Rip Current | THREE
Title: RIP CURRENT
By: tea_diva
Chapter: Three
Word Count: 10,452
There’s a stack of postcards sitting on Nate’s side table next to the coffee maker, a little four-by-six inch image of a beach at sunset catching his eye as he comes out of the shower toweling his hair. It makes him pause.
The stack is small, enough to send to each of his sisters, his parents, a few close friends. Though the images on each card vary, the writing is mostly the same scrawling font that Nate remembers being on the cover of the trip folder he had opened on Christmas day. Each message essentially saying the same thing, often in precisely the same way: Greetings from the Aloha State.
Tossing his towel onto the bed he picks up the cards and flips through them, remembers he had somewhat impulsively purchased them on his second day intending to write and post them so that they'd arrive before his trip concluded. He’d gone surfing with Rudy instead. Now there doesn’t seem like much point to it. He’s leaving in two days. At this rate, he’ll be back long before the postcards reach anyone.
Clearing his throat, Nate drops the cards back to the table and pulls on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, glancing at the clock. It’s too early for dinner, and Walt had more or less kidnapped Brad on some sort of secret mission that neither man would tell Nate about. It has left him feeling bereft, which makes him wonder how he’ll adjust to life back at his parent’s house without the water and the waves, without Ray’s constant teasing, Rudy’s patient presence, Walt’s steadfast support and Brad...
Two weeks, and Oahu feels like an integral part of him.
Releasing a whooshing breath, Nate grabs his backpack and the postcards, slips his feet into a pair of flip flops that he stole from Walt the last time he was over at Brad’s house, and heads out. He has no destination in mind, no sense of what he's doing outside of walking.
He walks for over two hours, stopping when he reaches a rocky high point overlooking a narrow strip of beach that is deserted save for a woman throwing a bright neon pink tennis ball out into the water for her dog to retrieve. He's far enough away that he can't be certain what type of dog it is, but he suspects it is a chocolate lab, maybe some kind of mix breed. His feet hurt from hiking rocky, uneven paths in flip flops and the location is peaceful, so he slides his backpack off his shoulders and settles onto a shaded spot of grass.
Eventually, he pulls out the postcards, flipping one over and rifling through his bag until he finds a pen. Writing has become a force of habit, a stabilizing influence that helps him clear his head. He fills out the first card mostly just because it's the only available paper in his bag.
That morning he and Walt had gone out on a tiny white catamaran with a blue and yellow sail. They spent more time hanging off the side of the boat than sitting in it, and when they came back to shore Ray had accused them both of being goat boaters and refused to speak to either of them, but Nate had enjoyed it. The wind rushing and pushing at them as they skimmed and bounced across the water. He writes about it on the back of the first card, trying to be succinct. When he reads it over he thinks it sounds a bit like an after-action report. Clinical and precise, no real sense of the experience, or how it had affected him. He tries to imagine his mother reading the postcard, wonders if she'd sigh and despair of his ever really leaving the Corps behind. Carefully, Nate tucks that card back into his bag, tells himself he hadn't meant to send it anyway.
Despite this thought he finds himself picking up another card. This one has a cartoonish map of the island on it and he marks the places he's been onto it, drawing two stick figures in kayaks around the Molokua islands, a sailboat along the northwest shore around the area Walt and he had been that morning. He estimates the location of the beach where they all surf and draws a little figure of himself mid-fall off a surfboard, and a scuba diver out where he'd gone on that tour. By the time he's done, there are clumps of little stick figures all around the island and the surrounding water. He flips it over onto the back and tries to summarize his adventures, ends up talking about the various scrapes and bruises he's earned during his surfing efforts and ends by saying that he's not even surfing in particularly treacherous waters, or near any sharp rocks. When he reads it over it doesn't sound like a report, certainly it contains too much humor to be acceptable in the Corps, and he addresses it to his younger sister before he realizes what he's doing.
Just because it's addressed doesn't mean he has to send it, he justifies to himself as he picks up another card. It gets easier to fill up the blank spaces the more he writes. He thinks about little snippets of his time in Oahu that his dad or big sister might appreciate and jots them down, and when he's finished he realizes that sometime during his writing the woman and her dog had both left the beach, and the sun has begun to set. Probably the others will be back at Dharma Resort looking to go out someplace for the evening.
Nate stows his gear in his bag, stands up and slings it over his shoulder. Then he stops. The neon pink tennis ball the dog had been chasing lies forgotten on the shore. As he watches the waves pick it up, tossing it back and forth and then, steadily and surprisingly quickly, it begins to drift, caught up in a current that pulls it along the shoreline until it's far enough out that Nate can't even make it out anymore.
There's a strange constriction in his chest that he doesn't quite understand. He catches himself staring out at the water and shakes his head. Readjusting the strap on his bag Nate turns and walks back the way he came.
_________________________________
The pink tennis ball stays in his head all night. They go out on an evening cruise that features dinner and dancing, and Nate laughs at Ray's humorous efforts to dance, shakes his head in fond amusement when a smiling redheaded girl asks Ray to dance a slow song with her and suddenly Ray is entirely competent, smooth and suave and oddly formal. A perfect gentleman.
"How much of the Ray Person we know and love is bullshit?" he wonders aloud, watching Ray dip his partner and bring her back up.
Walt shrugs. "All of it, of course."
Cherie coaxes him away from the table not long after that. He keeps up with her and avoids stepping on her toes, and she makes light-hearted jokes and tips her head back when she laughs, but after two songs she says, "You're distracted this evening. What is it?" Nate doesn't know how to answer.
There's a glint of knowing in Cherie's eyes as she tips her head to side. "You're thinking about Sunday. About leaving here." He nods his head and she pats his arm gently, nods. "When Rudy was a Marine and he went to Afghanistan I worried all the time," she confides. "That's life. You can't turn it off. I knew he was good at what he did and I knew it was what he wanted, but I didn't like the distance between us, the uncertainty." She smiles. "The trick isn't to stop that wondering nervous part of yourself from doing what it does best, because that's just what being human is. The trick is to always have more faith than you have fears."
She lets him go at the end of the song and rather than rejoining the table where Walt and Ray are laughing at whatever Rudy is telling them, he slips outside. It isn't his intention to go in search of Brad but he finds him almost immediately. When Nate steps closer Brad turns around, leaning back against the rail as he smiles, a lazy little quirk in his lips. Just like that the answer hits Nate.
Whatever he started here in Oahu, not just with Brad but also with the friends he has made and surfing -- all of it -- it's a beginning, the start of his life after the Corps, a reminder that the best and most meaningful part of his life isn't over before he's even reached thirty. Nate isn't sure that he won't slip back into old habits when he goes home. He isn't sure that this new part of himself that he's just discovering is established enough to survive away from the place and the people that brought it out in him.
"Hey." He rests his arms over the rail on which Brad is leaning, pressing slightly into the other man's side as he looks up at the bright stars overhead. "Come back to my place tonight?"
"Alright."
Nate's certain that those aren't the last words he says that evening, they both go back inside and rejoin the group; they both dance, and there's the drive back where Cherie and Rudy join Nate in Brad's truck while Walt drives Ray back to the house. The drive isn't passed in silence but Nate can't remember saying anything after that moment on the deck. He can't remember Brad saying anything. They were the only words that meant anything, that mattered until later, after Brad follows him into his cabin and they kick their shoes and clothes aside, topple in a heap of damp naked skin, sliding hands and gasping mouthes onto the bed and Brad says, "I want to be inside you."
The rush-tug feeling in Nate's chest is more than familiar now. He doesn't know how he can feel as if he is being swept away and also that he has finally found solid ground after years of searching, but that's how it is; like Brad is at once the current and the shore.
Later, lying in a tangle of sheets, his arm thrown carelessly over Brad's torso, Nate asks, "Do you think Rudy would kick out whoever he has booked in my room after Sunday and let me stay?"
"Hm." Brad doesn't open his eyes but the corner of his mouth quirks up at the thought. "Planning on extending your stay?"
"Yeah. If I could."
They lay there, silent, nothing but the rumble crash of the surf along the beach, lulling and constant. When Brad opens his eyes the moonlight catches on them, highlights a half-moon of bright blue. "I have a house. There is more than one guest room. Not to mention the guest house."
Nate wonders if Brad thinks that they're talking in hypotheticals. He lets his fingertips sketch an idle pattern on the skin of Brad's chest and wonders if he should admit that he means it. "It doesn't have to be 'moving in'," Brad continues, his voice purposely casual. "It would be too soon for that anyway. But, you could move in. You're there almost every night anyway, I wouldn't mind. Ray and Walt both live my place; it's sort of a surfer thing -- house sharing, I mean. I'm used to it."
Nate props his head up on his hand. "This doesn't seem strange to you?"
"What?"
"How easy all this has been. How we just…"
Brad licks his lips. "Has it been easy?" His voice is hushed, something tight and cautious in the tone. He shrugs. "Rudy might be seriously fucking gay, trotting around the island in those hideous daisy duke shorts of his but I remember he told me, a long time ago when we first met, that there's a purpose for every person you meet. That some people will test you, some will use you, and some will teach you." When Brad pauses Nate shifts a little more until he's leaning close, his hands braced on either side of Brad's body, skin to skin. Brad meets his gaze and raises his eyebrows. "But most importantly, some will bring out the best in you."
Nate smiles, drops a lazy kiss onto the center of Brad's sternum because he can imagine Rudy saying something like that, but it means something that Brad has told him this, that's he's said this. There's a bubbling roil of emotion threatening to pull Nate under, and the kiss is simple and brief but it's all he can do. The only coherent way he has to express himself.
After a moment, Nate clears his throat and smiles. "I'd like to point out the hypocrisy of your calling Rudy gay, considering where your dick's just been."
Brad rolls his eyes. "You've seen the shorts, Nate. You can't argue with me on this. I know we're in agreement here."
_________________________________
The next morning Nate cancels his return ticket and then phones his mother. Her voice is smooth and familiar and he presses the phone to his ear, closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the wall. “Nate, honey?” she prompts, when he falls silent.
“You were right, mom.”
He can hear her take a long breath and knows that she’s steeling herself in case he’s in some kind of trouble. It’s been so long since he’s needed her to fight his battles for him, but he appreciates that she’s still ready if he needs her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he assures her. “It’s just… I needed this. I didn’t realize how much.” His flexes his hand around the receiver, licks his lips and says, “I cancelled my return ticket. I’m going to stay a while longer.”
It falls quiet again. “Do you need some company? I’m willing to suffer through a vacation in Hawaii. That’s how much your mother loves you.”
He grins and then huffs a laugh. “I’m fine. I’ve met some people down here, actually. Rudy, the guy who owns the resort, he’s a retired Marine.”
“I know.” Of course, she would. He wonders how worried she had to be to go ahead and research and plan this entire trip. There aren’t adequate words to express how grateful he is to his mother, and for just one second the wave of emotion that overtakes him is overwhelming, is almost too much. “Nate?”
“Yeah.” He wipes at his eyes. “I’m here, it’s just … Thank-you. I would have just kept slogging through and never…”
“Nathaniel,” she says, her voice suddenly wry. “You would have ‘slogged through’, as you put it, and sorted yourself out while you were working on your education. That’s what you do, what you’ve always done. But I wanted you to know that you don’t always have to push yourself. You don’t have to ‘make do’. Sometimes it’s just as important to sit back and take a breath, and let the world catch up to you.”
She asks what he’s been up to and he tells her about his morning runs along the beach, yoga with Rudy, sailing with Walt and scuba diving. He talks about surfing and how horrible he is at it, that he has some of the best teachers possible but he doesn’t think he’ll ever learn because somehow they end up having water fights and floating around talking but that every time he gets up on his board he can’t think of any place he’d rather be.
He says, “Mom, I’ve met someone” and his mom tells him that she knows, that she can hear it in his voice when he talks. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“That’s okay,” she says. Her voice sounds warm and soft, like she's smiling. “You don’t always have to.”
When he hangs up he walks to the main house and finds Brad sitting at a table, his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee like he’s found the Holy Grail. His eyes are closed and Nate can tell that he’s trying his best to ignore Ray and Rudy, who are bickering over the buffet table.
When Nate walks up to him Brad pushes out a chair with his foot without opening his eyes. “When do you head back?”
Nate waits until Brad glances over at him. “I don’t know.”
They lock eyes for a moment, and then Brad nods almost to himself. “Walt’s meeting us after breakfast. We’re heading up to Manoa Falls.”
Nate smiles. “Sounds good.”
_________________________________
Walt is standing at the front of the resort, grinning, with his arm around a surfboard. Brad's gaze shifts over to Nate and then quickly away, which is the first clue he has that something is up. The second is Ray saying, "Shit, Brad. Weren't your supposed to text him?"
"Text me what?" Walt asks.
Brad shakes his head. "Nothing."
The smile drops from Walt's face and his gaze becomes suddenly accusing. "What?"
Brad sighs. "Nate's extended his trip."
Nate feels like he's missing something, especially when Walt sort of droops. A moment later, though, he recovers and his smile returns. "Well, that's fine. It's all good. Just means he can put her to use sooner rather than later, right?" Then he turns to Nate, thrusting the board he's holding forward as he asks, "Do you like it?"
Nate steps forward to get a better look. The board is colorful: greens and yellows and blues and filled and from a distance it looks like bands of color, thick bands and slim bands. Up close, Nate can see that there are long stripes of triangular patterns on the far left striping down the length of the board. Along the curve of the nose is a complicated network of interlocking images that takes him a moment to decipher: a stylized hibiscus flower that's small and half hidden by the veritable maze of images. He picks out a neat rendering of the USMC emblem, as well as what looks like a trireme ship. There are smaller designs connecting a mishmash of petroglyph images: a sun, an anchor, a warrior, a footprint.
The truly eye-catching part, however, is the bottom portion of the board where a stylized warrior strikes a powerful stance, arms above his head and legs apart. There is a sweep of geometric designs, thick at the bottom left and arching up around the figure, tapering off. Little curls following along the sweep of the line, and Nate realizes the pattern is meant to be a wave arching upward.
Ray crosses his arms and tilts his head to the side, carefully considering. "Personally, I think it's gay."
Nate is a little speechless. He says, "I don't understand," because the USMC logo makes him fairly certain that Walt didn't just go into a surf shop and pick him out a board. It feels personal in the same way the paddle his platoon presented him with upon leaving the Corps had felt personal.
But somehow, it's still a shock when Walt answers, "I made it."
"You…" Nate blinks. "Really?"
Walt shrugs. "It's a hobby that, you know, turned out to be pretty lucrative. I had a board prepped already and then I just thought, y'know, sort of a 'going away' present, so you'd remember us."
Ray says, "Gay" again, but Nate isn't paying attention.
"Brad helped," Walt's quick to point out. "Well, I mean, I guess he knows you better than I do. He had a few suggestions. But the art and everything..." Walt shrugs again.
"Walt… I don't even know what to say."
Ray throws his hands up in the air. "Fucking hug already! Geez."
Nate's laughing when he throws an arm over Walt's shoulder, and his 'thank-you' doesn't feel like enough, but Walt grins as if it is. As Nate takes the board, carrying it back toward his cabin for safe-keeping he hears Walt say, "I can't believe you thought that board was gay! You made me paint giant pink flowers on yours!"
Ray's answer carries easily over the increasing distance. "I wanted to see if you'd actually do it."
"Of course I'd do it. You were paying me to design a board for you."
"And I can't believe you made me pay for my motherfucking board!"
"Surfboards, as well as my own personal time, are not cheap. Since it wasn't a gift I had every right…" but whatever Walt continues on to say is lost as Nate cuts down to the sand.
Brad appears on the front porch as Nate is settling his gift securely inside. "I'm glad you like it."
"I'm glad I stayed," Nate says. It wasn't what he'd intended to say, but he doesn't regret it. It's the truth, after all, and it earns him another surprisingly shy smile, which is followed by a lingering kiss.
_________________________________
On Sunday, Nate checks out of the Dharma Resort and drags his suitcase to the front entrance where the white Defender is already waiting. His surfboard is already stashed at Brad's place, which means that there is only one small bag and his carry-on luggage to toss into the backseat. When he closes the door Cherie is standing right there, waiting to throw her arms around him. Nate laughs as he embraces her. "I'm seeing you tonight."
"Oh, I know. But I never miss an opportunity." She flashes a coy little wink as she steps back. "Brad, sugar, stop hiding behind that big truck and come say 'hello'."
Rudy stands there, smiling good-naturedly as Cherie wraps her arms around Brad's shoulders and drags him into a hug too. "Nate," he says. "I'm glad you're staying around for a bit, brother. We'll see you both tonight."
They shake hands and then Nate climbs into the front passenger seat and drags the door closed. "Sugar?" he says, teasingly. The first time Cherie had called Brad that, Nate had thought it was a generic pet name between friends, but he's heard it enough to realize that Cherie has nicknames for everyone and not all of them are as affectionate as the one she reserves for Brad.
Brad flashes a grimacing look in his direction, which Nate knows means the blond is secretly pleased. "Don't ask me. If I could change it, I would." Starting the engine, Brad shifts gears and pulls out of the Resort's driveway.
It's not the first time he's been to Brad's place but this time he's not a guest staying a few hours or spending the night. This time he grabs his luggage out of the backseat and stands aside as Brad unlocks the front door, smirking as he says, "I suppose you know your way around. Make yourself at home."
Nate's not the only one feeling it, which becomes obvious when Brad halts right in the front entrance, licking his lips and looking awkward. "You're welcome to share my room, but there are plenty of guest rooms around, if you want. Feel free to take your pick."
Nate tugs on the edge of Brad's T-shirt, dragging him forward into a brief kiss. "I don’t."
"Don’t?" Brad asks, blinking.
"Want a guest room."
There are empty drawers in Brad's dresser and space in the closet, not that Nate has much that he has to hang. Not that Nate has much at all, in fact. He unpacks what he does have and tries to calculate how far his savings will last him. This is the most impulsive thing he's ever done, but outside of a zinging sense of exhilaration mixed with nerves, he's not regretting it.
He had promised his mother that he wasn't moving, that Oahu wasn't a permanent choice. "Just, two weeks wasn't enough." He has no idea how much time will be enough, or at what point staying in one place stops being considered a holiday and becomes living there.
His plans haven't changed: he still wants to further his education, still wants to find a career that will allow him to make a difference. He's not running from any of that but he wants to do it right. Wants to go to classes and remember why he's there, and why it's important; where it's taking him and why that destination means anything to him at all, which is something he'd forgotten until he came to this island.
He's fairly certain that he'll recognize when it's time to go back. Hopefully when that time comes, he'll be able to make the right decision. Hopefully, when the time comes, he won't have to leave everything behind.
_________________________________
Without an imminent departure date looming, Nate finds the structure of his days changing. The pressure to do and see all he can is gone; there are days where he doesn't go anywhere near the water except to run along the beach, and days that are spent almost entirely in the ocean. He surfs, and he reads and he takes up watching C-Span and checking the news, both of which were things he actively avoided before.
He goes climbing with Rudy and Cherie at Diamond Head, rides a dune buggy with Ray, horseback rides with Walt, and goes snorkeling with Brad. On mornings when he wakes in a cold sweat he sits on one of the Adirondack chairs set on the private beach beneath the palm trees and he writes. Sometimes he talks to Brad, sometimes he talks to Rudy, and sometimes he doesn't talk about the Corps at all.
It feels like bits and pieces of himself are stitching back together again, but mostly he's happy and keeping busy and he doesn't spend too much time philosophizing. At night, they go out together as a group, or Ray and Walt come into the main house and they watch a movie. Sometimes Brad and Nate spend the evening by themselves. But every night, regardless of how the day is spent, Nate climbs into Brad's California king bed, slips under the soft sheets and looks out the glass windows to watch the shadows of palm trees sway in the dark, listens to the surge and roll of the waves along the beach as Brad presses close to him.
At some point Nate stops thinking: this is healing.
He starts to think: this is living.
_________________________________
When he finishes the call, Nate drops his cellphone onto the kitchen counter and grabs two beers from the fridge. He walks along the sheltered path toward the water where Brad is sitting on one of the wooden Adirondack chairs, his legs stretched out in a leisurely sprawl, his feet bare.
"That was Evan," Nate explains as he settles into the opposite chair, handing over one of the beers as he leans back. "He wanted to run some things by me, check that the quotes he was using were okay." Brad makes a low 'hm'ing sound.
Nate suspects that Evan began working on his book before he ever settled down to write the magazine articles that sent him to Iraq in the first place. Some of the others were caught off-guard, like it hadn't occurred to them that all those notes the reporter was taking might add to more than a handful of pages in a few of issues of Rolling Stone. Nate saw the book coming from a long ways off, plenty of time to adjust to the idea, though it had never bothered him much to begin with. He knows Evan, and he's confident that the end result will a fair representation of events.
"It's pretty much finished," Nate continues. "He's been stuck in the editing phase for a while."
"You keep in touch?"
Nate tips his head to the side. "He's called a few times about the article, and then about the book, mostly just fact checking, that kind of thing. But yeah, we talk some. This is the first we've spoken since I've been in Oahu, though. He was a little surprised."
The last time they'd talked Nate had been at school preparing for midterms, and Evan had accused him of being certifiably insane for jumping straight out of a Humvee in Iraq and into a lecture hall at Dartmouth.
This time, Evan had called just as Nate and Brad had been finishing dinner and Nate had gone out to the patio while Brad had finished clearing away. "There's some weird white noise coming across the line," Evan had said.
"Hm," Nate had said. "Maybe it's the waves."
"Since when are there waves at Dartmouth?" Nate had found himself explaining, and when he had finished, Evan's only response was, "Well, if there was ever anyone who needed a holiday…"
This feels like so much more than a holiday. He doesn't quite have words for it, but he imagines it's like Odysseus, which only makes him wonder what phase of the journey he's on. The first thing that comes into his head is: home, safe, and victorious, but another part of him wonders if his time in Oahu is maybe a little bit like Odysseus' stay with Circe: feasting, drinking, reveling before continuing onward. Toward home.
Maybe it's darkness, creeping in across the sky, or the quiet lull of the water. Nate finds himself peeling at his beer label as he admits, "When we were stationed in Baghdad, I thought about maybe doing something like that."
Brad turns his head, fixes him with a steady gaze. "Writing a book?" Nate nods. "Why don't you?"
“I can’t write a book,” Nate scoffs. “I have no idea where I would even begin.”
Brad takes a swig of beer, his gaze narrowed, considering. “I was born.”
Nate rolls his eyes. “Don’t even.”
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
“Stop quoting Dickens at me.”
He sees the smirk coming a mile away, but when the corner of Brad’s lips quirk up, just one side that somehow manages to show all his teeth, Nate can’t help laughing. He sort of loves that smile. “I thought you liked Dickens.”
“Brad, I’m trying to be serious.”
“I’m trying to be helpful.” Nate raises a disbelieving eyebrow. Brad says, “You’ve already made a solid start. Don’t bitch about an opening line.”
It takes a moment to realize that Brad’s talking about his journal. He wants to protest, to explain that the journal is just a stupid exercise that his therapist recommended, and that half the things written in that book probably aren’t even coherent.
He doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he takes a swig from his beer and stares out at the ocean. “I can’t write about the Marines, or Iraq or any of it.”
“Why not?”
Nate shrugs. “What would be the point?” It’s a variation of a question that’s been haunting him since he returned to the States. Since before that even, though he can’t quite place when it began.
He almost doesn’t register it at first because it starts so quietly that the rush-roar of the waves along the beach obscures it. But then the sound grows until Brad’s honey-smooth laugh bubbles up and leaves Nate blinking, unsure whether to be furious or shocked.
As a result, he’s left swinging awkwardly somewhere between the two. “What the fuck is so funny?”
“’What’s the point’,” Brad echoes, still snickering, though he's clearly trying to reign in his amusement with little success. “Nate,” he tries and then shakes his head. Tries again, “You’re a fucking grade-A, Ivy League, colossal moron. I have heard you bitch for hours about a damned speech you saw on fucking C-SPAN that nobody gives a shit about. You can’t even go to the beach without bringing a book with you, and that's without even taking your pretentious, hippie communist education into account.”
Nate narrows his eyes. “What’s your point?”
“Are you seriously trying to tell me that you don't believe words matter?” Brad asks. He pauses, and then opens his mouth like he still has more to say. Nothing more comes. Instead, Brad huffs, shakes his head and then gets up, walking up the path away from the water.
Nate isn’t sure how long he sits there in the dark, barely able to make out the white roll of the waves in the faint light coming from the house. He finishes his beer and sets it aside, but he’s still sitting, thinking. The problem, he thinks, is that he doesn't know what he wants to be anymore.
He was a student until he heard someone talk about ‘duty’ and ‘honor’ and being more than an individual in a crowd of people, about being a ‘team’ that could work together and protect each other. He was an infantry officer until someone recommended him for reconnaissance training. He was an idealist until he woke up one day standing at the side of a bridge en route to Al Kut looking at the passport of some college kid he might have shot the night before, and couldn’t pretend that his presence in that place wasn’t fucking things up even worse. He was a recon officer until he thought, 'No more.'
Nate remembers his mother smiling at him as he climbed out of her car at the airport. “Get some sun," she'd told him. "Swim in the ocean, learn to Hula. Just be.”
Nate had thought, “Be what?”
When retired from the Marines he’d had it easy. His family was there for him, he had friends who stuck by him and put up with his mood swings, and inappropriate comments resulting from too much time spent with a bunch of guys who rarely, if ever, concerned themselves with being PC. He had an education and the opportunity to continue that education, the money to do so. He’d landed on his feet.
So why the hell doesn't it feel that way?
When he walks back into the house he finds Brad sitting on the bed wearing a pair of cotton pajama pants and his black-framed geek-chic glasses that really should not be as hot as they are. He's got his laptop propped on his legs as he types. The sight momentarily derails what Nate had intended to say, especially when Brad glances up over the top of the frames.
Nate clears his throat. "Back home. Most of my friends, and a fair number of my extended family think that I joined the Marines as some sort of rebellion."
Brad blinks at him. "Blasting 50 Cent and OutKast wasn't enough?"
It feels a little bit like those tentative moments after a fight where both parties walk around on eggshells constantly checking and double-checking, 'Are we good now? Is it over?' It isn't so much that they actually fought, it's that this is one of those moments where there's that choice: share a little bit more, or keep the defenses high.
Tentatively, Nate takes a step closer as he shrugs. "I guess, even when I was rebelling I was a pretty good kid. My grades were always consistent; I never broke any laws or did something that might embarrass my parents or anything. Joining the Marines was probably the most outrageous thing I did…well, except for my prom, but that's not the point. I suppose I can understand why people would think my retiring from the Corps was just correcting a mistake. Coming to my senses or something."
Brad sets his laptop aside and shifts up on the bed. Nate has his full and undivided attention. Brad says, "It wasn't a mistake," with such steady confidence that Nate is momentarily winded. Ever since he mentioned that there was a time when he might have gone to military school, Nate has caught himself imagining Brad as soldier. As a Marine.
He pictures Brad in a MOPP suit, forest camouflage because apparently the people in charge of ordering MOPPS didn't get the memo that Iraq is a desert country. Dust-covered, weighed down by his gear, an M-4 at rest by his side, dark circles under his eyes because he hasn't slept in seventy-two hours, hair buzzed short to comply with the grooming standard. Tall and utterly, undeniably competent. Nate knows Brad would have been the kind of Marine you'd want leading the charge: steady, reliable, capable.
"I know why I joined," Nate says, swallowing around the constriction in his throat. He is impossibly relieved that Brad bowed to the ocean and not the military; grateful to Brad's uncle for dragging what Nate is certain was an impossibly stubborn and precocious teenager out to the water, even if it was against Brad's will at the time. Glad that Brad is here, now, and not out there in the desert fighting. "I know why I left, too. Them thinking that…it doesn't change things."
"Then what?" Brad prompts.
There have been questions plaguing him since he got back from Iraq that rise to meet him now; that never really leave him be. Nate thinks about all the moments in the past few years that he's proud of, finds that it's easier to recall all the things he would do differently, the moments that made him question everything he thought he understood, the moments when it was almost too much to carry on. There are things that he has kept to himself, and he knows those moments are written out in his journals. Knows that those moments would be included in any book he tried to write.
There would be no more secrets, no more pretenses.
He says, "I think if I wrote a book the USMC would blacklist it."
Again, that steady blue gaze matches his. Nate knows Brad's hearing all the things that he doesn't say, knows that, at least in part, Brad understands. "Then I guess you shouldn't write a book."
Nate raises his eyebrows. "If no one reads it, then it won't sell."
"And then it won't make money, and you'll have to go to school and earn your living the good old fashioned way. I get it." Brad keeps matching his stare head-on. "Don't write it, it's not worth it."
"I'm serious, Brad."
"Message received," Brad says, throwing in a wise-ass little salute because he's just that much of a prick. "I'll never mention it again. I apologize for bringing it up, clearly the idea was poorly thought-out on my part."
Nate wrestles him down for that, pins the taller frame beneath him with ease borne of years of training. Brad holds still under his grip and smirks, still defiant to the last. Nate keeps his grip strong on Brad's wrists keeping his hands pinned on either side of his head, but he leans down and lays a soft kiss against Brad's lips. He says, "I can't."
"Tell me you 'won't', and that's fine. I can understand that, even. Don't tell me that you 'can't', because frankly, Nate, that's bullshit."
Nate slips his tongue into Brad's mouth and lets his grip slacken, and then releases it entirely so Brad's hands can ghost along Nate's back and then fist into his hair. Sixta's gruff voice echoes in his memories: "Grooming standard" as Brad's fingers curl and tug gently, adjusting the angle of the kiss just so, deepening it.
_________________________________
Nate pushes the idea away. He keeps up with his journal but doesn't put any extra effort into his words. The whole point of the exercise is to help him make sense of things, and he doesn't want any extra pressure on that. To him, books are written by people who have already figured something out, and that's not him.
He reaches a tenuous balance with Ray, who stops narrowing his eyes accusingly whenever Nate mentions his home back in Baltimore, or his intentions to return to school at Dartmouth. "Just be careful," Ray says. "You don't have to go to war to get fucked up."
Nate sees vague hints of Brad's insecurities, hears the hidden meanings behind the flippancy, notices the moments of hesitation, or the shifts in mood that leave him curiously quiet. Brad shares himself in fits and starts, and Nate has learned to be patient.
It takes three weeks of living together before Nate learns about the last serious relationship Brad had, which ended when his girlfriend married his best friend. "They live back in California," Brad had said, in that infuriatingly casual tone, like the entire exchange hadn't been devastating. "She's pregnant now. They called me the other day."
'The other day' being the day when Brad had disappeared until late evening, taken his board and his truck and left his cellphone, and Nate, behind. "This is how Brad works shit out," Ray had said as Nate paced the length of the living room. "Sometimes he drives himself home in time for dinner, sometimes not. Sometimes you get a call from the hospital because he pulled some totally moronic, amateur surf-shift and nearly got himself killed."
When Brad had come home Nate had said that next time at the very least Brad should take his cell. He hadn't pushed further.
The next piece of truly personal information Nate gets comes from a magazine. It's the latest issue of Carve, which he stumbles on when he's over in the guesthouse visiting Walt. Brad doesn't subscribe to any surf magazines, and outside of a few surfers who are in Oahu on holiday, Brad doesn't get recognized that often. At least, the people who recognize him see him frequently enough not to make a big deal about it.
There's a picture of Brad beside the article and that, more than the title, is what catches Nate's attention. In the photograph a giant arching wave is cresting and Brad is perfectly balanced on his board, totally covered up by the wave. Nate skims the article, notes Brad's achievements and thinks that the journalist who wrote this apparently had more than a little crush. His eyes catch on a paragraph that details the strength and focus needed to win Triple Crown, 'especially so soon after suffering a significant loss.'
In December, just before the competition, Brad's uncle Daniel died in a hospital back in California.
After dinner Nate follows Brad onto the porch. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't want to talk about it. I still don't. It's always there, impossible to forget…he raised me, Nate, in every way that matters. This house, the boats, so much of this is stuff he left me. It sounds ungrateful but …I don't care about it…" Brad scrubs a hand over his eyes, runs it back through his hair and lets out a whooshing breath.
Nate ends up sitting on the patio stones with his back leaning awkwardly against one of the wooden columns, Brad resting against his chest, listening to the waves. "He was a corporate lawyer," Brad says. "He was successful, but eventually he burnt out and he quit. I was a kid at the time, but my mom told me he was pretty rough for a while, and then one day he told her that he was moving to Hawaii and he'd taken up surfing. He taught me everything…"
Daniel had died of a heart attack when he'd been visiting Brad's family back in California. Brad had been in Oahu. He'd flown back for the funeral and the first thing he had done when he returned to Oahu was enter Triple Crown.
Nate thinks about the focus and quiet that he feels when he surfs, the sense that nothing else beyond that single moment exists. He more than understands why Brad had trouble mentioning his uncle, why he turns to surfing in order to cope. "I care about you, Brad," Nate says. "I don't want to learn about you from a magazine, but I can understand that there are some things that are hard to talk about."
It's another significant figure in Brad's life who has left him, intentionally or no. Nate understands Ray's trepidation a little better, but he can't bring himself to regret any of the decisions that have brought him here. He realizes that until this moment, a part of him has been wondering how all of this could be so easy for Brad, this relationship thing. He should have known better. Nothing in life is ever easy except giving up.
_________________________________
The first person that Nate tells about the book is Mike Wynn, his former Gunnery Sergeant, who is less surprised by the idea of Nate writing than he is that Nate is basically living in Oahu.
In turn, Nate is surprised that Mike even knows where he is at all because he certainly didn't update anyone as to his holiday plans. It was supposed to be two weeks, and it's not like he's on the phone with Mike or anyone else from the Corps all that regularly.
"No, you're not," Mike says, wryly. "Though you could stand to check-in now and again. Scuttlebutt came from Reporter."
"I sent you and Cara a Christmas card," Nate defends. "And since when is Evan part of the knitting circle?"
Mike snorts. "Since he went to war with us, Nate."
They talk for most of the morning and it makes him feel homesick the same way that talking to his mom or his dad makes him homesick. Mike got him through some of the toughest moments of OIF, of Nate's entire career as an officer. There are things that Mike knows that Nate has never told anyone else, and there's some things that only Mike could understand because they were usually standing side-by-side when the shit came rolling downhill, even if Nate's the one it slammed into first.
He starts out writing on Brad's laptop, sitting on the beach and glancing up periodically to try and pick Brad out amongst the crowd of surfers. It's never difficult, especially when Brad takes a wave. There is a certain effortless beauty to the way Brad rides a wave that reminds Nate always of what it's like to be right where you're supposed to be, doing precisely what you should be doing, at the exact right moment.
After a while, his mom gets together a package and she includes his laptop, which means that there are no longer mini feuds between himself and Brad when they both want to use the laptop a the same time.
When Nate tells Evan about the book Evan asks if he's planning on making writing his career, now that's he's retired from the Marines. "I don't think I have more than one book in me," Nate says. "Whether it gets published or not, I don't even think that really matters to me."
This answers entirely baffles Evan. Maybe it's because he's a journalist who makes his money off what he writes, the notion of putting effort into something and not caring if it succeeds is probably foreign. To Nate, though, the writing isn't the point. "I'm not writing to make a point," he says. "I think maybe I'm writing to find one."
Evan wishes him luck and offers to give any advice or support that Nate might need, "Just give me a call." It makes Nate think of what Brad told him months ago, when he decided to extend his stay in Oahu, that everyone who comes into your life has a purpose. Evan was just another reporter when he first entered Camp Mathilda, and Nate knows he endured some teasing from the platoon, but somewhere along the way he became as much a part of the group as it is possible for a civilian to be, and Nate's grateful for that.
_________________________________
It's not always smooth sailing. Nate has days when he wants to pull his hair out over his writing, when he has nothing worthwhile to say, when no words come to him at all, when he writes an entire section and then throws it out. He's snarky and irritable and he knows that, but he can't help it.
Brad has days when he is stubborn and infuriating, or sullen and impossible, and Nate doesn't have the luxury of retreating to the guesthouse like Walt and Ray. They fight and yell and they make up again and somewhere in the middle of it all Nate remembers Brad saying: "It doesn't have to be 'moving in'. It would be too soon for that anyway. But, you could move in."
If there's a difference, he isn't seeing it.
Brad puts on the coffee and Nate takes down the mugs, pops three pieces of toast into the toaster because Brad only ever eats one slice, and then turns back to the eggs while Brad gets out two small bowls and spoons yogurt into them. "Don't look now," Nate says, smiling. "But I think we might actually be in a relationship."
Brad tilts his head to the side, smirking. "I'm strangely alright with that."
Nate nods. "Me too." He doesn't think about home, or Dartmouth. That's a whole other world away, a place he's going back to, some day, but not tomorrow, and certainly not today. Right now he's taking time to just be.
A portion of that, a significant portion, includes being with Brad.
_________________________________
Evan Wright publishes his book at the start of spring. He sends an advance copy to Nate, who reads it through in a single day and can't quite find the words after he finishes it. The copy is signed; there is a quote from Augustine of Hippo written out in Evan's messy print.
"Anyone who looks with anguish on evils so great must acknowledge the tragedy of it all; and if anyone experiences them without anguish, his condition is even more tragic, since he remains serene by losing his humanity," Brad reads when Nate hands over the book.
Nate still feels a bit shell-shocked. "I knew he was observant. I didn't know just how observant until I read that."
Brad reads the book always in the evening, lying on the couch with his feet propped on Nate's lap. He doesn't make any comments. He doesn't laugh or snort or react in any way. Sometimes Nate turns from the television and wants to ask, 'What part are you at now?' but he doesn't.
Just once, he thumbs open the book to the place Brad has marked-off when he finds it sitting on the coffee table and no one is around. He skims a few lines, recognizes the description of Schwetje's attempt to call in a fire mission that would have killed the entire platoon. After that, Nate stops checking on Brad's progress.
When he finishes reading the book Brad puts it aside and asks, "Did you want to talk about it?"
Nate flips off the television and shifts on the sofa so he's twisted to face Brad. "What did you think?"
Brad's face is inscrutable. "It was well written." Nate nods, because he thought so as well. "It seemed like a fair representation of events?"
"Yeah," Nate confirms. "He did a good a job." They lapse into silence. "I think I just wanted you to have some sort of sense of what it was like. From a different perspective, maybe a less biased one."
Brad snorts. "Nate, based on what I read this reporter had a hell of a lot more bias than you ever show when you talk about the idiots in command." Nate purses his lip and frowns, which makes Brad snicker. "Christ, that's exactly what I'm talking about."
"It's force of habit!" Nate knows it's more than that. He has no delusions about war or humanity in general. People are flawed, war is fucked, and not everyone who is attracted to battle represents the ideal that the USMC strives toward. He isn't interested in passing judgments; he just wants to make sense of what his part was in all of that. Where did he fall on that broad spectrum of good and bad officers? He already knows that he doesn't entirely comply with the expectations the Corps has, he's not certain, though, where he falls in terms of his own.
_________________________________
"If you could surf one wave anywhere in the world, which wave would you surf?" Ray asks one day. They're out at their beach again, sitting on their boards waiting for the next set to roll in. Nate's tried a few different waves around the island but he's fond of this location, if only because it is isolated and there are no treacherous conditions outside of the water itself.
Nate shrugs. "It doesn't matter to me. It's not about the waves."
"What the fuck to you mean? Of course it's about the waves!" Ray squawks.
To Nate, surfing is about losing himself and finding himself in the same moment. He can do that on any wave, so long as there's some decent height to it.
"Surfing is all about pushing your limits," Ray lectures. "Tell him, Rudy.
Rudy only shakes his head. "Ray, my friend, everybody is looking for something different in the waves."
"Walt." Ray twists around on his board. "Come on. Back me up."
"Sorry Ray," Walt says. "I'm with Rudy on this."
"What? You can't tell me after last year's Big Wave when you had that crazy run that you don't surf for the challenge."
Walt shrugs. "I surf to create a moment worth remembering."
"Besides," Rudy says, interrupting the tirade they can all see Ray brewing. "If you really want to push your limits, you should join Cherie and I on our holiday."
Ray rolls his eyes. "Rudy, I hate to tell you this, but crawling around the cold, damp, claustrophobic pitch-black caves in northern Brazil, going who the fuck knows where is not what a holiday is."
"I didn't know you were afraid of the dark, Ray," Walt says innocently.
Ray tackles Walt right off his perch on his board and Nate sits there, shaking his head and laughing and then out of nowhere he realizes that this is it.
It's time to go back.
He doesn't know why, but it feels like the right choice. Oahu, the water, the people, is what he needed to get himself back on track, to remember that he is more than a student, or an officer. His book is raw but it's mostly finished, and he feels like he's made peace with everything he was, everything he did.
Now it's time to move forward.
During dinner, both of them seated on opposite side of the table, Nate tells Brad. In retrospect, he doesn't know why he even considered that Brad might get angry, after all this time he should really know better. Instead, Brad locks down. "Not right away," Nate says. "But soon, I think. I'm registered for the next semester anyway, I want to shop my manuscript around over the summer, see if there's any interest. It just…it feels like it's time."
Brad nods. "I understand."
They finish dinner in contemplative silence, and then Brad stands and starts to clear away the dishes. "What's your stance on long distance relationships?" When Brad only blinks at him Nate continues, "I mean, when I go back home, go back to Dartmouth, are we still going to be together?"
Brad shakes his head. "That's never how it goes, Nate."
Nate jerks his eyebrows up. "I'm asking if you want to at least try."
Brad loads the dishwasher, adds the soap and sets the cycle, and then he leans forward over the counter, his arms rigid, hands braced on the cool slate, his back to Nate. He says, "Yes," and it sounds like this admission has cost him dearly.
"Me too." Nate rests his forehead on Brad's back, his arms wrapping around Brad's waist and he breathes.
_________________________________
It feels right to go, but it's not easy.
Nate navigates the airport, his friends clustered around him, all them doing a fair impression of a school of fish as the walk. Everyone is talking and laughing and upbeat, and Nate is missing them each already. It's hard. Oahu and Brad and the others feel more like home than anything has in a long while. He hasn’t even left the island and Nate's already feeling homesick.
His bags are checked and Walt has assured him that his surfboard will be fine, and that he can pick it up with the oversized luggage when arrives back in Baltimore. "Trust me, I've done this before. I haven't lost a board yet. How about you, Brad?"
"Not once."
"There. You see?" Walt smiles. Then his expression changes in a blink of an eye, goes flat and deadly serious. "If you lose it, I will be very unhappy." Nate is still recovering from the shock when the familiar, smiling Walt he's become used to returns, laughing as he bumps a fist into Nate's upper arm. "Just fooling…but seriously."
Ray scampers back to the group, thrusting a stack of magazines at Nate. "I got you some light reading for the epic flight.” Nate scans the magazines and ascertains that they are all about surfing, except for one porn rag tucked in the middle. "Seriously," Ray says. "This is a long flight." Nate is pretty certain that the airport bookshop does not carry porn, which makes him wonder where the skin mag came from. At least it looks new, so he's pretty certain it didn't come from under Ray's mattress.
"They're all new issues, and Brad's not in any of them," Ray says. "Which is why I also brought these." He hands over several other magazines while ignoring Brad's protests. Nate groups the entire bundle together and stashes them all quickly in his carry on before Brad can snatch them away.
"God dammit, Ray," Brad says, but he sounds more resigned than anything.
"Don't worry. Any future articles will be forward to your email address. I'll let you know if there's a radio or television broadcast coming up. Some places actually film the competitions so, you know, I'll keep you posted."
Nate smiles. “Thanks, Ray.”
“No problem, buddy.” Ray throws an arm around Nate's shoulders. “I’m there for ya, whatever you need. But I draw the line at taking sexy pictures of Bradley over here.” Then his head tilts as he eyes Brad up and down. “Actually…”
“No, Ray,” Brad says, with enough exasperation that Nate gets the feeling this is a conversation they’ve had before.
“What? Long-distance relationships are tricky, okay? You gotta develop some techniques, is all I’m saying.”
Rudy gives Nate a bone-crushing hug and Cherie places a lei over his head, the flowers fresh and fragrant. "Travel safely, Nate," she says, and kisses his cheek.
"I hope to hear from you soon, brother," Rudy adds.
Walt gives him a friendly hug, when he steps back he's smiling. "Make a wave," he says, holds up his hand with his thumb and pinkie out.
Nate finds his throat constricting. There are no words that can adequately express how grateful he is to have found each of them, that they embraced him like a friend more or less immediately. He doesn't want to leave even though he knows he has to. Even though he's certain this 'good-bye' isn't absolute.
Nate says, "Mahalo."
Brad shifts closer then, the heat of his body seeping through the thin button-down he's wearing. The kiss he gives Nate is what his sister's would probably consider a church kiss, soft and sweet and ever so reserved. When he starts to shift back, Nate grabs a fist full of his shirt and tugs him closer and kisses him properly.
It's not 'good-bye' it's 'see you later', but that 'later' could be a while from now and Nate intends to take his fill while he can. Ray and Cherie can hoot and give catcalls all they want, it won't stop him.
"Uh," Walt says. "Not to break up this moment but your plane is boarding pretty soon, and you have to pass through the gate…"
Reluctantly, Nate steps back. "Right," he says, taking a bracing breath. "I'll see you all later, then." It sounds woefully inadequate, and he stands there trying to think of something better.
"Good luck, little buddy!" Ray says, waving his hand. "When you get your seat, look for me out the window, okay? Because I'm totally running down the runway beside your plane, being all weepy and waving at you and shit."
Walt frowns. "You mean like those black and white movies where the heroine always cries and says 'goodbye' a thousand time and sobs into her handkerchief?"
Ray nods. "That's what I'm talking about. That's the extent to which I am going to miss you, man. I'm going to miss the shit out of you."
"Yeah. I'm pretty sure that whole running thing only works for trains," Walt says.
Nate's snickering, his moment of melancholy mostly conquered until he meets Brad's gaze, and Brad says, "Aloha," softly, his voice a little rough.
Then it doesn't matter what joke Ray tries to make because Nate's chest is constricting and he aches with the thought of leaving. "Aloha," he says back, raises his hand and flashes the classic surfer wave, pinkie and thumb out, and then he forces himself to turn on his heel and walk through the security line.
By the time he boards his plane, Nate's managed to compose himself. He tries to remind himself that there's things he's looking forward to when he gets back: seeing his family and his friends, getting ready to go back to school and finishing his book.
He drops down into his seat, which is by the window just above the wing and glances around. At least he seems to be leaving during the one month of off-season that Oahu has, which means there is a chance, however small, that the plane isn't teeming with people.
A chirruping ringing starts up, and it takes him a second to realize that it's his cellphone registering a text. Nate pulls it out of his carry on. There's a message from Brad: "Did I mention I have a condo in California?"
He catches himself grinning down at his phone. Quickly, Nate types back a reply and then switches his phone off. He thinks: "Yeah, I'll be back," and knows that it's true, even if he isn't sure when. He's not sure what exactly lies ahead of him, but he's looking forward to it. Nate tucks his phone away and settles back in his seat as his plane begins to taxi to the runway.
___________________________________________________
|<< THE END ||
STORY MASTERPOST
By: tea_diva
Chapter: Three
Word Count: 10,452
There’s a stack of postcards sitting on Nate’s side table next to the coffee maker, a little four-by-six inch image of a beach at sunset catching his eye as he comes out of the shower toweling his hair. It makes him pause.
The stack is small, enough to send to each of his sisters, his parents, a few close friends. Though the images on each card vary, the writing is mostly the same scrawling font that Nate remembers being on the cover of the trip folder he had opened on Christmas day. Each message essentially saying the same thing, often in precisely the same way: Greetings from the Aloha State.
Tossing his towel onto the bed he picks up the cards and flips through them, remembers he had somewhat impulsively purchased them on his second day intending to write and post them so that they'd arrive before his trip concluded. He’d gone surfing with Rudy instead. Now there doesn’t seem like much point to it. He’s leaving in two days. At this rate, he’ll be back long before the postcards reach anyone.
Clearing his throat, Nate drops the cards back to the table and pulls on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, glancing at the clock. It’s too early for dinner, and Walt had more or less kidnapped Brad on some sort of secret mission that neither man would tell Nate about. It has left him feeling bereft, which makes him wonder how he’ll adjust to life back at his parent’s house without the water and the waves, without Ray’s constant teasing, Rudy’s patient presence, Walt’s steadfast support and Brad...
Two weeks, and Oahu feels like an integral part of him.
Releasing a whooshing breath, Nate grabs his backpack and the postcards, slips his feet into a pair of flip flops that he stole from Walt the last time he was over at Brad’s house, and heads out. He has no destination in mind, no sense of what he's doing outside of walking.
He walks for over two hours, stopping when he reaches a rocky high point overlooking a narrow strip of beach that is deserted save for a woman throwing a bright neon pink tennis ball out into the water for her dog to retrieve. He's far enough away that he can't be certain what type of dog it is, but he suspects it is a chocolate lab, maybe some kind of mix breed. His feet hurt from hiking rocky, uneven paths in flip flops and the location is peaceful, so he slides his backpack off his shoulders and settles onto a shaded spot of grass.
Eventually, he pulls out the postcards, flipping one over and rifling through his bag until he finds a pen. Writing has become a force of habit, a stabilizing influence that helps him clear his head. He fills out the first card mostly just because it's the only available paper in his bag.
That morning he and Walt had gone out on a tiny white catamaran with a blue and yellow sail. They spent more time hanging off the side of the boat than sitting in it, and when they came back to shore Ray had accused them both of being goat boaters and refused to speak to either of them, but Nate had enjoyed it. The wind rushing and pushing at them as they skimmed and bounced across the water. He writes about it on the back of the first card, trying to be succinct. When he reads it over he thinks it sounds a bit like an after-action report. Clinical and precise, no real sense of the experience, or how it had affected him. He tries to imagine his mother reading the postcard, wonders if she'd sigh and despair of his ever really leaving the Corps behind. Carefully, Nate tucks that card back into his bag, tells himself he hadn't meant to send it anyway.
Despite this thought he finds himself picking up another card. This one has a cartoonish map of the island on it and he marks the places he's been onto it, drawing two stick figures in kayaks around the Molokua islands, a sailboat along the northwest shore around the area Walt and he had been that morning. He estimates the location of the beach where they all surf and draws a little figure of himself mid-fall off a surfboard, and a scuba diver out where he'd gone on that tour. By the time he's done, there are clumps of little stick figures all around the island and the surrounding water. He flips it over onto the back and tries to summarize his adventures, ends up talking about the various scrapes and bruises he's earned during his surfing efforts and ends by saying that he's not even surfing in particularly treacherous waters, or near any sharp rocks. When he reads it over it doesn't sound like a report, certainly it contains too much humor to be acceptable in the Corps, and he addresses it to his younger sister before he realizes what he's doing.
Just because it's addressed doesn't mean he has to send it, he justifies to himself as he picks up another card. It gets easier to fill up the blank spaces the more he writes. He thinks about little snippets of his time in Oahu that his dad or big sister might appreciate and jots them down, and when he's finished he realizes that sometime during his writing the woman and her dog had both left the beach, and the sun has begun to set. Probably the others will be back at Dharma Resort looking to go out someplace for the evening.
Nate stows his gear in his bag, stands up and slings it over his shoulder. Then he stops. The neon pink tennis ball the dog had been chasing lies forgotten on the shore. As he watches the waves pick it up, tossing it back and forth and then, steadily and surprisingly quickly, it begins to drift, caught up in a current that pulls it along the shoreline until it's far enough out that Nate can't even make it out anymore.
There's a strange constriction in his chest that he doesn't quite understand. He catches himself staring out at the water and shakes his head. Readjusting the strap on his bag Nate turns and walks back the way he came.
_________________________________
The pink tennis ball stays in his head all night. They go out on an evening cruise that features dinner and dancing, and Nate laughs at Ray's humorous efforts to dance, shakes his head in fond amusement when a smiling redheaded girl asks Ray to dance a slow song with her and suddenly Ray is entirely competent, smooth and suave and oddly formal. A perfect gentleman.
"How much of the Ray Person we know and love is bullshit?" he wonders aloud, watching Ray dip his partner and bring her back up.
Walt shrugs. "All of it, of course."
Cherie coaxes him away from the table not long after that. He keeps up with her and avoids stepping on her toes, and she makes light-hearted jokes and tips her head back when she laughs, but after two songs she says, "You're distracted this evening. What is it?" Nate doesn't know how to answer.
There's a glint of knowing in Cherie's eyes as she tips her head to side. "You're thinking about Sunday. About leaving here." He nods his head and she pats his arm gently, nods. "When Rudy was a Marine and he went to Afghanistan I worried all the time," she confides. "That's life. You can't turn it off. I knew he was good at what he did and I knew it was what he wanted, but I didn't like the distance between us, the uncertainty." She smiles. "The trick isn't to stop that wondering nervous part of yourself from doing what it does best, because that's just what being human is. The trick is to always have more faith than you have fears."
She lets him go at the end of the song and rather than rejoining the table where Walt and Ray are laughing at whatever Rudy is telling them, he slips outside. It isn't his intention to go in search of Brad but he finds him almost immediately. When Nate steps closer Brad turns around, leaning back against the rail as he smiles, a lazy little quirk in his lips. Just like that the answer hits Nate.
Whatever he started here in Oahu, not just with Brad but also with the friends he has made and surfing -- all of it -- it's a beginning, the start of his life after the Corps, a reminder that the best and most meaningful part of his life isn't over before he's even reached thirty. Nate isn't sure that he won't slip back into old habits when he goes home. He isn't sure that this new part of himself that he's just discovering is established enough to survive away from the place and the people that brought it out in him.
"Hey." He rests his arms over the rail on which Brad is leaning, pressing slightly into the other man's side as he looks up at the bright stars overhead. "Come back to my place tonight?"
"Alright."
Nate's certain that those aren't the last words he says that evening, they both go back inside and rejoin the group; they both dance, and there's the drive back where Cherie and Rudy join Nate in Brad's truck while Walt drives Ray back to the house. The drive isn't passed in silence but Nate can't remember saying anything after that moment on the deck. He can't remember Brad saying anything. They were the only words that meant anything, that mattered until later, after Brad follows him into his cabin and they kick their shoes and clothes aside, topple in a heap of damp naked skin, sliding hands and gasping mouthes onto the bed and Brad says, "I want to be inside you."
The rush-tug feeling in Nate's chest is more than familiar now. He doesn't know how he can feel as if he is being swept away and also that he has finally found solid ground after years of searching, but that's how it is; like Brad is at once the current and the shore.
Later, lying in a tangle of sheets, his arm thrown carelessly over Brad's torso, Nate asks, "Do you think Rudy would kick out whoever he has booked in my room after Sunday and let me stay?"
"Hm." Brad doesn't open his eyes but the corner of his mouth quirks up at the thought. "Planning on extending your stay?"
"Yeah. If I could."
They lay there, silent, nothing but the rumble crash of the surf along the beach, lulling and constant. When Brad opens his eyes the moonlight catches on them, highlights a half-moon of bright blue. "I have a house. There is more than one guest room. Not to mention the guest house."
Nate wonders if Brad thinks that they're talking in hypotheticals. He lets his fingertips sketch an idle pattern on the skin of Brad's chest and wonders if he should admit that he means it. "It doesn't have to be 'moving in'," Brad continues, his voice purposely casual. "It would be too soon for that anyway. But, you could move in. You're there almost every night anyway, I wouldn't mind. Ray and Walt both live my place; it's sort of a surfer thing -- house sharing, I mean. I'm used to it."
Nate props his head up on his hand. "This doesn't seem strange to you?"
"What?"
"How easy all this has been. How we just…"
Brad licks his lips. "Has it been easy?" His voice is hushed, something tight and cautious in the tone. He shrugs. "Rudy might be seriously fucking gay, trotting around the island in those hideous daisy duke shorts of his but I remember he told me, a long time ago when we first met, that there's a purpose for every person you meet. That some people will test you, some will use you, and some will teach you." When Brad pauses Nate shifts a little more until he's leaning close, his hands braced on either side of Brad's body, skin to skin. Brad meets his gaze and raises his eyebrows. "But most importantly, some will bring out the best in you."
Nate smiles, drops a lazy kiss onto the center of Brad's sternum because he can imagine Rudy saying something like that, but it means something that Brad has told him this, that's he's said this. There's a bubbling roil of emotion threatening to pull Nate under, and the kiss is simple and brief but it's all he can do. The only coherent way he has to express himself.
After a moment, Nate clears his throat and smiles. "I'd like to point out the hypocrisy of your calling Rudy gay, considering where your dick's just been."
Brad rolls his eyes. "You've seen the shorts, Nate. You can't argue with me on this. I know we're in agreement here."
_________________________________
The next morning Nate cancels his return ticket and then phones his mother. Her voice is smooth and familiar and he presses the phone to his ear, closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the wall. “Nate, honey?” she prompts, when he falls silent.
“You were right, mom.”
He can hear her take a long breath and knows that she’s steeling herself in case he’s in some kind of trouble. It’s been so long since he’s needed her to fight his battles for him, but he appreciates that she’s still ready if he needs her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he assures her. “It’s just… I needed this. I didn’t realize how much.” His flexes his hand around the receiver, licks his lips and says, “I cancelled my return ticket. I’m going to stay a while longer.”
It falls quiet again. “Do you need some company? I’m willing to suffer through a vacation in Hawaii. That’s how much your mother loves you.”
He grins and then huffs a laugh. “I’m fine. I’ve met some people down here, actually. Rudy, the guy who owns the resort, he’s a retired Marine.”
“I know.” Of course, she would. He wonders how worried she had to be to go ahead and research and plan this entire trip. There aren’t adequate words to express how grateful he is to his mother, and for just one second the wave of emotion that overtakes him is overwhelming, is almost too much. “Nate?”
“Yeah.” He wipes at his eyes. “I’m here, it’s just … Thank-you. I would have just kept slogging through and never…”
“Nathaniel,” she says, her voice suddenly wry. “You would have ‘slogged through’, as you put it, and sorted yourself out while you were working on your education. That’s what you do, what you’ve always done. But I wanted you to know that you don’t always have to push yourself. You don’t have to ‘make do’. Sometimes it’s just as important to sit back and take a breath, and let the world catch up to you.”
She asks what he’s been up to and he tells her about his morning runs along the beach, yoga with Rudy, sailing with Walt and scuba diving. He talks about surfing and how horrible he is at it, that he has some of the best teachers possible but he doesn’t think he’ll ever learn because somehow they end up having water fights and floating around talking but that every time he gets up on his board he can’t think of any place he’d rather be.
He says, “Mom, I’ve met someone” and his mom tells him that she knows, that she can hear it in his voice when he talks. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“That’s okay,” she says. Her voice sounds warm and soft, like she's smiling. “You don’t always have to.”
When he hangs up he walks to the main house and finds Brad sitting at a table, his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee like he’s found the Holy Grail. His eyes are closed and Nate can tell that he’s trying his best to ignore Ray and Rudy, who are bickering over the buffet table.
When Nate walks up to him Brad pushes out a chair with his foot without opening his eyes. “When do you head back?”
Nate waits until Brad glances over at him. “I don’t know.”
They lock eyes for a moment, and then Brad nods almost to himself. “Walt’s meeting us after breakfast. We’re heading up to Manoa Falls.”
Nate smiles. “Sounds good.”
_________________________________
Walt is standing at the front of the resort, grinning, with his arm around a surfboard. Brad's gaze shifts over to Nate and then quickly away, which is the first clue he has that something is up. The second is Ray saying, "Shit, Brad. Weren't your supposed to text him?"
"Text me what?" Walt asks.
Brad shakes his head. "Nothing."
The smile drops from Walt's face and his gaze becomes suddenly accusing. "What?"
Brad sighs. "Nate's extended his trip."
Nate feels like he's missing something, especially when Walt sort of droops. A moment later, though, he recovers and his smile returns. "Well, that's fine. It's all good. Just means he can put her to use sooner rather than later, right?" Then he turns to Nate, thrusting the board he's holding forward as he asks, "Do you like it?"
Nate steps forward to get a better look. The board is colorful: greens and yellows and blues and filled and from a distance it looks like bands of color, thick bands and slim bands. Up close, Nate can see that there are long stripes of triangular patterns on the far left striping down the length of the board. Along the curve of the nose is a complicated network of interlocking images that takes him a moment to decipher: a stylized hibiscus flower that's small and half hidden by the veritable maze of images. He picks out a neat rendering of the USMC emblem, as well as what looks like a trireme ship. There are smaller designs connecting a mishmash of petroglyph images: a sun, an anchor, a warrior, a footprint.
The truly eye-catching part, however, is the bottom portion of the board where a stylized warrior strikes a powerful stance, arms above his head and legs apart. There is a sweep of geometric designs, thick at the bottom left and arching up around the figure, tapering off. Little curls following along the sweep of the line, and Nate realizes the pattern is meant to be a wave arching upward.
Ray crosses his arms and tilts his head to the side, carefully considering. "Personally, I think it's gay."
Nate is a little speechless. He says, "I don't understand," because the USMC logo makes him fairly certain that Walt didn't just go into a surf shop and pick him out a board. It feels personal in the same way the paddle his platoon presented him with upon leaving the Corps had felt personal.
But somehow, it's still a shock when Walt answers, "I made it."
"You…" Nate blinks. "Really?"
Walt shrugs. "It's a hobby that, you know, turned out to be pretty lucrative. I had a board prepped already and then I just thought, y'know, sort of a 'going away' present, so you'd remember us."
Ray says, "Gay" again, but Nate isn't paying attention.
"Brad helped," Walt's quick to point out. "Well, I mean, I guess he knows you better than I do. He had a few suggestions. But the art and everything..." Walt shrugs again.
"Walt… I don't even know what to say."
Ray throws his hands up in the air. "Fucking hug already! Geez."
Nate's laughing when he throws an arm over Walt's shoulder, and his 'thank-you' doesn't feel like enough, but Walt grins as if it is. As Nate takes the board, carrying it back toward his cabin for safe-keeping he hears Walt say, "I can't believe you thought that board was gay! You made me paint giant pink flowers on yours!"
Ray's answer carries easily over the increasing distance. "I wanted to see if you'd actually do it."
"Of course I'd do it. You were paying me to design a board for you."
"And I can't believe you made me pay for my motherfucking board!"
"Surfboards, as well as my own personal time, are not cheap. Since it wasn't a gift I had every right…" but whatever Walt continues on to say is lost as Nate cuts down to the sand.
Brad appears on the front porch as Nate is settling his gift securely inside. "I'm glad you like it."
"I'm glad I stayed," Nate says. It wasn't what he'd intended to say, but he doesn't regret it. It's the truth, after all, and it earns him another surprisingly shy smile, which is followed by a lingering kiss.
_________________________________
On Sunday, Nate checks out of the Dharma Resort and drags his suitcase to the front entrance where the white Defender is already waiting. His surfboard is already stashed at Brad's place, which means that there is only one small bag and his carry-on luggage to toss into the backseat. When he closes the door Cherie is standing right there, waiting to throw her arms around him. Nate laughs as he embraces her. "I'm seeing you tonight."
"Oh, I know. But I never miss an opportunity." She flashes a coy little wink as she steps back. "Brad, sugar, stop hiding behind that big truck and come say 'hello'."
Rudy stands there, smiling good-naturedly as Cherie wraps her arms around Brad's shoulders and drags him into a hug too. "Nate," he says. "I'm glad you're staying around for a bit, brother. We'll see you both tonight."
They shake hands and then Nate climbs into the front passenger seat and drags the door closed. "Sugar?" he says, teasingly. The first time Cherie had called Brad that, Nate had thought it was a generic pet name between friends, but he's heard it enough to realize that Cherie has nicknames for everyone and not all of them are as affectionate as the one she reserves for Brad.
Brad flashes a grimacing look in his direction, which Nate knows means the blond is secretly pleased. "Don't ask me. If I could change it, I would." Starting the engine, Brad shifts gears and pulls out of the Resort's driveway.
It's not the first time he's been to Brad's place but this time he's not a guest staying a few hours or spending the night. This time he grabs his luggage out of the backseat and stands aside as Brad unlocks the front door, smirking as he says, "I suppose you know your way around. Make yourself at home."
Nate's not the only one feeling it, which becomes obvious when Brad halts right in the front entrance, licking his lips and looking awkward. "You're welcome to share my room, but there are plenty of guest rooms around, if you want. Feel free to take your pick."
Nate tugs on the edge of Brad's T-shirt, dragging him forward into a brief kiss. "I don’t."
"Don’t?" Brad asks, blinking.
"Want a guest room."
There are empty drawers in Brad's dresser and space in the closet, not that Nate has much that he has to hang. Not that Nate has much at all, in fact. He unpacks what he does have and tries to calculate how far his savings will last him. This is the most impulsive thing he's ever done, but outside of a zinging sense of exhilaration mixed with nerves, he's not regretting it.
He had promised his mother that he wasn't moving, that Oahu wasn't a permanent choice. "Just, two weeks wasn't enough." He has no idea how much time will be enough, or at what point staying in one place stops being considered a holiday and becomes living there.
His plans haven't changed: he still wants to further his education, still wants to find a career that will allow him to make a difference. He's not running from any of that but he wants to do it right. Wants to go to classes and remember why he's there, and why it's important; where it's taking him and why that destination means anything to him at all, which is something he'd forgotten until he came to this island.
He's fairly certain that he'll recognize when it's time to go back. Hopefully when that time comes, he'll be able to make the right decision. Hopefully, when the time comes, he won't have to leave everything behind.
_________________________________
Without an imminent departure date looming, Nate finds the structure of his days changing. The pressure to do and see all he can is gone; there are days where he doesn't go anywhere near the water except to run along the beach, and days that are spent almost entirely in the ocean. He surfs, and he reads and he takes up watching C-Span and checking the news, both of which were things he actively avoided before.
He goes climbing with Rudy and Cherie at Diamond Head, rides a dune buggy with Ray, horseback rides with Walt, and goes snorkeling with Brad. On mornings when he wakes in a cold sweat he sits on one of the Adirondack chairs set on the private beach beneath the palm trees and he writes. Sometimes he talks to Brad, sometimes he talks to Rudy, and sometimes he doesn't talk about the Corps at all.
It feels like bits and pieces of himself are stitching back together again, but mostly he's happy and keeping busy and he doesn't spend too much time philosophizing. At night, they go out together as a group, or Ray and Walt come into the main house and they watch a movie. Sometimes Brad and Nate spend the evening by themselves. But every night, regardless of how the day is spent, Nate climbs into Brad's California king bed, slips under the soft sheets and looks out the glass windows to watch the shadows of palm trees sway in the dark, listens to the surge and roll of the waves along the beach as Brad presses close to him.
At some point Nate stops thinking: this is healing.
He starts to think: this is living.
_________________________________
When he finishes the call, Nate drops his cellphone onto the kitchen counter and grabs two beers from the fridge. He walks along the sheltered path toward the water where Brad is sitting on one of the wooden Adirondack chairs, his legs stretched out in a leisurely sprawl, his feet bare.
"That was Evan," Nate explains as he settles into the opposite chair, handing over one of the beers as he leans back. "He wanted to run some things by me, check that the quotes he was using were okay." Brad makes a low 'hm'ing sound.
Nate suspects that Evan began working on his book before he ever settled down to write the magazine articles that sent him to Iraq in the first place. Some of the others were caught off-guard, like it hadn't occurred to them that all those notes the reporter was taking might add to more than a handful of pages in a few of issues of Rolling Stone. Nate saw the book coming from a long ways off, plenty of time to adjust to the idea, though it had never bothered him much to begin with. He knows Evan, and he's confident that the end result will a fair representation of events.
"It's pretty much finished," Nate continues. "He's been stuck in the editing phase for a while."
"You keep in touch?"
Nate tips his head to the side. "He's called a few times about the article, and then about the book, mostly just fact checking, that kind of thing. But yeah, we talk some. This is the first we've spoken since I've been in Oahu, though. He was a little surprised."
The last time they'd talked Nate had been at school preparing for midterms, and Evan had accused him of being certifiably insane for jumping straight out of a Humvee in Iraq and into a lecture hall at Dartmouth.
This time, Evan had called just as Nate and Brad had been finishing dinner and Nate had gone out to the patio while Brad had finished clearing away. "There's some weird white noise coming across the line," Evan had said.
"Hm," Nate had said. "Maybe it's the waves."
"Since when are there waves at Dartmouth?" Nate had found himself explaining, and when he had finished, Evan's only response was, "Well, if there was ever anyone who needed a holiday…"
This feels like so much more than a holiday. He doesn't quite have words for it, but he imagines it's like Odysseus, which only makes him wonder what phase of the journey he's on. The first thing that comes into his head is: home, safe, and victorious, but another part of him wonders if his time in Oahu is maybe a little bit like Odysseus' stay with Circe: feasting, drinking, reveling before continuing onward. Toward home.
Maybe it's darkness, creeping in across the sky, or the quiet lull of the water. Nate finds himself peeling at his beer label as he admits, "When we were stationed in Baghdad, I thought about maybe doing something like that."
Brad turns his head, fixes him with a steady gaze. "Writing a book?" Nate nods. "Why don't you?"
“I can’t write a book,” Nate scoffs. “I have no idea where I would even begin.”
Brad takes a swig of beer, his gaze narrowed, considering. “I was born.”
Nate rolls his eyes. “Don’t even.”
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
“Stop quoting Dickens at me.”
He sees the smirk coming a mile away, but when the corner of Brad’s lips quirk up, just one side that somehow manages to show all his teeth, Nate can’t help laughing. He sort of loves that smile. “I thought you liked Dickens.”
“Brad, I’m trying to be serious.”
“I’m trying to be helpful.” Nate raises a disbelieving eyebrow. Brad says, “You’ve already made a solid start. Don’t bitch about an opening line.”
It takes a moment to realize that Brad’s talking about his journal. He wants to protest, to explain that the journal is just a stupid exercise that his therapist recommended, and that half the things written in that book probably aren’t even coherent.
He doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he takes a swig from his beer and stares out at the ocean. “I can’t write about the Marines, or Iraq or any of it.”
“Why not?”
Nate shrugs. “What would be the point?” It’s a variation of a question that’s been haunting him since he returned to the States. Since before that even, though he can’t quite place when it began.
He almost doesn’t register it at first because it starts so quietly that the rush-roar of the waves along the beach obscures it. But then the sound grows until Brad’s honey-smooth laugh bubbles up and leaves Nate blinking, unsure whether to be furious or shocked.
As a result, he’s left swinging awkwardly somewhere between the two. “What the fuck is so funny?”
“’What’s the point’,” Brad echoes, still snickering, though he's clearly trying to reign in his amusement with little success. “Nate,” he tries and then shakes his head. Tries again, “You’re a fucking grade-A, Ivy League, colossal moron. I have heard you bitch for hours about a damned speech you saw on fucking C-SPAN that nobody gives a shit about. You can’t even go to the beach without bringing a book with you, and that's without even taking your pretentious, hippie communist education into account.”
Nate narrows his eyes. “What’s your point?”
“Are you seriously trying to tell me that you don't believe words matter?” Brad asks. He pauses, and then opens his mouth like he still has more to say. Nothing more comes. Instead, Brad huffs, shakes his head and then gets up, walking up the path away from the water.
Nate isn’t sure how long he sits there in the dark, barely able to make out the white roll of the waves in the faint light coming from the house. He finishes his beer and sets it aside, but he’s still sitting, thinking. The problem, he thinks, is that he doesn't know what he wants to be anymore.
He was a student until he heard someone talk about ‘duty’ and ‘honor’ and being more than an individual in a crowd of people, about being a ‘team’ that could work together and protect each other. He was an infantry officer until someone recommended him for reconnaissance training. He was an idealist until he woke up one day standing at the side of a bridge en route to Al Kut looking at the passport of some college kid he might have shot the night before, and couldn’t pretend that his presence in that place wasn’t fucking things up even worse. He was a recon officer until he thought, 'No more.'
Nate remembers his mother smiling at him as he climbed out of her car at the airport. “Get some sun," she'd told him. "Swim in the ocean, learn to Hula. Just be.”
Nate had thought, “Be what?”
When retired from the Marines he’d had it easy. His family was there for him, he had friends who stuck by him and put up with his mood swings, and inappropriate comments resulting from too much time spent with a bunch of guys who rarely, if ever, concerned themselves with being PC. He had an education and the opportunity to continue that education, the money to do so. He’d landed on his feet.
So why the hell doesn't it feel that way?
When he walks back into the house he finds Brad sitting on the bed wearing a pair of cotton pajama pants and his black-framed geek-chic glasses that really should not be as hot as they are. He's got his laptop propped on his legs as he types. The sight momentarily derails what Nate had intended to say, especially when Brad glances up over the top of the frames.
Nate clears his throat. "Back home. Most of my friends, and a fair number of my extended family think that I joined the Marines as some sort of rebellion."
Brad blinks at him. "Blasting 50 Cent and OutKast wasn't enough?"
It feels a little bit like those tentative moments after a fight where both parties walk around on eggshells constantly checking and double-checking, 'Are we good now? Is it over?' It isn't so much that they actually fought, it's that this is one of those moments where there's that choice: share a little bit more, or keep the defenses high.
Tentatively, Nate takes a step closer as he shrugs. "I guess, even when I was rebelling I was a pretty good kid. My grades were always consistent; I never broke any laws or did something that might embarrass my parents or anything. Joining the Marines was probably the most outrageous thing I did…well, except for my prom, but that's not the point. I suppose I can understand why people would think my retiring from the Corps was just correcting a mistake. Coming to my senses or something."
Brad sets his laptop aside and shifts up on the bed. Nate has his full and undivided attention. Brad says, "It wasn't a mistake," with such steady confidence that Nate is momentarily winded. Ever since he mentioned that there was a time when he might have gone to military school, Nate has caught himself imagining Brad as soldier. As a Marine.
He pictures Brad in a MOPP suit, forest camouflage because apparently the people in charge of ordering MOPPS didn't get the memo that Iraq is a desert country. Dust-covered, weighed down by his gear, an M-4 at rest by his side, dark circles under his eyes because he hasn't slept in seventy-two hours, hair buzzed short to comply with the grooming standard. Tall and utterly, undeniably competent. Nate knows Brad would have been the kind of Marine you'd want leading the charge: steady, reliable, capable.
"I know why I joined," Nate says, swallowing around the constriction in his throat. He is impossibly relieved that Brad bowed to the ocean and not the military; grateful to Brad's uncle for dragging what Nate is certain was an impossibly stubborn and precocious teenager out to the water, even if it was against Brad's will at the time. Glad that Brad is here, now, and not out there in the desert fighting. "I know why I left, too. Them thinking that…it doesn't change things."
"Then what?" Brad prompts.
There have been questions plaguing him since he got back from Iraq that rise to meet him now; that never really leave him be. Nate thinks about all the moments in the past few years that he's proud of, finds that it's easier to recall all the things he would do differently, the moments that made him question everything he thought he understood, the moments when it was almost too much to carry on. There are things that he has kept to himself, and he knows those moments are written out in his journals. Knows that those moments would be included in any book he tried to write.
There would be no more secrets, no more pretenses.
He says, "I think if I wrote a book the USMC would blacklist it."
Again, that steady blue gaze matches his. Nate knows Brad's hearing all the things that he doesn't say, knows that, at least in part, Brad understands. "Then I guess you shouldn't write a book."
Nate raises his eyebrows. "If no one reads it, then it won't sell."
"And then it won't make money, and you'll have to go to school and earn your living the good old fashioned way. I get it." Brad keeps matching his stare head-on. "Don't write it, it's not worth it."
"I'm serious, Brad."
"Message received," Brad says, throwing in a wise-ass little salute because he's just that much of a prick. "I'll never mention it again. I apologize for bringing it up, clearly the idea was poorly thought-out on my part."
Nate wrestles him down for that, pins the taller frame beneath him with ease borne of years of training. Brad holds still under his grip and smirks, still defiant to the last. Nate keeps his grip strong on Brad's wrists keeping his hands pinned on either side of his head, but he leans down and lays a soft kiss against Brad's lips. He says, "I can't."
"Tell me you 'won't', and that's fine. I can understand that, even. Don't tell me that you 'can't', because frankly, Nate, that's bullshit."
Nate slips his tongue into Brad's mouth and lets his grip slacken, and then releases it entirely so Brad's hands can ghost along Nate's back and then fist into his hair. Sixta's gruff voice echoes in his memories: "Grooming standard" as Brad's fingers curl and tug gently, adjusting the angle of the kiss just so, deepening it.
_________________________________
Nate pushes the idea away. He keeps up with his journal but doesn't put any extra effort into his words. The whole point of the exercise is to help him make sense of things, and he doesn't want any extra pressure on that. To him, books are written by people who have already figured something out, and that's not him.
He reaches a tenuous balance with Ray, who stops narrowing his eyes accusingly whenever Nate mentions his home back in Baltimore, or his intentions to return to school at Dartmouth. "Just be careful," Ray says. "You don't have to go to war to get fucked up."
Nate sees vague hints of Brad's insecurities, hears the hidden meanings behind the flippancy, notices the moments of hesitation, or the shifts in mood that leave him curiously quiet. Brad shares himself in fits and starts, and Nate has learned to be patient.
It takes three weeks of living together before Nate learns about the last serious relationship Brad had, which ended when his girlfriend married his best friend. "They live back in California," Brad had said, in that infuriatingly casual tone, like the entire exchange hadn't been devastating. "She's pregnant now. They called me the other day."
'The other day' being the day when Brad had disappeared until late evening, taken his board and his truck and left his cellphone, and Nate, behind. "This is how Brad works shit out," Ray had said as Nate paced the length of the living room. "Sometimes he drives himself home in time for dinner, sometimes not. Sometimes you get a call from the hospital because he pulled some totally moronic, amateur surf-shift and nearly got himself killed."
When Brad had come home Nate had said that next time at the very least Brad should take his cell. He hadn't pushed further.
The next piece of truly personal information Nate gets comes from a magazine. It's the latest issue of Carve, which he stumbles on when he's over in the guesthouse visiting Walt. Brad doesn't subscribe to any surf magazines, and outside of a few surfers who are in Oahu on holiday, Brad doesn't get recognized that often. At least, the people who recognize him see him frequently enough not to make a big deal about it.
There's a picture of Brad beside the article and that, more than the title, is what catches Nate's attention. In the photograph a giant arching wave is cresting and Brad is perfectly balanced on his board, totally covered up by the wave. Nate skims the article, notes Brad's achievements and thinks that the journalist who wrote this apparently had more than a little crush. His eyes catch on a paragraph that details the strength and focus needed to win Triple Crown, 'especially so soon after suffering a significant loss.'
In December, just before the competition, Brad's uncle Daniel died in a hospital back in California.
After dinner Nate follows Brad onto the porch. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't want to talk about it. I still don't. It's always there, impossible to forget…he raised me, Nate, in every way that matters. This house, the boats, so much of this is stuff he left me. It sounds ungrateful but …I don't care about it…" Brad scrubs a hand over his eyes, runs it back through his hair and lets out a whooshing breath.
Nate ends up sitting on the patio stones with his back leaning awkwardly against one of the wooden columns, Brad resting against his chest, listening to the waves. "He was a corporate lawyer," Brad says. "He was successful, but eventually he burnt out and he quit. I was a kid at the time, but my mom told me he was pretty rough for a while, and then one day he told her that he was moving to Hawaii and he'd taken up surfing. He taught me everything…"
Daniel had died of a heart attack when he'd been visiting Brad's family back in California. Brad had been in Oahu. He'd flown back for the funeral and the first thing he had done when he returned to Oahu was enter Triple Crown.
Nate thinks about the focus and quiet that he feels when he surfs, the sense that nothing else beyond that single moment exists. He more than understands why Brad had trouble mentioning his uncle, why he turns to surfing in order to cope. "I care about you, Brad," Nate says. "I don't want to learn about you from a magazine, but I can understand that there are some things that are hard to talk about."
It's another significant figure in Brad's life who has left him, intentionally or no. Nate understands Ray's trepidation a little better, but he can't bring himself to regret any of the decisions that have brought him here. He realizes that until this moment, a part of him has been wondering how all of this could be so easy for Brad, this relationship thing. He should have known better. Nothing in life is ever easy except giving up.
_________________________________
The first person that Nate tells about the book is Mike Wynn, his former Gunnery Sergeant, who is less surprised by the idea of Nate writing than he is that Nate is basically living in Oahu.
In turn, Nate is surprised that Mike even knows where he is at all because he certainly didn't update anyone as to his holiday plans. It was supposed to be two weeks, and it's not like he's on the phone with Mike or anyone else from the Corps all that regularly.
"No, you're not," Mike says, wryly. "Though you could stand to check-in now and again. Scuttlebutt came from Reporter."
"I sent you and Cara a Christmas card," Nate defends. "And since when is Evan part of the knitting circle?"
Mike snorts. "Since he went to war with us, Nate."
They talk for most of the morning and it makes him feel homesick the same way that talking to his mom or his dad makes him homesick. Mike got him through some of the toughest moments of OIF, of Nate's entire career as an officer. There are things that Mike knows that Nate has never told anyone else, and there's some things that only Mike could understand because they were usually standing side-by-side when the shit came rolling downhill, even if Nate's the one it slammed into first.
He starts out writing on Brad's laptop, sitting on the beach and glancing up periodically to try and pick Brad out amongst the crowd of surfers. It's never difficult, especially when Brad takes a wave. There is a certain effortless beauty to the way Brad rides a wave that reminds Nate always of what it's like to be right where you're supposed to be, doing precisely what you should be doing, at the exact right moment.
After a while, his mom gets together a package and she includes his laptop, which means that there are no longer mini feuds between himself and Brad when they both want to use the laptop a the same time.
When Nate tells Evan about the book Evan asks if he's planning on making writing his career, now that's he's retired from the Marines. "I don't think I have more than one book in me," Nate says. "Whether it gets published or not, I don't even think that really matters to me."
This answers entirely baffles Evan. Maybe it's because he's a journalist who makes his money off what he writes, the notion of putting effort into something and not caring if it succeeds is probably foreign. To Nate, though, the writing isn't the point. "I'm not writing to make a point," he says. "I think maybe I'm writing to find one."
Evan wishes him luck and offers to give any advice or support that Nate might need, "Just give me a call." It makes Nate think of what Brad told him months ago, when he decided to extend his stay in Oahu, that everyone who comes into your life has a purpose. Evan was just another reporter when he first entered Camp Mathilda, and Nate knows he endured some teasing from the platoon, but somewhere along the way he became as much a part of the group as it is possible for a civilian to be, and Nate's grateful for that.
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It's not always smooth sailing. Nate has days when he wants to pull his hair out over his writing, when he has nothing worthwhile to say, when no words come to him at all, when he writes an entire section and then throws it out. He's snarky and irritable and he knows that, but he can't help it.
Brad has days when he is stubborn and infuriating, or sullen and impossible, and Nate doesn't have the luxury of retreating to the guesthouse like Walt and Ray. They fight and yell and they make up again and somewhere in the middle of it all Nate remembers Brad saying: "It doesn't have to be 'moving in'. It would be too soon for that anyway. But, you could move in."
If there's a difference, he isn't seeing it.
Brad puts on the coffee and Nate takes down the mugs, pops three pieces of toast into the toaster because Brad only ever eats one slice, and then turns back to the eggs while Brad gets out two small bowls and spoons yogurt into them. "Don't look now," Nate says, smiling. "But I think we might actually be in a relationship."
Brad tilts his head to the side, smirking. "I'm strangely alright with that."
Nate nods. "Me too." He doesn't think about home, or Dartmouth. That's a whole other world away, a place he's going back to, some day, but not tomorrow, and certainly not today. Right now he's taking time to just be.
A portion of that, a significant portion, includes being with Brad.
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Evan Wright publishes his book at the start of spring. He sends an advance copy to Nate, who reads it through in a single day and can't quite find the words after he finishes it. The copy is signed; there is a quote from Augustine of Hippo written out in Evan's messy print.
"Anyone who looks with anguish on evils so great must acknowledge the tragedy of it all; and if anyone experiences them without anguish, his condition is even more tragic, since he remains serene by losing his humanity," Brad reads when Nate hands over the book.
Nate still feels a bit shell-shocked. "I knew he was observant. I didn't know just how observant until I read that."
Brad reads the book always in the evening, lying on the couch with his feet propped on Nate's lap. He doesn't make any comments. He doesn't laugh or snort or react in any way. Sometimes Nate turns from the television and wants to ask, 'What part are you at now?' but he doesn't.
Just once, he thumbs open the book to the place Brad has marked-off when he finds it sitting on the coffee table and no one is around. He skims a few lines, recognizes the description of Schwetje's attempt to call in a fire mission that would have killed the entire platoon. After that, Nate stops checking on Brad's progress.
When he finishes reading the book Brad puts it aside and asks, "Did you want to talk about it?"
Nate flips off the television and shifts on the sofa so he's twisted to face Brad. "What did you think?"
Brad's face is inscrutable. "It was well written." Nate nods, because he thought so as well. "It seemed like a fair representation of events?"
"Yeah," Nate confirms. "He did a good a job." They lapse into silence. "I think I just wanted you to have some sort of sense of what it was like. From a different perspective, maybe a less biased one."
Brad snorts. "Nate, based on what I read this reporter had a hell of a lot more bias than you ever show when you talk about the idiots in command." Nate purses his lip and frowns, which makes Brad snicker. "Christ, that's exactly what I'm talking about."
"It's force of habit!" Nate knows it's more than that. He has no delusions about war or humanity in general. People are flawed, war is fucked, and not everyone who is attracted to battle represents the ideal that the USMC strives toward. He isn't interested in passing judgments; he just wants to make sense of what his part was in all of that. Where did he fall on that broad spectrum of good and bad officers? He already knows that he doesn't entirely comply with the expectations the Corps has, he's not certain, though, where he falls in terms of his own.
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"If you could surf one wave anywhere in the world, which wave would you surf?" Ray asks one day. They're out at their beach again, sitting on their boards waiting for the next set to roll in. Nate's tried a few different waves around the island but he's fond of this location, if only because it is isolated and there are no treacherous conditions outside of the water itself.
Nate shrugs. "It doesn't matter to me. It's not about the waves."
"What the fuck to you mean? Of course it's about the waves!" Ray squawks.
To Nate, surfing is about losing himself and finding himself in the same moment. He can do that on any wave, so long as there's some decent height to it.
"Surfing is all about pushing your limits," Ray lectures. "Tell him, Rudy.
Rudy only shakes his head. "Ray, my friend, everybody is looking for something different in the waves."
"Walt." Ray twists around on his board. "Come on. Back me up."
"Sorry Ray," Walt says. "I'm with Rudy on this."
"What? You can't tell me after last year's Big Wave when you had that crazy run that you don't surf for the challenge."
Walt shrugs. "I surf to create a moment worth remembering."
"Besides," Rudy says, interrupting the tirade they can all see Ray brewing. "If you really want to push your limits, you should join Cherie and I on our holiday."
Ray rolls his eyes. "Rudy, I hate to tell you this, but crawling around the cold, damp, claustrophobic pitch-black caves in northern Brazil, going who the fuck knows where is not what a holiday is."
"I didn't know you were afraid of the dark, Ray," Walt says innocently.
Ray tackles Walt right off his perch on his board and Nate sits there, shaking his head and laughing and then out of nowhere he realizes that this is it.
It's time to go back.
He doesn't know why, but it feels like the right choice. Oahu, the water, the people, is what he needed to get himself back on track, to remember that he is more than a student, or an officer. His book is raw but it's mostly finished, and he feels like he's made peace with everything he was, everything he did.
Now it's time to move forward.
During dinner, both of them seated on opposite side of the table, Nate tells Brad. In retrospect, he doesn't know why he even considered that Brad might get angry, after all this time he should really know better. Instead, Brad locks down. "Not right away," Nate says. "But soon, I think. I'm registered for the next semester anyway, I want to shop my manuscript around over the summer, see if there's any interest. It just…it feels like it's time."
Brad nods. "I understand."
They finish dinner in contemplative silence, and then Brad stands and starts to clear away the dishes. "What's your stance on long distance relationships?" When Brad only blinks at him Nate continues, "I mean, when I go back home, go back to Dartmouth, are we still going to be together?"
Brad shakes his head. "That's never how it goes, Nate."
Nate jerks his eyebrows up. "I'm asking if you want to at least try."
Brad loads the dishwasher, adds the soap and sets the cycle, and then he leans forward over the counter, his arms rigid, hands braced on the cool slate, his back to Nate. He says, "Yes," and it sounds like this admission has cost him dearly.
"Me too." Nate rests his forehead on Brad's back, his arms wrapping around Brad's waist and he breathes.
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It feels right to go, but it's not easy.
Nate navigates the airport, his friends clustered around him, all them doing a fair impression of a school of fish as the walk. Everyone is talking and laughing and upbeat, and Nate is missing them each already. It's hard. Oahu and Brad and the others feel more like home than anything has in a long while. He hasn’t even left the island and Nate's already feeling homesick.
His bags are checked and Walt has assured him that his surfboard will be fine, and that he can pick it up with the oversized luggage when arrives back in Baltimore. "Trust me, I've done this before. I haven't lost a board yet. How about you, Brad?"
"Not once."
"There. You see?" Walt smiles. Then his expression changes in a blink of an eye, goes flat and deadly serious. "If you lose it, I will be very unhappy." Nate is still recovering from the shock when the familiar, smiling Walt he's become used to returns, laughing as he bumps a fist into Nate's upper arm. "Just fooling…but seriously."
Ray scampers back to the group, thrusting a stack of magazines at Nate. "I got you some light reading for the epic flight.” Nate scans the magazines and ascertains that they are all about surfing, except for one porn rag tucked in the middle. "Seriously," Ray says. "This is a long flight." Nate is pretty certain that the airport bookshop does not carry porn, which makes him wonder where the skin mag came from. At least it looks new, so he's pretty certain it didn't come from under Ray's mattress.
"They're all new issues, and Brad's not in any of them," Ray says. "Which is why I also brought these." He hands over several other magazines while ignoring Brad's protests. Nate groups the entire bundle together and stashes them all quickly in his carry on before Brad can snatch them away.
"God dammit, Ray," Brad says, but he sounds more resigned than anything.
"Don't worry. Any future articles will be forward to your email address. I'll let you know if there's a radio or television broadcast coming up. Some places actually film the competitions so, you know, I'll keep you posted."
Nate smiles. “Thanks, Ray.”
“No problem, buddy.” Ray throws an arm around Nate's shoulders. “I’m there for ya, whatever you need. But I draw the line at taking sexy pictures of Bradley over here.” Then his head tilts as he eyes Brad up and down. “Actually…”
“No, Ray,” Brad says, with enough exasperation that Nate gets the feeling this is a conversation they’ve had before.
“What? Long-distance relationships are tricky, okay? You gotta develop some techniques, is all I’m saying.”
Rudy gives Nate a bone-crushing hug and Cherie places a lei over his head, the flowers fresh and fragrant. "Travel safely, Nate," she says, and kisses his cheek.
"I hope to hear from you soon, brother," Rudy adds.
Walt gives him a friendly hug, when he steps back he's smiling. "Make a wave," he says, holds up his hand with his thumb and pinkie out.
Nate finds his throat constricting. There are no words that can adequately express how grateful he is to have found each of them, that they embraced him like a friend more or less immediately. He doesn't want to leave even though he knows he has to. Even though he's certain this 'good-bye' isn't absolute.
Nate says, "Mahalo."
Brad shifts closer then, the heat of his body seeping through the thin button-down he's wearing. The kiss he gives Nate is what his sister's would probably consider a church kiss, soft and sweet and ever so reserved. When he starts to shift back, Nate grabs a fist full of his shirt and tugs him closer and kisses him properly.
It's not 'good-bye' it's 'see you later', but that 'later' could be a while from now and Nate intends to take his fill while he can. Ray and Cherie can hoot and give catcalls all they want, it won't stop him.
"Uh," Walt says. "Not to break up this moment but your plane is boarding pretty soon, and you have to pass through the gate…"
Reluctantly, Nate steps back. "Right," he says, taking a bracing breath. "I'll see you all later, then." It sounds woefully inadequate, and he stands there trying to think of something better.
"Good luck, little buddy!" Ray says, waving his hand. "When you get your seat, look for me out the window, okay? Because I'm totally running down the runway beside your plane, being all weepy and waving at you and shit."
Walt frowns. "You mean like those black and white movies where the heroine always cries and says 'goodbye' a thousand time and sobs into her handkerchief?"
Ray nods. "That's what I'm talking about. That's the extent to which I am going to miss you, man. I'm going to miss the shit out of you."
"Yeah. I'm pretty sure that whole running thing only works for trains," Walt says.
Nate's snickering, his moment of melancholy mostly conquered until he meets Brad's gaze, and Brad says, "Aloha," softly, his voice a little rough.
Then it doesn't matter what joke Ray tries to make because Nate's chest is constricting and he aches with the thought of leaving. "Aloha," he says back, raises his hand and flashes the classic surfer wave, pinkie and thumb out, and then he forces himself to turn on his heel and walk through the security line.
By the time he boards his plane, Nate's managed to compose himself. He tries to remind himself that there's things he's looking forward to when he gets back: seeing his family and his friends, getting ready to go back to school and finishing his book.
He drops down into his seat, which is by the window just above the wing and glances around. At least he seems to be leaving during the one month of off-season that Oahu has, which means there is a chance, however small, that the plane isn't teeming with people.
A chirruping ringing starts up, and it takes him a second to realize that it's his cellphone registering a text. Nate pulls it out of his carry on. There's a message from Brad: "Did I mention I have a condo in California?"
He catches himself grinning down at his phone. Quickly, Nate types back a reply and then switches his phone off. He thinks: "Yeah, I'll be back," and knows that it's true, even if he isn't sure when. He's not sure what exactly lies ahead of him, but he's looking forward to it. Nate tucks his phone away and settles back in his seat as his plane begins to taxi to the runway.
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|<< THE END ||
STORY MASTERPOST