“He’ll be OK,” I say. “He’s an incredible man, your dad. I’m sorry I didn’t say a proper good-bye.”
“How was your boat trip?” he asks, eyes still on the breaking waves in front of us.
“I’m glad to have my feet back on solid ground.”
He looks across at me and smiles, reaching a hand up to my hair.
“You look all wild and windswept.”
I let him smooth it down around my face, then find myself leaning my head into his hand.
“You’re back sooner than I thought you would be,” he says, in a tone I can’t decipher.
His eyes make contact with mine, and he drops his hand almost guiltily from my hair.
“I got a phone call from my gran, it kind of ruined things,” I say, my eyes darting to my toes in the sand.
He makes a low hum, an invitation to explain.
“It turns out my parents’ love story wasn’t quite what I thought it was.” I pick up a handful of sand, letting it drain through my fingers. “The way Mum told it, it was this grand romance, an epic proposal, and the perfect relationship until she lost Dad in the accident. Turns out it was only ever a fling. My dad didn’t even stick around when he found out I was on the way.”
“I’m sorry, Laura. That must have been hard to hear,” says Ted, leaning over and nudging his shoulder against mine.
“And, to make it worse, none of the objects I have from my dad were even his. His books, this watch—my mum bought them, so I’d have something to ‘remember’ him by.” I puff out an angry laugh, and take the watch off my wrist, examining it in my hands. “I’ve worn this watch every day of my adult life. Every time I look at it, I think of him. It’s been broken twice, and I paid a fortune to get it mended because it felt like”—I pinch my lips together—“the ticking felt like his heartbeat carrying on somehow.” My vision is swimming. It’s not even a particularly nice watch now I look at it objectively, the muddy brown color and the hands too thick for the size of the face.
Ted puts an arm around my shoulders, and I want to sink into him. But instead, I fling the watch into the waves as hard as I can.
“It’s all just meaningless junk.”
Seeing it go, disappearing beneath the waves, I unclip the pendant around my neck and pull my arm back to fling it into the sea too, but Ted stops me, grabbing my arm and gathering me into a tight hug against his warm chest.
“Don’t,” he says softly. Being folded in his arms feels so good, and I let myself go limp against his body. He talks gently into my hair, and the tone of his voice is like dark amber honey; I want it to ooze into every pore.
“Don’t, Laura.”
“What, you’re allowed to throw things into the sea, but I’m not?” I ask with a half laugh, half sob.
“No, you need to think of your own symbolic gesture, you can’t have mine.” His words make me laugh, pressing snotty tears into his shoulder. Then he says, in a more serious voice, “These things might not have the meaning you thought, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have meaning. From what you’ve told me about your mother, she invested in objects. Perhaps it was hard for her that she had nothing of his to give you.” Ted strokes my hair. “Maybe she was trying to give you the father she would have liked you to have.”
Ted’s arms feel so warm and safe. I feel so known by him; the words he says, the way he touches me like fingers on braille, reading who I am.
“I just hate not being able to ask her about it,” I say, my voice calmer now. “I’ll never be able to ask her.”
“I think when you’re young, your parents feel infallible,” says Ted, “people who have all the answers. Then gradually you notice a few chinks, and it crosses your mind that occasionally they might be wrong. Then one day, you look at them, and you realize they’re just the same as you—cobbling it together, with no real clue.”
“Gerry must have more of a clue than most, though.”
“I don’t know.” Ted releases me from his arms and weaves his hands together, looking at the place where his ring used to be. “I think he’s just trying to make sense of it all like the rest of us.”
Reaching forward beyond his feet, Ted picks something up from the sand, a blue tear-shaped piece of sea glass.
“The blue pieces are rare,” he says, examining it and then pressing it into my hand. “This is a good piece. Some people call them mermaid’s tears. Do you want to hear the story?” I nod as I inspect the smooth glass in my palm—it looks like a gem, a tear of frosted sapphire. “The story goes that a mermaid watched as a storm threatened to wreck the ship of the man she loved,” Ted says. His voice is hypnotic, I love listening to him. I sink my head back onto his shoulder as he speaks and he runs a hand across my hair, my whole body alert to his touch. “She was forbidden by Neptune from intervening in the weather, but she calmed the sea and tamed the waves to save her love from certain death. For her disobedience, she was banished to the ocean floor, never to surface again. Her tears wash up on the shore as glass, a reminder of true love.”
I don’t know if it’s the hair stroking or his perfectly chosen words, but I pull away and look into Ted’s face, and then we are kissing. It feels out of my control, the force with which I want to kiss him; I give in to it entirely, planting my lips firmly against his. There’s a moment of surprise in his eyes, a flash of startled bemusement, but then it turns into the golden flicker of fire I saw last night on the beach, and in an instant he’s kissing me back. His kiss is so passionate, it feels as though the fire in Ted, the years of loss and sadness have suddenly been given an outlet. The energy of it is electrifying.
I climb onto his lap—my thinking mind muted by an animal instinct. Clasping my hands around his face, his beautiful, clean-shaven skin, I run my hands up into his hair, pushing my mouth down onto his. His lips push back with equal force and his tongue delves to explore mine, unlocking some new urgency inside me. The kiss sends a wave of energy down between my legs, and I pull back, startled by the effect his lips are having on the rest of my body. When I pull away, his eyes lock onto mine and I know I should pause, let my thinking brain back in for a moment, but I can’t. Perhaps he sees the want in my eyes, because he holds my waist and rolls me over on the sand. Then, lying on top of me, his fingers entwined in mine above our heads. I push my hips up against his, and he lets out a low moan.
Some animal switch has been flicked inside me; I feel feral and wild and completely alive.
This—this is kablammo.
Then it ends as quickly as it began. Cold splashes over my feet, and Ted flinches, pulling away. We look down to see the tide has come in, the waves breaking over our legs—we laugh, untwine our limbs, and scramble farther up the beach, away from the water.