“Oh,” I say, looking around. “I didn’t see it when we went by.”
“That’s because it’s kind of hidden.”
“Like a top secret cave?” I joke.
“Sort of,” Colton says with a smile. “Not part of the standard tour anyway. Too much liability. C’mon. I’ll show you.” He digs his paddle in deep on one side, and the kayak slowly starts to turn. “You coming?” he asks. “I can’t steer this thing all by myself.”
I doubt that. His shoulders are surprisingly broad, and his arms are strong, but I turn around anyway and dig my paddle in on the same side as him, and in a few more strokes we’re facing the shore again, heading back toward the rocks. It hits me right then that I’ve never been this far from the shore before, which is as exhilarating as it is scary.
When we were kids coming over to the coast, Ryan would swim out so far I was always sure the lifeguards would have to go out and get her, and later on, Trent would too, racing his friends out past the buoys or the end of the pier. Fearless. But I didn’t ever go out past where the waves broke. It felt too big out there, too out of control. But it doesn’t today. Being out here now, I feel the best I have in a long, long time, and it makes me wish I could bottle this feeling.
Here, beneath the impossibly blue sky, I think I understand what Colton’s dad meant about falling in love with the ocean. Maybe all it takes is a guide you trust.
“So those rocks all used to be part of the coastline,” Colton says from behind me. I look at the rocks more carefully, and now that he’s said it, I can see how their layers of color match up with the cliffs.
“What happened?”
“Erosion,” he answers. “I kinda picture it like one of those time-lapse sequences—with waves crashing against cliffs, and storms rolling over them, and water and air finding the cracks and widening them into tunnels and caves until the weak parts crumble and all that’s left are these little rock islands.”
The way he says it, I can see it perfectly, like it’s happening right in front of us. And it is, really. Just so slowly you can’t see it—the same way grief can do to a person over time, wear you down until you almost disappear.
“Anyway, the one with the cave is that one, right in front of us,” Colton says.
About a hundred feet away, the largest rock of the cluster rises high up from the water. It’s fairly flat on top and covered with some sort of yellow wildflowers that sway gently in the sunshine and the ocean breeze as they reach for the sky. My eyes follow a crevice that starts out narrow at the top, down to the middle of the rock where it begins to widen into what looks like it could be an opening at the base. Water flows in and out of it every few seconds, the steady rhythm of the waves.
“It’s a calm enough day; we can go in,” Colton says.
I look back at the opening, which is dark and doesn’t seem tall enough, weighing my bravery.
“If it’s like I remember, it’s one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen. There’s one main chamber that’s open at the top, so the sun shines down into the water, and then there a couple of other smaller chambers that are all connected, and the surge pumps the water in and out of them all like—”
“Like a heart,” I say. It comes out of nowhere, but from everywhere at the same time. I turn around.
Colton flinches, almost imperceptibly, but I see it and wish I could take back those three words I just said. Stupid. A moment ago we were out here on the ocean, just for a day, the reason for our connection left far behind on the shore. But now that reason is right here again, pulling me back in like the tide.
“Yeah,” he says simply. “I guess it is kinda like a heart.”
He gives a little half smile and is quiet for a long moment. I worry that he might say something about his own heart—Trent’s heart.
“So what do you think?” he asks instead. “You want to go in? It’s safe, I promise.” His eyebrows lift in a hopeful smile.
I know it probably is safe, and I trust him, I do. But there’s nothing safe about what I’m doing here with him, or the way it makes me feel, or the way he seems to trust me. Guilt tugs at my conscience, reminding me of every little wrong I’ve already done. But then something bigger sweeps through me, a pull toward Colton and toward this feeling I have right now.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, sending away all the things I don’t want to think about. And then I look at Colton, really look at him in a way I haven’t yet let myself.
“I do,” I say. “I want to.”
He doesn’t answer for a moment, just holds my eyes there in the bright sunlight. Then he smiles. “Good,” he says, like it’s another one of his little victories. “Because this is the part where you fall in love.”
“[The heartbeat is] a link to the universal motion surrounding us, the tides and stars and winds, with their puzzling rhythms and unseen sources.”
—Stephen Amidon and Thomas Amidon, M.D.: The Sublime Engine: A Biography of the Human Heart
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WE SIT A little ways off from the cavern, the kayak rising gently with each swell that passes beneath us, watching the water surge around the rock, then funnel in through the opening. I lean forward, trying to see like I have for the last ten waves, how much space there is between the surface of the water and the ceiling of the tunnel—it can’t be more than a foot or two higher than our kayak.