He shrugs his shirt off and tosses it on his chair, brows raised. “I’m assuming you wore a swimsuit under it?”
Cap chuckles, and I glare at him. Jutting my lower jaw out, I peel off my dress. The way Nash looks at me makes me think the fabric shrunk.
I put my hands on my hips—again. “Now what?”
Before I can react, Nash charges at me, throws me over his shoulder, and marches toward the ocean, me screaming his name and smacking his back like a hostage as we go.
He says, “Hold your breath,” and it barely registers before he drags me underwater.
When we emerge, he’s smiling, and the saltwater burns my nose like acid.
“I hate you,” I say without heat, smoothing my hair.
“My bullshit detector says you’re lying.”
“Oh really?” I splash him with both hands. “What else is it saying?”
He disappears underwater then pops up closer to me.
“That you’ve been keeping secrets from me.”
Wading toward the shore, I pause, caught. He can’t be talking about Bennie, but it feels like he is. Like he knows.
I swallow. “Like?”
“Like ...” He smiles innocently, wobbling his head side-to-side. “You having a finger-sucking fetish.”
“Ha!” If I wasn’t so relieved he didn’t just sayYou had my child, I’d be embarrassed. “Maybe you just never knew what I liked.”
He wades next to me, running his hands through his wet hair, water racing down the tattoos of his sinewy arm like sin-lined highways. “Well, now I do, and you’d never believe all the things I’ve been imagining.”
I’m surprised the water lapping my skin doesn’t sizzle and start boiling around me. I’m even more surprised I don’t take my swimsuit off.
I’m also engaged and married.
“That sounds like a personal problem.”
My attempt at sounding dismissive fails miserably because he’s all smiley and perfect.
A too-loud holler from the shore cuts through the crashing of the waves. “We at the beach, fam!”
Sunny.
Oh, dear God.
“This is the real fun.” Nash waves at her. “Sunny at the beach is a show you don’t want to miss.”
He goes ahead of me, three boys tackling him into the water. Sunny’s kids, I piece together by their dark skin and the way she shouts something at them about drowning.
Instead of joining, I hang back to watch—I’ve never seen Nash with a child.
Above water, his arms spread as he roars then dunks them under, one by one. He slings the youngest of the three onhis shoulders before walking to Sunny and Cap. The sand is overtaken by another umbrella and more beach toys than I can count.
Sunny’s laugh carries across the water. When my eyes land on her, it’s hard not to smile. She’s wearing a humongous hat and a hot-pink one-piece bathing suit under a crocheted jumpsuit. A sunflower standing out in a field of daisies. Despite being part demon, Sunny suits her.
Down the beach, the song of an ice cream wagon blasts and Nash doesn’t hesitate to walk with the boys toward it, my dad hobbling alongside. Walking in the sand looks like an effort for him, so he must like ice cream. A new piece of my father is revealed in an everyday act.
Next to Sunny, I sit on a spread-out beach towel.
