Dean leans against the hood of his car, looking like a teenage fantasy in his ripped jeans and tight shirt. He pushes his sunglasses up to sit atop his head as I step out of the house. His appearance reminded me of someone that I'd seen on the television yesterday.
"What are you smiling at?" He asks, looking around to check where my attention is.
"I'm thinking about how much you look like James Dean right now." My smile is widening at the quirk of his lips and the way he glances aside a little self-consciously.
I wonder how conscious of my holding appeal he truly is. Oh shit! I forgot to give him what I worked with the collection of shells from the beach that day. "Look!" I hold my gift toward him, hoping he will like it. It should reflect my love for him.
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He observes the empty mason jar that I have filled with the shells and takes it from me. "Actually, it looks pretty cool." He smiles and places it on the dashboard of the car.
We take off down the road, so it makes me think that we might head to the restaurant, but he takes me along the coast, rolling down the windows so that the ocean breezes cool down to us.
I fiddle with the radio until I find the classic rock station, and soon I'm singing along with it. Despite the confrontation, I feel great, and he wears his smirk, the one that shows he is secretly enjoying himself. We've just rounded a corner when he curses and slows to a crawl.
"What's wrong?" I look in the rearview mirror. No one behind us, and we hadn't been driving fast enough for a cop to come after us. Up ahead, the only people around are a couple of kids standing on the side of the road.
He pulls over and puts the car in park. Only when we have gotten out of the car, I notice what is going on. One of the kids is sobbing his eyes out over a little dun-colored mongrel dog, while another kid, probably his sister, is rubbing his shoulders.
I feel sorry for them, so I nod at him before we approach them. I don't know what to do, so I grab his hand as he calls out to let them know that we are here to help. The little boy looks up at us with terrible eyes and points at the dog as though commanding us to fix everything.
He kneels beside the dog, pressing his fingers to its throat and searching for a pulse. "Hit by a car, I think." He says before putting his ear to the dog's chest, listening and feeling for any sign of life. "It's dead."
The kid burst into fresh tears, and the little girl's face crumbles. My heart sinks when I see the emotional drama that is happening in front of me. Without stumbling like a freak, I fumble through some inarticulate words to calm them down.
He stands up and wipes his hands before looking at us, "We'll bury the dog."
"What?!" I blink in surprise. I don't understand what he is talking about, so I look at the kids who handle the dog.
"A funeral. It'll help." He says and convinces the kids, letting them understand what he is talking about. They sniffle and dry their tears before nodding at him.
He pops the trunk and finds an old towel in the back, giving the kids a lift up the hill to their house. He gets a shovel from the little girl and starts digging out a grave beside the house.
After the recent work, we lay the dog to rest in a shoebox along with its favorite toy. We bury the dog solemnly and lay some flowers over the grave. The kids are still heartbroken, but they aren't crying, and indeed it seems as though the funeral has consoled them. Afterward, we wash up in their kitchen sink, and the kids give us some fruit juice boxes for the road.
We're about to head back to the car when a truck pulls up, and a man inevitably called the kid's father steps out. The kids run up to tell him what has happened. His heavily-lined face goes from confusion to shock to wondering, all in the space of a minute or so.
"Come on," He grabs my hand and holds it tight, nodding at me. "Let's go. There's nothing else for us to do here."
The kids' dad stops us and says, "It was kind of you to do what you did." It's an unexpected thing from him.
"It was nothing, man." He tells him and leads me out. "We gotta get going."
"No, wait!" The man looks from him to me and back to him. "Let me do something for you."
He looks at him warily, but the man gestures for us to follow him. Behind the house, in a shed, there is a tiny boat. Even if I'm a merman and see many boats already, I don't know about it well, but I guess it is a kind of canoe.
The man straps the boat to the back of his truck, and we jump in with him and the kids' wedge in the middle. We don't go far away but reaching a small pier next to a red mangrove lagoon that seems like the entrance to a fairyland.
The man puts the boat in the water and gives us the paddles. "Take it out for an hour," He tells us. "No one will bother you out here. This place is very significant. There's only a handful of lagoons like this in all the world."
"What do you mean?" I ask him, a little confused.
He smiles, "You'll see." His smile promises that we won't get disappointed.
We get in the boat, dipping the paddles in the water, and in a matter of moments, we take off into the sheltering mangroves. The sun dips low on the horizon, living things that have slept all day are awakening, and the night comes alive.
Sea birds watch us from the shore or branches or skim alongside the boat on silent wings. We catch a glimpse of stars overhead through gaps in the canopy. We haven't gone far, but I breathe out, "Oh my God, look at that."
I dip the paddle into the water, and a faint but unmistakable glow outline the paddle. Gasping, I rinse my hand into the warm water and astonish to see the glimmer surrounding my own hands, almost electric blue.
"It's a kind of magic!" I mumble, swirling my hands in the water to make it light up, looking for all the world like I'm playing with lightning.
We paddle a little further along and peer over the edges of the boat to see schools of fish swimming below us. Their bodies outline by a blue glow as they flick their fins.
On impulse, I flick my wet hand at him. A few droplets land on his upper arm, gleaming like diamonds and sliding down the length of his arm until they drop from the tips of his fingers back into the lagoon.
We find a spot to turn the boat around, then stretch out to relax. With one at each end, our heads hanging off one end, and our feet dangling off the other end, we are perfectly balanced. The boat drifts languorously back the way we have come.
In the deliciously warm evening atmosphere, floating in on a glowing pathway, I never felt so content. The world takes on a dreamlike quality that I've never known before. In the dim light, I study Dean as he tips his head back, his expression rapturous.
"I want this to be mine forever." He rasps, looking at me in the eyes. "Moments like this. Being here with you."
I reach out and clasp our hands, interlocking our fingers. Something inside me thrum like a struck guitar string, and I know what it is. It's my heart that tries to make me remember that I belong to the ocean.
We drift back the way we have come and take everything in our minds. The kids and his dad are waiting for us. Only with great reluctance, we leave the mangrove lagoon. I'm sure something in both of us remains here, always, in this place of unspoiled beauty.
