Sea Side

The ride home was silent; our hands still a sea of flesh. His skin was as warm as ever imagined; I was courting a man composed of sea foam and starfish.

“School starts up soon, Flynn,” I said. I had discovered this sailor in the heat of late July. We were starting school again in August. I was going to be a junior.

His face muscles had contorted into a look of slight disappointment. “Will I not see you as much?”

“No. I love you, Flynn,” I replied, rubbing my thumbs over his flesh.

“Stop it.” This had become his magical phrase, as if two meaningless waves could frighten a siren. He was English ivy and I was the anchoring soil.

His face had reminded me of the great reveal of Daniel. I was four. Mother had sat me down, little whispers flying from her mouth and making nests in my ears. “I’ve never told you about Dad, have I?”

“No,” I replied. Even at the little age of four, I had no care for Daniel, I think. He was simply the man who bore me in the ocean and sent me off my Moses journey.

“You look just like him. All gingery and pale,” Mother said, stroking my hair. Her gentle pats always calmed me. “He was a sailor. Died at sea.”

“The Great Sea had tried to claim me, too.”

“What are you on about?” Flynn asked, withdrawing his bark skin from my pale flesh. He wasn’t born from the Great Sea, I realized. He was carved from the Silver Ocean, a gentle man. Poseidon had instead birthed a sailor instead of a knight.

“Daniel. He died at sea. I don’t… I don’t know if it was the Great Sea. I wanna think it was.” Daniel would have liked Flynn, I think.

“Who is Daniel?”

“My dad,” I replied, pulling a cigarette from my shirt pocket, lighting the porcelain tobacco stick. Flynn let me smoke in his car. He didn’t smoke, I think. It was a testament of love. Allowing me to pollute him with cancer as well. Mother didn’t know I smoked, it would kill her. Mother doesn’t know much about me, I think. All she cares about is Daniel. Daniel and his gingery locks and sea-man’s death. I wonder what it looked like, fishing him from the sea. Was he bloated? Did his skin marble to a rainbow of blue and gray?

“Do you hate him?” Flynn asked a lot of questions. For a man who never loved a siren, he was interested in this monster. It was love.

“I never knew him, I think. I look like him. But not anymore. Now, he’s bloated, blue, and dead.”

He didn’t reply, he again stared deeply into my face, looking for my eyes. Looking for something in them, but I’m afraid all he found was fairy dust and love.

“We’ll crash if you keep staring at me.”

“Sorry.” He looked embarrassed now, a flaming blush igniting on his bark cheeks. I had wooed Flynn Corbett.