Two hours alone in a car was not enough time to come to terms with the fact that Dom is divorced. When he offered to carpool, I immediately shot him down because no way did I want to be in an enclosed space with the guy. But also, I needed the entire drive to work through the new information in my head like an equation.
How is it that the perfect couple are no longer together?
Dom and Rosaline were the model high school couple: the handsome straight A captain of the baseball team with the gorgeous debate captain and valedictorian. Homecoming King and Queen. They would have been Prom King and Queen, too, if Josh hadn’t convinced half the senior class to vote for him instead as a joke on his best friend. My brother wore the same suit as Dom and a black wig and insisted his queen waltz with him before he returned Rosaline to her exasperated—yet clearly amused—boyfriend. The summer Dom and Rosaline broke up—the one where he kissed and touched me and I convinced my hopeful heart there was a chance with Dominic Perry—was merely a blip of a mistake on their spotless record.
Once they got back together, they got married in a beautiful ceremony that both their families attended. Dom got a job at an accounting firm, and Rosaline eventually enrolled in law school.
All this info was fed to me through Josh, who relayed his friends’ lives like they were on a hot-air balloon ride to perfection. No bumps or unsteady breezes. Just a constant upward trajectory.
And now they’re divorced.
“What the fuck?” I mutter to myself, not for the first or even the tenth time.
I can’t make sense of it. If I want to understand what went down, I’ll have to ask Dom.
Not going to happen.
If Josh were here, I could have gotten the details from him.
Or…maybe not.
After pulling my car into an open spot on the street that leads to the Rehoboth boardwalk, I consider the timeline. Dom said they’re divorced. That doesn’t happen in a week. This has been in the works for a while, and there’s no way they’d be able to keep news of it from their best friend.
Which means that Josh knew before he died and made no mention of it to me.
Why wouldn’t he say anything? Am I truly this cut off from what’s going on with the people from my childhood?
Isn’t this what I wanted?
There’s a knock on my window, and I yelp in shock.
Dom waits outside my car, standing by the door with an unreadable expression. I’m tempted to stay here and make him hover there like a creep until I get my whirling thoughts in order.
But then he holds up an envelope.
Delaware
The need to know what my brother wrote overwhelms everything else.
He’s not gone yet. There’s a piece of him in that envelope as well as the glass container I pluck from my passenger seat.
Yes, Josh rode shotgun.
Yes, I may have had a few one-sided conversations on the way down here with my dead brother.
I pop the door open, almost whacking Dom in the leg with it, but the asshole moves out of the way too fast.
“Let’s go.” He walks ahead of me and I follow behind, trying not to grimace at the renewed pinching of my heels. I should’ve insisted that we swing by my hotel before heading down here so I could change, but I was too distracted by that word bouncing around in my brain.
Divorced.
Finally, I push it away, coming to terms with the fact that I cannot come to terms with the new info about Dom at this moment. Too much has been thrown at me today. All that I have the mental capacity for is this ash-spreading ridiculousness.
When we reach a path to the beach, I immediately kick my heels off and groan as the cold sand cradles my aching feet.
At the sound I made, Dom turns around, taking in all of me. “What’s wrong?”
Good to know my pleasure noise sounds like I’m in pain. “Your face.”
Boom. Zinger. To be fair, I’m hungry, and I should’ve been drunk hours ago, so my comedic skills aren’t at full capacity.
Dom huffs an annoyed breath and faces forward, somehow managing to walk on the sand in dress shoes and not look like a stork on ice skates. Fuck him very much.
The sun is low in the sky at our backs. On the West Coast, this would be a beautiful beach sunset. But I don’t want some picturesque setting. If it was, there’d probably be more people congregated here. As it is, there’s a fisherman a little ways down, someone bundled up and sitting on a blanket with a book, and a jogger who passes us as Dom heads in the opposite direction, away from the potential spectators. When he comes to a stop, I sidle up close, but not too close to him.
“Are you ready?” He holds up the letter, the salt-scented wind attempting to pluck the thin envelope from his fingers.
But nothing as silly as a beach breeze could overcome the force that is Dominic Perry.
“Open it.” I hug Josh against my chest, staring down at him through the glass, trying to conjure his voice to overlay the man who’s reading some of his final words.
Dear Maddie & Dom,
Welcome to Delaware!
Dom is terrible at reading exclamation points, but I suspect that there is one. Josh liked to infuse energy into his messages.
So close, and yet I never stepped over the state line. Thank you both for bringing me here. I love the ocean. How the water stretches on and on, seemingly endless. Every coast I’ve visited reminds me how small I am in the world, but also how lucky I am to take in a view that always inspires awe.
Sorry if I’m getting too sentimental, but I figure these letters are the best place to get a little sappy.
I want you to take me for a swim. Yes, I know you both are pool people, but I want you to wade into the wild. Let the waves tug at you. Let the waves take away some of my ashes.
Then, once I’m gone, find the closest bar with any of the Dogfish Head beers on tap and raise a toast. To me, of course!
Take a picture and try to smile for me.
Love,
Josh
Dom folds up the paper slowly, then returns it to its envelope and carefully tucks the missive into the lapel of his suit jacket. All the while he gazes out over the water.
I glance down at my outfit. Under my wool peacoat I still have on the ill-fitting black dress and hellish tights that I now realize have a hole in the toe, too.
I want them gone. Even in the chilly air of winter, I want to strip these clothes off, throw them into the ocean, and never see them again.
But all my other clothes are back at the hotel in Pennsylvania, and I’m not about to drive hours in nothing but my matching green bra and underwear set. There are at least two tollbooths between here and my hotel where I’d give the workers a show.
Still, I can get rid of this depressing uniform for a moment. Divest myself of the itchy, stiff funeral trappings.
“Okay, Josh. Time to go for a swim.” I set the container of his ashes at my feet next to my heels, slip off my jacket, and reach for the hem of my dress.
“What are you doing?” I can feel Dom’s eyes on me, but I ignore the weight of his gaze as I pull my dress over my head in one swift move.
“I’m being a good sister, obviously.” I drag my tights down my legs, shivering as the winter breeze against my bare skin raises goose bumps. The temperature hasn’t dropped below freezing yet, but the air isn’t balmy, either.
“The letter doesn’t say to skinny-dip.” There’s something in Dom’s words, a strain of his vocal cords. Like he’s pissed off, maybe.
Who cares? He’s seen all this before.
And decided I wasn’t worth his time.
I flick my hair over my shoulder in a dismissive move, then grab Josh off the ground. “I’m not getting naked, perv. But I’m also not going to sit in a bar in a wet dress. So, makeshift bathing suit it is. Come or don’t. Preferably, don’t.”
“We could come back in the summer.”
Meet up with Dom more than I have to? Not likely.
“Do what you want.” Without another glance his way, I stroll with purpose toward the gentle waves.
I want to sprint into the water. A quick, daring submersion that I can’t back away from. But if I do that, my lungs will probably seize up, I’ll have my second attack for the day, and I’ll end up drowning myself in the process.
Then Dom would have to give me CPR.
I don’t linger on how that thought has my nipples tightening and my skin growing overly warm. Those are obviously reactions of disgust.
So, with my finicky lungs in mind, I ease myself into the frigid surf. Toes, feet, ankles, calves. Each meeting with the icy water, prickling to an almost painful degree, and yet still somehow making me giggle.
The water has a cleansing sensation. Numbing the discomfort of the day. Washing away the sticky residue of half-hearted sympathy.
The ocean spreads far in front of me, darkening with the setting sun. A vast inky expanse I imagine myself slipping into.
Is this what death feels like?
I hope so. I hope Josh didn’t hurt at the end. Didn’t fear.
I hope he saw it as his next adventure.
“Don’t go too deep.” The commanding voice tears me out of my peaceful contemplation and water splashes behind me, sending sharp pricks of cold scattering along the bare skin of my thighs where they haven’t been immersed yet. A result of Dom’s approach.
He doesn’t ease in like I did. He charges. And when I turn to snap at him about telling me what to do, I choke on my words.
I forgot. Over the years, an occasional dream has plagued me where I’m back in Dom’s arms, his body against mine, something I thought was love in his eyes. All born from the memory of the night we were together.
As much as I hated him, I thought I’d never forget.
But I did. I realize now that his form was only a hazy recollection paired with a tangle of emotions.
Now he stands in the fading twilight, solid and unavoidable.
And dressed only in briefs.
But they aren’t black. Or gray. Or green. Or some other solid, responsible, boring color like I would have guessed if asked.
“What is that?” I point to his crotch with the hand I’m not using to clutch my brother’s remains to my chest.
Dom glowers, setting his hands on hips that taper too nicely. My eyes fixate on the tight skin just above his waistband. He doesn’t have the sculpted six-pack he did seven years ago, but his abdomen is solid and defined and…
Not what I should be focusing on.
“Do you need a lesson in male anatomy?” he asks.
“You’re wearing colorful panties!” my voice squeaks out, the pitch sent high from incredulity and freezing water.
His scowl deepens. “I’m wearing boxer briefs made for men, purchased in the men’s section of the store. I assume.”
“You assume?”
“Josh gave them to me.”
Of course he did. My brother would gift his perpetually black-wearing friend a pair of pink briefs covered in pineapples.
Not only did Dom keep the underwear, but he wore them to my brother’s funeral.
I don’t want to dig into the emotions brought up by that fact. So instead, I attempt to be the responsible one in this duo.
“What’s the procedure here? Any more directions?”
Dom doesn’t answer right away. He stands knee-deep in the ocean, immobile as waves pound his shins, and he stares at me, his hands still resting on that small stretch of skin that looks tight yet soft and might taste like salt now that the ocean air clings to him…
Wanting more of the numb, cleansing feeling that comes with the ocean water, I wade out farther. The waves push and pull at me, as if they want me to keep going. As if this ocean wants me to be a part of it.
This will be one of the places that Josh lays to rest.
It makes sense that it is an ever-moving mass. My brother didn’t rest in life—why would he pause for even a moment after death?
I dip my hand into the water swirling around my thighs and bring a finger up to my lips, spreading the salty liquid on the seam of my mouth. I sneak my tongue out, knowing that this isn’t sanitary but needing to take some of this ocean into me. Testing it as if I am assessing its safety, when really I am only trying to remember everything about this place. Using all of my senses to drill this memory into my mind so I will never forget where Josh is.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Dom says, sounding close again.
I don’t want his voice to be part of this memory. He’s going to be here—next to me—for every one of these goodbyes. Every final moment with my brother will have the shade of Dom.
Why couldn’t this have been my task alone? Didn’t you trust me to follow through?
I could’ve done it. I would’ve done it for Josh.
“Stand here.” I point to my right side. “I’m going to just…let him go.”
Let him go. If only it were that easy.
Dom doesn’t argue as he comes to stand beside me, the heat of him radiating off his body in stark contrast to the numb sensation of my lower limbs. I pry the lid off the Rubbermaid, and the wind of the ocean already starts to stir the leavings of Josh.
“I will miss you.” Dom’s voice is steady while my hands shake.
I take note of the direction the wind is blowing and turn so Josh will fly with the breeze instead of back on us. I hold the container just above the water and let him spill out into the gentle waves, ready to watch the particles of my brother become one with the majestic ocean.
But the jackass floats.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mutter.
What I imagined was going to be a beautiful weaving of sparkling dust motes with saltwater waves instead looks like some sewage muck hanging out on the surface.
“This was supposed to be beautiful, Josh,” I rail at my brother. “I was supposed to start sobbing. Can’t you just fucking join with the ocean like you wanted?”
“He’ll mix in with time,” Dom mutters.
“Or he’ll wash up onshore and become a litter box for a seagull. Sink, you asshole!” With my hands, I press the remains of my brother into the water swirling around us. I don’t know if this is something that I should be grossed out by, but this day is weird enough as it is that I don’t have a measure anymore. My normal compass is broken. If I ever had one. If I did, I doubt I’ll be able to fix it.
“I thought this was a group activity,” I snap at the stoic man beside me. “Are you going to help me mix him in with the ocean? Or are you gonna stand there in your rainbow underpants and watch me do all the hard work?”
Dom hesitates a moment longer. Then his big hands join mine, pressing the ashes under the surface.
“Thank you.” My tone is all sarcasm.
If Josh wanted me to maintain an air of poise and loving sadness, then he shouldn’t have paired me with a jerk and asked me to dump his remains in the ocean when he was just gonna float his ashy ass around.
After enough swirling and pushing that the remains of Josh finally fully merge with the frigid water around us, my hands are numb, my nerves are fried, and I need a drink.
Good thing that was part of his request. It’s as if he knew that the first activity would require the second. I straighten and wade toward the shore, barely feeling my legs as I move.
“Let’s go find a bar.”