That Summer

18. King and Lionheart

18. King and Lionheart

“Nell? Wake up,” I hear Max murmur. He’s shoving me gently, and I open my eyes. It’s still dark in the room, and I know instantly that it’s not a normal time to be awake.

“What? What’s going on?” I ask quickly, immediately sitting up. I glance at the clock and see that it’s five in the morning.

“I have a surprise.” He grins at me, and that’s when I notice that he has his bathing suit on and a t-shirt.

“I don’t like surprises,” I grumble as I lay back down, pulling the covers over my head. I hear him laugh before he comes over to my side of the bed and pulls them back. He kisses me gently before pulling back and brushing a strand of hair away from my face.

“I think you’ll like this one. Come on, baby, let’s go.” He pulls the covers all the way off and stands up.

I sigh and get out of bed, going over to the dresser and pulling out my bathing suit. I go into the bathroom and change and then put a tank top and shorts on over my bikini.

Max takes my hand and leads me out of the room and downstairs. We exit the house towards the beach.

“Why are we going to the beach? It’s still pretty dark, Max,” I say as we walk across the boardwalk and down towards the water’s edge.

He looks over at me and grins. “You really don’t like surprises, do you?”

He still didn’t answer my question.

It’s quiet between us as we finally reach the beach. He stands behind me and puts his hands on either side of my head. “Okay, I want you to look right along the water’s edge. What do you see?”

I look towards the water and notice a ton of shells.

“Oh, my God. There’s so many shells!” I turn around and face him. “How did you know about this?”

He grins and shrugs. “Anna told me about it. She said you mentioned something about wanting to get shells from the water instead of a gift shop the other day. You can only really find them in the mornings before the tractor comes and grates all the sand, so I figured I’d wake you up super early and go find some.”

I press my lips to his excitedly. I can feel him smile before he kisses me back.

I take a step back and pull on his hand. “I want to go find some. Come with me.” I lead the way down to the water and look at all the shells.

They’re mostly small and not worth picking up, but they’re still so pretty. There are a lot of little mussels that get dug up when the wave gets sucked back out to sea. I see them digging their way back into the wet sand, and it makes me smile. Their shells are definitely the prettiest with all the different colors, but I don’t pick them up since there’s something living inside of it.

Suddenly, I hear splashing and see Max’s shirt lying on the sand a couple of yards away from me. He’s in the water about knee-deep. He bends down to pick something up out of the water, and I have a feeling that it’s some sort of fish or something that’ll make me scream. However, when he comes back over to where I’m watching the mussels, he opens his hands and there’s a perfectly intact shell.

It’s brown and swirls around with a point at the top and bottom. It’s almost like every stereotypical shell you find in gift shops around beaches but Max actually got this out of the water.

“No way. How did you see this?” I ask excitedly. He stares at me before looking back down at the shell in his hands and shrugging.

“I don’t know. I guess the light hit the right spot or something. But seriously, this is for you.”