I was brutally awakened by an unpleasant shove, but were there such things as pleasant shoves? Didn’t know. Didn’t care. All I cared about was the current shove.

“What the hell?” I groaned, my head having made painful contact with the seat in front of us. Beau was glowering as per usual.

“Get out,” he ordered. Nimble fingers massaged his right shoulder for some reason. “We’re here.”

“Huh?”

Wide-eyed, I took in our surroundings, discovering that, yeah, we had arrived.

Our hotel was a L shaped building of pastel green siding and white molding. The hotel was two stories high with a small parking lot, a matching office building and an attached indoor pool. The surroundings weren’t all that gave way to our arrival though; the scent and the sounds did too.

Dad claimed we were right on the beach. I suspected he was exaggerating. In truth, I thought we were a block away or even a five minute drive, but my ears were not deceiving me. I heard it; the ocean, waves crashing against the sand. Smelled it too, the salty scent of the water that I half expected to be a tad repulsive. Often the ocean was described as a fishy scent and those were never pleasant. This, however, was not unpleasant at all, somehow fresh and exhilarating instead, which may have had to do with the fact that I had never been to the ocean and thus was a little biased in my enthusiasm.

Aunt Zoey and Uncle David were getting the luggage out of the trunk. Both smiled when the door opened, spotting us in the back seat.

“What are you two doing?” she asked, nodding towards the edge of the hotel. There was an obvious break between our residency for the week and the hotel next door. “Get on out there and see the beach.”

She didn’t have to tell me twice. I practically teleported out of the van. The excitement drove me round the corner, spotting a wooden pier that led from asphalt to tan sand. There were mounds on either side of the walk way coated in green weeds. Beyond that was the sea; a deep, alluring blue against an equally dark sky so one could barely tell where the sea ended and the sky began.

My shoes were haphazardly kicked aside, left on the asphalt with my socks. The thought of a sandbox came to mind, would the beach be similar? I was about to discover.

I bolted off the walk way into warm sand that sunk beneath my feet. The beach was nothing like a sandbox. This sand was almost heavy. I couldn’t stop squishing the grainy texture childishly between my toes. I leaned over to touch coarse sand, fingers grazing over pieces of twigs or sea shells mixed within. The lights of the town cast the beach in a warm glow. The full moon hung over small waves dancing across the shore. From left to right, the beach dragged on and on with a long, dark wooden pier nearby. A spray of cool water sprinkled against my cheeks from the ocean air that tasted of cold salt. Footprints littered the shore out to the water that called to me.

I was hesitant at first, imagining every shark movie I ever saw then taking that first step in. White foam and bubbles tickled my feet then my ankles then half way up my calves. Since it was night, that was as far as I went, admiring the translucent water and dark sand beneath, glistening under pale moonlight. It was a little cool so my toes grew cold. Goosebumps broke out across my skin along with slight shivers that didn’t have me turning away. The sand sank even further when wet, but I stood among the sea for the first time and realized it was better than I ever imagined.

Click.

Behind me, Beau stood with a camera in hand. The light of the town illuminated his silhouette, a boy among the sand with a night sky backdrop.

“Did you just take a picture of me?” I asked.

“I took a picture of the ocean,” he replied. His pant legs had been rolled up nearly to his knees with shoes nowhere in sight, likely left on the asphalt same as mine. The natural sea-breeze brushed the blonde fringe from his eyes, which were admiring the beach similarly to my own.

“Come on then,” I said, gesturing for him to step closer, which didn’t happen.

“What?”

“Get in.”

“No. I have my cam—Devin!” Beau growled when I dragged him. His feet sloshed in the cool water, realizing quickly that struggling would only put his camera in more danger. Besides, the damn thing was on a strap around his neck anyways! Freaking worry wart.

“The water’s cold,” he grumbled yet captured another picture, which had me raising a brow.

“Did you just take a picture of our feet in the water?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Foot fetish?”

Beau rolled his eyes so hard I was fairly certain they were about to take a trip out of his skull to the Bahamas and back.

“This is our first time in the ocean,” he easily argued with the signature nose curl, the one that stated he was willing to put up a fight to defend his reasoning.

Ok, that was sound reasoning and I got why...but whatever, it was still a lame picture.

“If I find this picture on some weird foot fetish site, I swea—”

“You check weird foot fetish sites?” he asks.

“I may have to start now that I’m aware of your kink. No shame though, bro. You do you.”

“Devin.”

“Yeah?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

I smirked. A sort of sick warmth settled in my chest when Beau’s eyes were on me; that narrowed look and the minute curl of his upper lip. After a snigger, my gaze returned to the water that reached into the horizon. An eternal blue drifted far as the eye could see, as if there was nothing but ocean from here until the end of eternity, which had somehow become a comforting thought.

Another click followed. Beau deemed this depth of the ocean not to be a danger to his beloved camera. He wandered off.

“Is the water cold?!” Mom hollered from behind, joining us a moment later to squeal. “Devin, aren’t your toes cold?!”

“A little.”

“Get out then or you’ll catch a cold.”

“I’m not going to stay out of the ocean when we came to be in the ocean.”

“A sound argument,” said Uncle David.

Our families were all there among the waves, admiring the dark horizon and clear water. Once the parents started getting romantic and cuddling, I ducked out real quick to tag along with Beau down the shoreline. Somehow he had made it all the way to the pier, standing beneath the damp wood with his neck craned. I swear he was taking pictures of the strangest things, then again, pretty sure that was what made him a photographer. He just wanted to catch everything in his lens. That was a thing, right? Wasn’t sure. My knowledge of photography was to turn on the camera, make sure the lens cap was off and click.

“Don’t follow me,” he ordered once I was near, which was dumb. Why would I follow his order?

“I do what I want.”

“And you want to follow me?”

“I want to avoid our lovey-dovey parents.”

Beau was admiring the recent photos when he spoke, “You could have gone the opposite way, or gone to the hotel.”

“Why do that when I could annoy you?” I smiled when he flipped me off.

Not another word was spoken. We absentmindedly traveled the shore. Beau was always a few steps ahead. I childishly stepped in his footprints, like when I would follow my parent’s tracks through fresh snow. Sometimes he caught this and raised a questioning brow but made no verbal remark. Once or twice he faced me for another picture that I didn’t complain about because we were at the beach and I would request copies later. I even took a few with my own phone. They would pale in comparison to his, but whatever, I wanted some memories of my own.

That evening stood out for more reasons than one. A first visit to the beach and a rare occurrence of civility between two that were the exact opposite of civil. With Beau there tended to be two atmospheres, heated and tense. Even in silence there was one of the two; heated because an argument was about to ensue or tense because one had ended. That time though, there was neither, although we were poking fun moments ago.

Maybe it was the beach, the fact that we were both appreciating the first sight of it, taking in the view and the sounds and the new sensations beneath our bare feet. If anyone ever asked, I wouldn’t admit that our walk was comforting nor comment on how we returned to the hotel side by side. It happened and that was that.

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