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Brody crawls onto the beach, never more grateful to be enveloped by sand.
After pulling the barrels onto shore with them, he and Hooper collapse to the ground, the sun beating down on them in a different way than in the water. The tide had indeed been with them, and they had kicked with adrenaline that was now catching up to them.
Brody, catching his breath, watches Hooper watch the waves. Hooper is leaning back, resting on his arms. His wetsuit cannot be comfortable, Brody thinks, but Hooper seems unperturbed, as far as it goes: his curls stick to his face with sweat and saltwater, his eyes are closed in the shine of the day, and his chest—up, down, up, down—shows he is alive. They are both alive, and really, this is nothing short of a miracle.
“Matt,” Brody says, once he’s got enough energy to speak.
We haven’t been alone since that first shark, he wants to continue, when I got drunk and you dragged me on your boat. I didn’t know I missed that. Just you and me.
Hooper rolls his head to look at him. “Yeah?”
He studies Hooper’s eyes; bluer than the ocean, bluer than the sky.
“I don’t know,” he says.
At this, Hooper starts to laugh—the kind of laugh you have when there’s no other emotion you want to face, when something is bursting to come out that you have no control over, when the seriousness or even the reality of a trauma is too soon to be dealt with. So Brody joins him, not knowing what else to do, laughing at nothing. Hooper holds his belly and sinks to the ground, and Brody joins him there, too.
Later, they will be apart; later, Brody will rejoin his family, kiss his wife, hug his children; later, Hooper will leave the island, and they will probably never see each other again. To do so would be too much effort, on both their parts, Brody thinks. The kind of effort you say you’d be willing to go through—and he is—but life gets in the way.
So he resigns himself to the now. Their laughter has stopped, and they are on their backs, looking up at the sky. Brody feels Hooper’s hand rest on his, find his palm. Closing his eyes, Brody intwines their fingers together, and hears three things that now remind him of home: the cry of gulls, the splashing of waves, and the breathing of one Matt Hooper.