Tex is on the balcony. In the wind. In the rain. He's got one hand on the railing and his flashlight in the other and he's leaning out to look down at the waterline.
"The first floor's taking water!" he shouts back at me. "Maybe two feet inside, based on where it's hitting the exterior. Surge is still rising!"
The wind is incredible. I'm standing in the doorway and it's pulling at me, trying to drag me out, and Tex is standing in the full force of it like he's planted there. His shirt is soaked in seconds, plastered against his chest, and the rain is hitting him hard. His dark hair is whipping across his face, his beard is dripping and he's squinting against the wind.
And then he laughs.
It starts low in his chest and builds until it's louder than the wind, this full-body, head-thrown-back laugh that comes from somewhere deeper than humor. He grabs the railing with both hands and leans into the storm and yells.
"That all you got, Peter? That's your big move? My grandma hits harder than you and she's been dead for twelve years!"
The wind tears the words out of his mouth and flings them sideways into the dark. He doesn't care. He's grinning, this wild, unhinged grin, rain streaming down his face. He looks like something that was born in a storm and is finally back where it belongs.
"Come on, you son of a bitch!" He slaps the railing with his open palm. "I've got a bar to run! You think I'm scared of you? I survived Michael! I survived a tax audit! You're nothing, Peter! Nothing! You hear me! We'll still be here when you're long gone!"
He turns to me standing in the doorway. His brown eyes are bright and alive and the crinkles at the corners are so deep they look carved. Even in the middle of a Category 5 hurricane with the ocean swallowing his building, he looks like the safest thing in the world.
"You want a turn?" he shouts over the wind. "It's very therapeutic! It doesn't help but it feels fantastic! I also take requests! You want me to yell anything specific?"
I shake my head. I can't speak. Not because of the wind. Because something is happening inside me. It started when he laughed, and hasn't stopped.
I've spent my whole life around men who are big and loud and take up space. Every single one of them used that size and that volume to make the world smaller for someone else.To push. To corner. To trap. Being big was a weapon. Being loud was a warning.
This man is standing in a hurricane, screaming profanity at the sky, and he's not trying to scare anything. He's not trying to dominate anything.
He's just alive.
He's so alive it's pouring out of him like the rain. He's inviting me to yell with him, like joy is a thing that multiplies when you split it instead of shrinking.
I don't join him. I can't. But I stand in the doorway and watch him. I let the image burn into my brain the way a photograph burns onto film.
Tex on the balcony in the hurricane, laughing at the storm.
I think I'll remember this for the rest of my life, no matter how long or short that turns out to be.
He comes back inside dripping wet and shuts the balcony door against the wind. "Surge is still rising," he says, all business again, like he wasn't just challenging a hurricane to a fistfight. "We need to move anything left on the first floor up here. If it gets above four or five feet inside, the bar equipment is going to take a hit. Let's try to save what we can."
We get to work. The next two hours are a blur of stairs and heavy lifting and flashlight beams cutting through the dark. We carry cases of liquor, the cash register, boxes of records and receipts, anything we can move. The water is visible now on the first floor, black and cold, creeping across the hardwood floor that Tex's dad built, and I can see Tex watching it with a tightness in his jaw that he doesn't let reach his voice.
"It's just water," he says when he catches me looking at him. "Water goes away eventually. The building stays. The foundation. That's what matters."
But I see his hand trail across the mahogany bar top as we pass it, his fingers brushing the wood like he's saying goodbye. Just in case.
The wind hits a new level around eleven. I didn't think it could get louder, but it does. It sounds like a jet engine parked on the roof, a constant, deafening roar that makes the walls vibrate and my ears pop. Something outside breaks loose and slams against the building with a crack that shakes the floor. I drop to a crouch against the wall without thinking, arms over my head, and I can't breathe.
Tex is beside me in three steps. He doesn't touch me. He crouches down next to me, not close enough to reach, and puts his flashlight on the floor between us so I can see his face.
"That was debris," he says. His voice is impossibly calm. "Probably a sign or a piece of roof from another building. It hit the exterior. We're inside three layers of concrete and steel. Nothing is getting through these walls. You hear me? We're fine."
I nod. My hands are shaking. My whole body is shaking.
"Breathe, Stormy. You're okay. The building is solid. I promise you, this building is not going anywhere."
I breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth, the way I taught myself to breathe during other times when I was trapped and scared and the walls felt like they were closing in. Except this time, the voice talking me through it isn't in my head. It's next to me. It's warm and steady. It belongs to a man who was laughing at this storm twentyminutes ago and is now crouched on the floor making sure I can breathe.
"There you go," he says. "You're good. We're good. I've got you."
We are not good. The Gulf of Mexico is inside his bar and the wind is trying to rip the roof off. We're crouched in the dark on the second floor of a building that might float away. But he says we're good and I believe him. I don't know when that started happening but it scares me almost as much as the storm.
