I come back with crackers, a water bottle, and a granola bar. Mitch holds a cracker in front of Paul's mouth.
“Open,” Mitch commands.
“Absolutely not.”
Mitch puts the cracker on Paul's lower lip. Paul stares at it. Cross-eyed, because it's on his face. The cracker sits there, orange and defiant.
Paul eats the cracker.
The boys cheer. Mitch produces another one. Paul opens his mouth with resigned dignity. Resistance is futile. Acceptance is lessexhausting.
I'm sitting cross-legged on the sand next to a man's head, watching eight-year-olds feed him goldfish crackers, and my chest is doing a warm, expanding thing I can't blame on the sunshine or the salt air or the three cups of coffee I had this morning.
He catches me looking. Our eyes meet over the sand fortress and the cracker crumbs on his chin.
“What?” he says.
“Nothing.”
“You're looking at me.”
“You're a head on a beach. It's hard not to look.”
“Water break,” Aidan announces. He picks up my water bottle, unscrews the cap, and holds it to Paul's mouth at an angle that would be approximately perfect if Aidan's sense of angles weren't governed by the same brain that thinks crabs need vitamin D.
Water runs down Paul's chin. Into the sand fortress. Paul sputters.
“Sorry. I'm used to watering Steve.”
“You water your crab?”
“Hydration is important for all living things, Mr. Paul.”
“Give it to your mother. Let your mother do it.”
Aidan hands me the bottle.
I hold the water to Paul's mouth. Carefully.Tilted just enough for him to drink without drowning. He takes a sip. Then another. His eyes are on mine the whole time and I'm suddenly very aware of how close my fingers are to his lips. How close my face is to his face. How this is the most intimate thing I've done with another adult in longer than I want to calculate, and it involves a water bottle and a man buried in sand.
“Thank you,” he says. Quiet. Just for me.
“You're welcome.”
We stay like that for a second too long. Me holding a water bottle. Him buried. Our faces close enough that I can see the flecks of amber in his brown eyes and the sand on his eyelashes and the way his jaw softens when he's not clenching it.
“The sea monster is coming!”
Aidan launches himself at the sand around Paul's head, arms spread wide, yelling at a volume that suggests the threat is enormous and imminent.
“I'll save you, Mr. Paul!”
“It's a kraken! A baby kraken!”
Olson and Mitch join immediately. The three of them are now defending Paul's buried body from an imaginary sea creature with the coordination of a military unit and the volume of a rock concert.
Paul takes a goldfish cracker to theforehead.
“Friendly fire! Sorry, Mr. Paul!”
