I swim alone most mornings, before the world wakes, because there is a version of me that only surfaces — pun fully intended, Darlings — when no one else is watching.
The water that morning was the temperature of memory: shocking at first, then impossible to leave.
My wildcat bikini had felt perfect to slip on, and off…what little there was of it, and the towel that waited, unbothered, on the sand. It might also have sat discreetly pool side…but this day, was made for the stories the ocean would remind me of.
This is where I'll tell you a bit about the paperback man, since you've been so patient, and since memory — unlike the present — asks no permission before it undresses itself for you.
He read constantly. Battered spines, dog-eared pages, a man who traveled with more books than shirts. I used to steal his sentences mid-page just to watch him pretend to be annoyed. He was not a subtle man in the ways that mattered — the way he'd stop reading entirely, book still open, the moment I walked into a room. The way “just one more chapter” became, more nights than either of us will admit, no chapters at all.
I have one almost regret from that whole plot twist of my life, and I'll give it to you honestly, because a legend who never regrets anything isn't a legend, she's a liar. I never told him I loved him. I told him everything else — my real age, my worst year, the name I was born with before I gave myself a better one — but not that. I let my life move on with that sentence still folded in my chest, unsent, like the note currently sitting in my drawer.
Some mornings the water gives moments back to me whether I ask for it or not. It must be the water’s caress reminding me to be patient as I visit the coolness of being buoyant while feeling fully supported.
I must admit, swimming alone I often choose the bottoms that slip easily to one side beneath the surface. The current does some of the work. My own hand is perfectly capable of the rest.
I came up for air gasping.
Yes, Ladies. I am that good.
And there she was — not the paperback man, obviously, Darlings, do keep up — but someone from an entirely different chapter of my life, standing at the shoreline like the tide had personally arranged her there.
“Word is you were back,” she said. The tide had apparently tossed her onto my early morning beach.
Word travels faster than boats, faster than ferries, faster, apparently, than a woman can towel off and compose herself.
“Word,” I said, “is correct.”
She smiled the smile I remembered far too well for someone I hadn't seen in years. Except for one brief moment while getting pedicures.
I do not know yet, Sirens, whether this is a complication or a gift. I suspect, as always, it is both.
I plan, to keep reading the story. Even as I write it.
XXOO Your Weazelle
