. She’d not slept a wink since, not been able to focus on a thing for thinking about it. About him. Out there. Somewhere. Without her. Yet even when she was back on that bike with him, riding along that unfamiliar coastline in France, things still didn’t feel right. Nothing had felt right, not since he left. Not to her.
Daryl had retreated to the farthest, rockiest, loneliest little cliff, moving about as far out to sea as two legs could take him. Wading through the moat encircling his fortress of solitude, Carol braced a hand against the slippery rockface and started to scramble up toward him. Daryl turned and momentarily tried to resist the impulse to help. But his chivalrous side overwhelmed whatever else he was feeling and he stretched out a hand to assist. Carol reached for his hand with one of hers, her other hand wrapping around his arm as Daryl effortlessly hauled her up beside him. He didn’t let go until she was steady on her feet, and she didn’t let go when he did. She held onto his arm with both of her hands, shuffling in close on the narrow, uneven plateau. He faced out to sea but she faced him, chest pressed to his arm, hugging it close as her forehead dropped to his shoulder.
“All this time…?” she asked eventually, lifting her head and looking up at him.
“All this time,” he murmured at the horizon.
“And still…?” she asked after another moment.
He looked down at her then back at the distant horizon. “S’not your fault. You can't help it. No one can help who they…”
He stopped short of saying the word and her head dropped back to his shoulder. His arm was limp in her hands and tears pricked at her eyes as more memories replayed in her mind’s eye. They seemed differently colored now, enhanced by an onslaught of alternative emotions, interpretations and opportunities. So obvious. So available. So very, very regrettable. Her words. All she’d said. And hadn’t. All he’d withheld. But felt. For years. Years upon wasted years. The next words out of her mouth were a surprise, even to her own ears.
“You're an idiot.”
He started slightly. “What?”
She laughed into his shoulder. “I'm an idiot.”
His body shifted, his hand flexed. “‘Kay…”
One of her hands slid down his arm and into his, fingers interlacing with his. Carol looked up at him, ran her eyes deliberately over his aged and hardened profile. The wind was blowing his hair back from his face instead of into it and she felt like she could see him clearly for the first time in months. For the first time since finding him again. For the first time since he’d looked at her like he was memorizing every plane and groove of her face before saying goodbye. Back then, she’d adjusted his clothes as a poor substitute for touching him the way she’d wanted, holding on and never letting go. Back then, he’d told her he loved her with such heartrending clarity and candor. And, without the slightest sense of hesitation or untruth, she’d told him she loved him too.
“Look at me,” she said, squeezing his hand and drawing his attention. “Daryl. Look at me.”
He did, and she saw everything she always saw there. She saw all the versions of him in how he looked at her now. She saw uncertainty in how his eyes dipped to her mouth then lifted to her hair, the short grey curls blown flat against one side of her face.
“I don't want another husband,” she told him, voice lifting above the rising whip of the wind. “I don't wanna feel hemmed in like that again. Ever.” She cast a look at the beach, where their Spanish friends continued their carousing. Only Valentina had noticed their sea-bound congress and had stepped away from the others, lifting a curious hand to her brow. Recalling the other woman’s previous comments, her sly incredulity, Carol turned back to her long-time companion to ask with a hint of humor, “Are we too old for you to be my boyfriend?”
Daryl glanced over his shoulder at Valentina, clocking her onshore observation. “Not accordin’ to some.”
She caught his face as he turned back, smoothed his hair back so her access to him remained unimpeded by the curtain of hair he habitually hid behind. She tried to draw his face, his mouth, down to hers but Daryl stiffened and pulled back.
“This ain’t pity,” he muttered, eyes skittish and voice hesitant, “I don’ want pity.”
She drew in a breath, stroked his hair, the side of his scarred face. “What d’you want?”
He grimaced and narrowed his eyes at the view over her shoulder, before haltingly admitting, “Never…had a…girlfriend…before. Not really.”
She drew their joined hands from between their bodies and wrapped them round her back. “Oh, I'm gonna bug the shit outta you.”
Daryl looked down at her, taking the hint and hugging her closer. “Same as always then.”
“Same as always. Only…there's this.”
She tried a second time to draw him down and this time he didn’t pull back. Daryl let her guide his mouth to hers, let his lips meet hers in a brief, light, salty kiss. The first contact of their mouths felt dry and a little awkward, but beneath the initial strangeness of a best friend's kiss lay something more, a buried but telling spark. Resisting the urge to delve deeper and dig out that heated potential, Carol pulled back and opened her eyes partway. His eyes had cracked and his gaze was focused on her mouth with pained and rapt longing. She licked her lips, as did he, before mutually initiating a second, deeper kiss. This time, their mouths opened, heads tilted and tongues touched. The arm around her lifted her up and into him while his free hand cupped her head, riffled through her hair.
Pausing for breath, Carol gasped, “That sound good?”
Daryl nodded once, grunted: “Sounds fuckin’ fantastic,” then proceeded to pepper her mouth and chin and cheeks with short, hard kisses that made laughter rise in her throat. He pressed as close as he could get to her, leaning over her, bending her backwards on the windswept precipice.
Carol slithered her trapped arm out from under his, held onto his shoulders and hoped his overeager passion didn’t land them in the ocean. And in the distance, on the wind, over the crash of the waves and thrum of her blood, she thought she heard the sound of applause and laughter and congratulatory cries in a language that was not their own.
END.