Across the Sea -3-
by Suzan Donamas

The boat out to Catalina was smaller than Patrick expected.

Not small enough to be alarming, just small enough that the water felt present in a way it hadn’t the first time. Then, there had been more people, more noise, more sense of being carried along as part of something ordinary. This time it was quieter. Fewer passengers. More space between them.

Greg stood easily near the rail, one hand resting on it, looking out toward the open water as if he had done this often enough that the crossing required no attention at all.

Patrick sat for a while, then stood, then sat again. The motion of the boat wasn’t rough, but it was insistent, a steady rise and fall that made it hard to forget where they were.

“First time it feels different,” Greg said without turning.

Patrick glanced over. “What does?”

“The island. Second time you go, you notice it more.”

“I noticed it the first time.”

Greg smiled slightly. “You noticed the parts you were shown.”

That should have meant something more than it did. Patrick let it pass.

The harbor at Avalon appeared the same as before—bright, contained, full of color and movement—but they didn’t stay. Greg led him off the boat, through the familiar cluster of shops and people, and then past it, toward a waiting car Patrick hadn’t seen arrive. Cars weren’t as common on the island as back on the mainland, and many people got around town by walking or using golf carts. Getting a car to Avalon and keeping it there was expensive. There were few roads and not many places to go.

“Where are we going?” Patrick asked, echoing his thoughts.

“Other side.”

“Of the island?”

“Of everything.”

Greg said it lightly, but there was something in the way he didn’t explain further that made Patrick stop asking.

The road climbed quickly, winding upward through dry hills and stands of scrub, the harbor falling away behind them. At one turn Greg slowed the car and pointed.

“Bison,” he said.

Patrick looked. A small group stood in the distance, massive, hairy and still, their shapes almost unreal against the pale grass.

“They’re just… here?” Patrick said.

“They’ve been here longer than either of us has been alive. Left here after a movie shoot more than half a century ago.”

Greg accelerated again, leaving them behind.

Higher up, the air changed. Thinner, cooler. They passed the small airport—just a strip of runway laid along the top of the island, the sky open in every direction.

“It feels like you’re above everything,” Patrick said.

Greg glanced at him. “You are.”

Far in the distance, a green and gray shoreline must be the mainland. Then they were descending again, the road narrowing, the trees thinning, until at last the land opened out toward the Pacific side.

There were fewer buildings here. Fewer signs of anything arranged for visitors. The ocean stretched out without interruption, darker and more constant than the sheltered water Patrick remembered. Greg new where they were going though. They passed several campgrounds, then turned off on a tiny track toward the ocean.

The cabin sat back from the edge of a low cliff, yards above the water. It looked simple but clean, the kind of place that felt temporary even when it wasn’t.

Inside, it was cool and quiet. Two rooms, a small kitchen, a view that filled the window. An immense ocean, blue, gray and green stretching out to where it met the sky, more blue with white clouds.

Patrick set his bag down and stood there for a moment, looking out. “This isn’t like the other side,” he said. Avalon seemed like a real city compared to this isolation.

“No,” Greg said. “This is different.”

Patrick turned. “Why here?”

Greg took a few steps into the room, set his keys on the small table, and looked at him with that same easy attention that had drawn Patrick in from the first day.

“It’s quieter,” he said. “You can hear yourself think.”

Patrick almost laughed. “I can do that anywhere.”

Greg didn’t answer. He only watched him for a second longer, then said, “We’ll go out in a bit. There’s a place for dinner. Two Harbors, the town, is small but there are hotels, shops, beaches.”

“Why is it called Two Harbors,” Patrick asked.

“Because there are. One on the Pacific side, and one on the channel side. The island narrows here and the harbors are less than a mile apart.”

Patrick laughed. “I want to see.”

“You will,” Greg promised. “But first, dinner.”

Patrick had changed before they left, into the sea-glass shirt Greg had given him, the watch cool against his wrist, the faint sheen of the lip gloss still present though he had applied it hours before.

He caught his reflection once in the cabin window before they stepped out.

He still looked like himself.

That was the strange part.

Just… arranged.

Dinner turned out to be exactly what Patrick had imagined when Greg first mentioned the trip: a small, expensive restaurant with a view of the water and the Pacific harbor dotted with white sails. Everything, the sea, the sky, the boats, the tables in the restaurant had the kind of lighting that made everything look deliberately chosen and placed.

The restaurant was quiet, only a few tables occupied. The sound of the ocean seemed to come through the windows, the walls, maybe the floor. just audible beneath the low conversation and the soft clink of glass.

Greg ordered for both of them without asking, and Patrick didn’t object. The menu leaned toward seafood and expensive steaks, and the prices intimidated him.

“You trust me,” Greg said, not as a question.

Patrick tilted his head. “You haven’t been wrong yet.”

Greg smiled.

They ate. They talked. Nothing unusual. Nothing that would have seemed, from the outside, like anything more than two people having dinner.

Later, walking back along the path toward the cabin outside of the town, the ocean a steady presence in the almost dark, they paused on the path above the beach to watch the sunset. To the west, a fiery globe that seemed to have cloudy wings set slowly. Yellow to orange to red, then seeming to pause for a moment. Had there been a brief flash of green before the last edge of the sun disappeared?

Greg began walking again, and Patrick followed him without thinking. Neither spoke for a long minute as they approached the cabin.

“You know why I brought you here,” Greg said, finally.

Patrick felt the answer before he formed it.

“Not just for the view,” he said.

“No.”

They walked a few more steps.

Greg’s voice, when he spoke again, was as calm as it had always been.

“I want something from you.”

Patrick stopped.

Not sharply. Just enough that the movement broke.

Greg turned back toward him.

“What?” Patrick asked.

Greg considered him for a moment, as if measuring how much needed to be said.

“Something simple,” he said. “While we’re here.”

Patrick felt something tighten and loosen at the same time.

“What kind of simple?”

Greg’s gaze didn’t waver.

“I want you to dress for me,” he said.

Patrick let out a breath that might have been a laugh.

“That’s already happening.”

Greg shook his head slightly. “More specifically.”

Patrick looked at him.

And for the first time, the direction he had been moving in—slowly, almost invisibly—came into focus all at once.

“Like a girl,” Patrick said.

Greg didn’t react to the words themselves. Only to the fact that Patrick had said them.

“Yes.”

The ocean moved steadily in the dark beside them.

Patrick looked away, out toward it, then back again.

“And that’s it?” he asked.

Greg’s expression didn’t change.

“For the weekend,” he said.

Patrick nodded once.

“Right.”

They stood there for a moment.

Greg took a step closer, not touching him, just closing the distance slightly.

“I’ll make it worth your time,” he added.

Patrick almost smiled at that.

“That’s not really the question.”

“No,” Greg said. “It isn’t.”

Silence settled between them, not uncomfortable, just full.

Patrick let out a slow breath.

Then, lightly—too lightly, maybe—he said:

“So what happens after that?”

Greg didn’t answer.

Patrick tilted his head again, studying him.

“What’s next?” he went on. “Weekend trips, then you take me home to meet the family?”

There was a hint of humor in it. Enough to keep it from being a direct challenge.

Greg’s mouth curved, just slightly.

“You’d make a good impression,” he said.

Patrick felt something shift, settle.

Not surprise.

Recognition.

He looked at Greg for another second, as if he might say something else, something clearer.

He didn’t.

Instead, he nodded once, almost to himself.

Then he turned back toward the cabin.

Behind him, Greg followed.

The ocean went on moving in the dark, steady and indifferent, as if nothing had changed at all.