I rub my lips together, mulling it over for a moment. “It doesn’t change much for me. I like Seattle a lot. I feel a kinship with it.”
“It’s because you’re a grunge girl at heart,” he interjects.
“True. And a weirdo. Which is why I like Portland too, and it will always be my home, but despite what some people think, I think it’s better that I’m further away from my family. I don’t want to be too far, which is why Seattle works so well. But I don’t think I’ll have a chance to keep growing if I lived closer…though now that I say that, I get why Ada is so mad at me.”
“She’s going through shit,” he says to me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, hands laced, bumping my shoulder with his. “Just give her some space and some time to figure it out.”
“It’s nothing personal,” I go on. “It’s nothing really to do with her. Or Dad. But I don’t think she gets that.”
“She will. So, you want to stay in Seattle. You haven’t thought about San Francisco?”
“I would love to live there but we can’t afford it, no matter how much money we have.”
“This is true.” He pauses. “But dreams do come true, baby. If our documentary gets picked up by Netflix or Amazon or someone, you never know. Until then though, we stay in Seattle?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“And we try and get a house. With a yard. And adopt a little chubby gray pitbull named Fat Hippo?”
“Absolutely. Either by the water or deep in the trees.”
“Pretty sure we’ll only be able to afford deep in the trees. And probably far from the city.”
Dex makes the grabby hand motion for the alcohol. I hand it to him.
“We won’t know until we start looking,” I tell him.
He takes a gulp of the JD and then puts it down in the sand between his boots. He reaches into the pocket of his utility jacket and pulls out his phone, quickly flipping through the apps. Then he hands it to me.
“I’ve already been looking,” he says.
I stare down at the Zillow page on his phone and quickly scroll through listing after listing.
“I saved all the ones we should look at. It’s a lot, which isn’t a bad thing, and we can at least start narrowing it down.”
The fact that he’s already been so proactive, already starting the process for us to buy a home together and start a new chapter in life, warms me more than the bourbon ever could.
I lean in and kiss him softly on the cheek. “I love you, you know that?”
He turns his head slightly, a soft smile curving his lips. He grabs my hand, giving it a squeeze. “I do know that. And that alone means everything.”
He kisses me back and then hands me the bottle, getting to his feet. “Okay, I’m breaking the seal. Where does a guy take a leak around here without having someone shine a flashlight on him?”
He takes out his phone, aiming it on the sand as he makes his way away from the fire and into the darkness. I watch as the light gets smaller and smaller, hoping he doesn’t go too far. Finally the light stops moving and I exhale.
I turn my attention back to the flames, my mind drifting everywhere and anywhere. I don’t blame Dex for already looking at houses—I know how important it is for him to feel like we’re a real family unit, even without a baby. He’s had such a traumatic and tragic childhood, abandoned at every turn, that I know this is the kind of thing he’s always strived for. Or at least he did once he realized he was deserving of it. That was a difficult thing for him to move past, to realize he’s deserving of love and family.
Sometimes that abandonment still comes out. He’s never been very needy, always been independent, used to looking out for himself and only himself. Selfish, but only because he had to be to survive. Even now I find myself reassuring him that he’s worthy of being loved. It’s a hard thing to overcome, and it’s not like he ever asks for the reassurance, but I always keep it in mind, especially if I act in a certain way that may put him in a bad space. And those bad spaces crop up from time to time.
He’s had contact with his father, Curtis, over the last few years, but that hasn’t helped as much as I thought it would. He came to the wedding but that’s the last we’ve seen him. He does make the effort to call on Dex’s birthday or at Christmas, which is nice, and he and his wife Margaret send gifts and cards. But their relationship is very strained and I think Dex is still waiting, deep down, for his father to make up for running out on him, supplying him with all the love he missed out on.
That hasn’t happened yet. I’m not sure it ever will.
A scratching noise from behind me pulls me out of my thoughts.
Distracted, I turn around and look over my shoulder.
There’s nothing but darkness.
I keep looking, training my eyes to try and see something but all I pick up is the sand closest to me, illuminated faintly by the fire. In the distance there’s darkness, then the lights of hotels and houses.
Feeling the hair raise at the back of my neck, I turn back around and face the fire. In the distance, the light from Dex’s phone is now gone.
What the fuck?
“Dex?” I call out, rubbing my hands up and down my arms, feeling a deep chill come over me despite the warmth of the fire.
I don’t hear him. I only hear the rhythmic pounding of the waves.
And that scratching sound again, like someone has taken a stick and is drawing deep lines in packed sand.
Shit.
Now my body is abuzz with nerves, telling me to turn around, to look at what’s making that noise. To face the darkness, the truth.
A puff of hot breath falls on my neck.
I yelp, jumping to my feet, backing up until I almost fall in the fire.
There’s nothing there at all.
Just the log and the empty sand behind it and that infinite black.
“Perry?”
I whirl to the side to see Dex approaching, boots crunching in the sand.
“Where did you go?” I ask, barely finding my voice, my pulse pounding against my throat.
“I was right over there somewhere,” he says. “My phone died. Thankfully I had the fire to guide me back. Were you going to come look for me?”
I nod absently and then look back at the log.
I walk toward it, crouching down to pick up the bottle of JD. As I do so, my eyes drift over the back of the log. Long, deep indents are carved into the back of it, like a pair of claws took a swipe at the wood.
Right where I was sitting.
My eyes trail over to the sand behind it, where similar claw marks are visible, leading off into the darkness.
Was that there before? I can’t even remember.
“I’m getting a bit cold,” I tell him, giving him a quick smile before handing him the bottle. “Let’s have a shot and head back to the room. I think we need to abuse the hot tub.”
“Sounds good to me,” he says. He takes a shot then gives me the bottle so I do the same. We quickly kick sand on the fire, putting it out into a puff of dark smoke.
I make sure we walk back to the hotel by way of the side roads, taking solace in the lights and civilization.
Eleven
Our mini vacation did us a lot of good. Despite the couple of strange and scary things that happened, we returned home to Seattle feeling relaxed and refreshed and utterly satisfied with each other. Fat Rabbit, Rebecca, and Lucinda were there to greet us, and Rebecca gave me a birthday present (though she told me to open it later, alone).