of the sand dune.
Vic groaned, and they began the difficult climb up the
sand, helping each other up, occasionally sliding back in the
loose sand, and struggling until they were both crawling on
hands and knees to the top.
Once there, though, they didn’t even try to regain their
feet. They just stayed on their hands and knees, staring out
over the view. This one was by far taller than the platform, and
they could see almost the entire site that bore the name
Jockey’s Ridge.
The name elicited images of a straight line of dunes, like
you saw along the beaches, only bigger. A ridge of sand dunes.
They were anything but. Vic had never imagined they were like
this: clustered and widespread and larger than he could have
ever guessed. The water lay just beyond the last dune in the
distance.
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They sat down in the sand, sweat dripping off them and
mixing with the fine sand to stick to their bodies. They would
worry about that when they got back to the car, though. They
sat together in silence, watching the would-be hang gliders as
they fought the wind, watching as other people scaled the sand
dunes and made their precarious ways down them, watching
the world go slowly by.
The sun beat down on them as they passed the bottle of
water back and forth, and finally Vic could feel his nose and
cheeks burning.
“You about ready?” he asked Shane softly.
“I think so,” Shane answered happily. “If our goal was to
get sand in every imaginable crevice, then… mission
accomplished,” he added as he struggled to his feet and wiped
at the stray sand clinging to him.
Vic laughed as Shane helped him to his feet. “And the
day’s just begun,” he crooned.
The first thing Vic thought when they drove into the massive
parking lot of the Wright Brothers memorial was that he was
grateful it was on flat land and devoid of sand.
That was before he saw the hill.
The location was mostly flat, with a wide open field where
the Wright Brothers had tested their airplanes and eventually
taken to the skies. A large building sat to the side of it, housing
a museum and visitor’s information. Vic and Shane bypassed
the building and followed the path that would walk them out
toward the field. It was just before noon, and there were people
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everywhere. They didn’t want to be herded into the building
with everyone else and get stuck in the crowd.
The field stretched out before them. Signs requested
people to stay on the walkways. In the distance, on the far end
of the flat field, there was a hill.
“That’s a big hill,” Shane said in a flat voice as they stared
at it.
Vic groaned loudly. On top of the hill was the monument,
and on either side of it a graceful, arcing pathway led around
and up the hill.
Vic looked down at his flip-flops. “If I’d known we were
mountain climbing today, I would have come prepared.”
“Quit your whining,” Shane scolded, but he didn’t look
very enthused about taking the long walk up the path either.
They looked at each other critically, each wondering if the
other would be willing to forego the hill in favor of just saying
they’d seen the field. Vic shook his head.
“We drove all the way down here,” he reminded.
Shane pursed his lips and then groaned just as Vic had.
They started off together toward the big hill.
“We’re stopping at the first tourist trap we see and I’m
getting a drink with an umbrella in it,” Shane declared as they
walked. “The kind that tastes like fruit and when you stand up
after drinking one they hit you with an invisible hammer.”
The distance to the hill stretched out in front of them,
becoming longer and longer as they walked in the sweltering
sun.
“Me too,” Vic agreed.
When they got to the top it was nearly twenty minutes
after they’d arrived. They looked around them silently. People
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swarmed the monument on top of the hill, sitting on the
benches that surrounded it, gulping down water, some of them
even eating lunches they’d packed. Kids ran around with
boundless energy.
Vic peered at the monument, wholly unimpressed as he
tried to catch his breath.
“Well,” Shane finally said under his breath. “At least we
can say we saw it.”
Vic snickered and nodded toward the opposite walkway,
the one that led down. “Ready for liquor?”
“Oh, yeah,” Shane said with relish, and they started down
the hill once more.
They stopped at a Walgreens and bought baby wipes, using
them to wipe off the sweat and sand and grime. Vic didn’t feel
much cleaner, but they had a long drive ahead of them, and
being covered in sand and sweat was not the way Vic wanted to
go.
They ate at another tourist trap that Shane claimed made
his teeth itch, but the drinks were good and strong and they
sat there talking and eating hush puppies until Vic was sure he
could stand without meeting the hammer.
Then they were off, driving south along the barrier islands
toward Shane’s cottage on the ocean. They stopped to see each
lighthouse, foregoing climbing to the top of each one in favor of
just driving through the overflowing parking lots to peer up at
them and then moving on each time.
Every store they came to seemed to be named after the
pirate Blackbeard in some way; every possible permutation of
many of his aliases or anything to do with him graced the signs
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they passed, the most common being Edward Teach and the
Queen Anne’s Revenge. They all sold pirate souvenirs and OBX
stickers and floppy straw hats. As they went farther south, the
stores thinned out until the occasional country food mart and
gas station were the only places they saw.
Hours of driving later, they almost missed the ferry they
hadn’t known they were going to have to take, but after a half-
hour wait for the next—and last—ferry of the day, they were
soon sailing off to the next barrier island where they would
finally come to Shane’s cottage.
Rather than sitting in the car or inside the little lobby of
the ferry, Vic stood at the railing in the front, bending into the
breeze, rocking with the violent motion of the ferry, face
upturned as the sea spray cooled his face.
“I think I was a sailor in a past life,” he told Shane as the
other man joined him at the edge of the railing. They had to
shout to be heard over the roar of the wind and water.
“Yeah?” Shane said curiously, a tinge of amusement in his
voice. He held to the railing until he got his feet under him,
then let go when he was sure he was steady and stuffed his
hands into
the pockets of his shorts.
“The sea calls to me. Always has,” Vic murmured by way of
answering. He was blushing slightly as he said it. Shane was a
little too grounded to really believe the past life type of thing,
but he was also a good enough friend to humor Vic if he
wanted to talk about it.
“I never would have thought of you and the sea,” Shane
said thoughtfully as he looked out over the water. “You and
ships, maybe. That sort of fits. Were you a happy sailor or did
you drown?”
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“I doubt I’d be drawn to the sea if I had drowned,” Vic
laughed.
He didn’t even know if what he said was plausible or if it
was just too much new-age bullshit from the law firm’s touchy-
feely retreats he’d been soaking in. He liked the thought of
something calling to him, though, something that went deeper
than just this lifetime.
He hummed and smiled. “What calls to you, Shane?” he
asked curiously. Vic felt Shane shift beside him, probably
turning to look at him, but Shane remained silent and Vic
finally turned to see that the other man was leaning on the
railing and looking at him calmly.
“I don’t know,” Shane finally answered softly, so softly that
Vic almost couldn’t hear over the noise. “Never thought much
of it.”
“Nothing calls to you?” Vic asked incredulously. “Nothing
out there makes you just want to… breathe it in and become
part of it when you see it?”
Shane looked at him thoughtfully for several moments,
and then he transferred his clear green eyes back to the roiling
ocean. “I suppose not,” he finally answered.
Vic watched him for several moments, suddenly
inexplicably sad. Surely something impassioned Shane, other
than his Gamecocks and Braves, of course. But something had
to be out there, speaking to Shane and calling him. Shane was
far too alive to be devoid of passion.
They had an entire month together—four weeks in which
neither man had any responsibilities other than to sit on their
respective asses and drink—, and Vic promised himself that
would be one of his goals, finding Shane’s Shiny Things.
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The only other goal he had at the moment was to make
certain he got home and no longer needed Owen, and Vic was
pretty sure that having only one goal and not reaching it would
do some damage to his ego. Having two goals was better.
Maybe he’d make it a goal to make more goals. That
upped the count to three.
Shane glanced over at him and snorted. “Does it bother
you? That I have nothing calling to me?” he asked him in
amusement as he saw the frown still on Vic’s face.
“A little, yeah,” Vic admitted. “I mean, I thought I led a
meaningless, depressing existence. Yours is even worse,” he
teased.
Shane barked a laugh and shook his head, unable to come
up with a response.
“What say we get shitfaced when we get there, then, and
think of something for you to love?” Vic suggested as he threw
his arm around Shane’s shoulders.
Shane laughed again and nodded, and they watched the
ocean roll by together.
Four hours and a torrential rain later, Shane and Vic were
practically crawling through the front door of Shane’s house on
the coast of North Carolina. It was south of the more popular
destination of the Outer Banks, for the very reason Shane and
Vic had just discovered. Too many tourists, too many hills, not
enough umbrella drinks in the world to compensate for the
crowds and hassle.
Here it was quieter, not yet commercialized. The house
wasn’t glamorous, but that had been exactly what Shane had
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wanted when he’d bought it; a nice run-down old beachfront
cottage with no lawn to mow and no neighbors to bother him.
It had been built before the environmental protection laws
prohibited the destruction of the sand dunes, and when they
walked through the living room and out onto the little deck
behind, it was quite a shocking sight to see the ocean just
there, almost at their feet. No sand dunes to block the view.
Just… a house sitting in the sand.
There was a short walkway and a deck, one that Shane
had added several years back, with a hot tub in the corner. But
the deck was more to protect the inside of the house from sand
and water than it was anything else, and to keep people from
wandering off the beach into the hot tub.
“Wow,” Vic said quietly as he looked out over the dark
water. He’d been invited many times, but this was his first trip
here.
“Next hurricane to come through will take her with it,”
Shane mused. He didn’t sound very upset, almost like he
accepted the little house’s fate and was prepared for the day.
“The riptides have been bad the last few years,” he added as he
headed down the walkway and stepped onto the sand.
Vic followed, shielding his eyes from the sun as he peered
down the beach. A red flag flapped in the breeze several
warn swimmers to stay out of the water.
“Guy at the grocery store said two guys got pulled down
just yesterday,” Shane murmured distractedly as he squinted
and shaded his eyes from the sun.
“The Atlantic’s a mean bitch,” Vic told him as he walked
out even farther and went all the way to the edge of the scant
saw grass. He looked down at the white sand, then back up at
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the roiling ocean with a smile. The sun was just falling below
the horizon, setting the ocean ablaze. Vic loved the ocean in
any form. He loved the sound. He loved the smell. He loved
standing here as his feet sank into the sand and watching the
waves crash one after another.
He glanced over at Shane and smiled wider. And he
couldn’t ask for better company right now.
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III
“I can’t sleep for shit,” Vic griped as he flopped himself into
the brightly painted Adirondack chair beside Shane.
Shane managed to raise one eyelid and peer at him for
several seconds before letting it close again and smiling softly.
“I see you take pleasure in my suffering,” Vic snarled as he
tried to get comfortable in the wooden chair that Shane had
dragged to the edge of the deck.
“I take pleasure where I can get it,” Shane murmured, his
voice slurred from sleep and the copious amounts of liquor
they had consumed the night before.
“Yeah, well… why aren’t we down there in the sand?” Vic
asked for the fifteenth time since they had dragged themselves
out of the house that morning.
“Too far,” Shane grunted.
“Uh-huh,” Vic responded flatly as he looked sideways at
Shane. �
�Did you think about not pilfering the big-ass wooden
chairs from the deck and maybe taking a towel down there
instead?”
“Too cold,” Shane claimed without opening his eyes.
“It’s August.”
“Too sandy, then.”
“What the hell, Simpson?”
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“Relax, Vic. It’s your vacation,” Shane reminded through a
sleepy grin as he rested his head on the back of his own chair.
“I’m tired and it’s a long way down there. You looked like you
were sleeping pretty well this morning when I checked on you,”
he added, his train of thought obviously skipping around on
him.
“When I finally got to sleep, yeah,” Vic answered testily.
“That mattress is… horrendous. Have you ever actually slept in
it or do you use it to repel long-term guests? It’s like sleeping
on a plank.”
“Should make the reincarnated sailor in you feel at home,”
Shane told him with obvious enjoyment.
“I’d have been better off on the floor,” Vic insisted, ignoring
the remark for lack of anything clever to say in response to it.
“Hmm. Mine was okay,” Shane said contentedly, his voice
more of a purr than anything else.
“Good,” Vic snapped. “We’ll switch, then.”
“Over my dead body.”
“That can be arranged, Your Honor,” Vic murmured as he
shifted in the wooden chair again.
Shane snickered and finally sat up. “I’ve got some of those
pills Owen recommended to me a while back,” he said as he
stretched his arms over his head and looked out over the dark
ocean contentedly. “Melatonin. You put them under your
tongue and let them dissolve. Helps you sleep. Makes your
mouth scream, though,” he added thoughtfully. “You get used
to it.”
Vic’s mind had latched onto Owen’s name and was having
a hard time letting go, but he fought any errant thoughts and
focused on what Shane was saying. He thought about asking
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