“I’m listening,” Kate said, our eyes fixed on each other’s.
“I will let you write if you come into the water with me.”
“You drive a hard bargain,” Kate said with slight sarcasm.
“That’s the deal,” I said.
“And what if I say no?”
“Then I will annoy the hell out of you till you say yes.”
Kate laughed.
“I’m serious,” I said.
I got up and pulled her up and a little bit closer towards the water. Just a little bit.
Kate sighed with a small smile looking uncertain of what to say or do. She looked out at the wide open sea and the dozens of people splashing around in it.
“Don’t stare honey,” a young woman said, disrupting the negotiation between Kate and me. At first, I thought she was talking to us but I soon realized that she was talking to a little boy with plaited hair who was right next to us sitting on the sand building sand castles. Kate and I were standing in between his castles which to be fair, looked more like ant mounds. The little boy just sat there looking up at us as we ruined his day’s work and he didn’t seem to have the audacity to say something. The woman, who I assumed was his mom was just lying down on the sand typing away at a Smartphone.
“I’m sorry,” I said, as Kate and I stepped away from the ant mound-looking sand castle
“It’s okay,” the woman said really abruptly and without even a glance away from her phone.
“Where were we?” I said to Kate when we got to a fair enough distance from the little boy and the woman.
“You were just saying how much you loved the idea of me using the entire day at the beach to sit and write,” Kate smirked.
“Nice try but a deal’s a deal. Just come into the water with me for ten minutes. Just ten minutes. If a giant man-eating squid shark is in there, we’ll be out before it can even smell us.” I set the stopwatch on my G-Shock to 10 minutes for Kate to see then said, “Just ten minutes.”
The crashing sound of the waves pouncing on the sandy shore filled the silence as Kate contemplated on what to say.
“I — I — I can’t,” Kate said.
“Why not?”
“Because…..” Kate paused clearly trying to think of an excuse. “I’m on my period.”
“No, you’re not.” I still stepped back a bit just in case she was telling the truth.
“Yes, I am.”
I was obviously getting nowhere in my attempts to get Kate into the water with my words so I decided to take a more active approach. I began to remove her heavy backpack from her back and she only resisted a little but not enough for me to stop. The bag fell to the sand leaving a small crater. I then held both her hands and began to lead her into the water with a gentle pull as I walked, both of us face to face. She sighed but I was making progress without the use of words. As we got closer to the water, she resisted to the point where she wouldn’t let me lead her any further.
“Do you trust me?” I asked.
“I trust you, but I don’t trust that,” Kate said, pointing at the sea.
“The sea is like love,” I started, slowly stepping into the water before Kate, our hands still bound. “At first glance you’re not sure what to expect. Maybe you’re going to get some rough waves, some treacherous tides, or some unforeseen perils lurking. Or maybe the experience of a lifetime. But you just can’t tell by standing on the shore.” I stepped back some more, gently pulling Kate with me until her feet entered the water. “You need to dive in and like love, once you dive in, you keep wanting more so you keep going deeper and deeper.” Kate and I were now both knee-deep in the water and I kept walking back slowly, maintaining eye contact with Kate the whole time. “So deep that it stifles you but you just don’t care because even though it slowly kills you, you know that you loved every moment of it. You know that your life will never ever be the same because you’ve fallen DEEPLY in love.” Kate and I were now so far out that everything on shore looked smaller. We were up to our necks in water and Kate’s lips trembled. I couldn’t tell if it was because she was afraid or because she was cold.
“You did it,” I said.
Kate looked around then at the shore then said, “I guess I did. Let’s turn back now.”
“I said ten minutes. We’ve only been here for…” I raised my hand to check the stopwatch on my G-Shock then said, “damn I forgot to start to timer.” I clicked the timer and then said, “The ten minutes starts now.”