"Do you like the ocean, beautiful?" Lisa was startled by the voice next to her. She forced herself to not turn towards him, despite having stood there for a good thirty minutes praying for him to show up. She'd searched the fairgrounds for a while with no luck. Then she'd remembered seeing him the previous night staring out at the ocean. She'd hoped if she recreated that, she could will him back into the continuity of the dream.
Containing her excitement, she calmly answered, "Yeah, I like the smell of it. People say that makes me weird."
"People are weird. You," he took a seat next to her on the edge of pier and stared out at the ocean, "are spunky."
Lisa's eyes widened and she looked down at the man. This time he was wearing a white hoodie with crude breasts drawn onto the front. Above that was printed the word "Oppai." She smiled, as this time she knew where her mind was conjuring it from. She'd watched an anime on Netflix called One Punch Man, and the guy in it occasionally wore that shirt. She'd considered trying to buy one online, but money was currently too tight for bingeing on anime memorabilia. Other than the hoodie, he wore pair of plaid sweatpants. He was barefoot.
"What did you just say?" she asked as she took a seat next to him.
"People are weird?" he looked at her, "When you're a weirdo. Or whatever The Doors said."
"No," she chuckled. "The other thing."
"Spunky? I looked up your hairstyle. It's called a pixie cut. I guess named after Tinkerbell. The description said it's meant to be spunky and playful. Although I hope none of the people using that term ever go to Europe." He grinned at her mischeviously, "Spunk means jizz over there."
She grinned, "Either way, yeah, that's the name for it. I don't think I have the face to pull it off. You need to be thin to make this hair look good."
He arched an eyebrow at her, "You are thin."
"Not according to my ex-boyfriend."
"Give me a name."
She eyed him, "Rick Harvey."
"You want he should be sleepin' with the fishes, boss?" he asked in a mock-gangster voice.
She bit her lip and looked down, returning the voice, "Yeah, I want you to moydalize him."
"Do you really believe his crap? About your body, I mean?"
"No. Well, I mean," she sighed. "Ever hear that old saying about horses?"
"I have heard a lot of sayings about horses. They give gifts, they get beaten even when they're dead." He shook his head, "Man, horses got it rough in the world of idioms."
"Well this one goes, 'If someone calls you a horse, you tell them they're nuts. If a second person calls you a horse, you tell them they're nuts. But if a third person calls you a horse? Well, it might be time to start shopping for saddles."
"So enough people say something about you, it's hard to not at least entertain the possibility of them being right?"
She nodded. "I know I'm a beanpole. But getting insulted because you decided to order two burgers instead of one..."
"No, I," he kicked at the water with his bare foot, "I know exactly what that's like."
They sat together in silence for a while.
"I got an idea," he stood and turned away. "Be right back."
She watched him walk away towards the dock where the boats were. He returned with a handful of rope. She asked, "What's the rope for?"
"I've never actually done this, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't matter here." he said as he finished making a lasso. He twirled it above his head for a moment. She stared up at him as he did so, and he offered her a smile and a wink. "Check it out. I saw this in a movie once." He hurled it forward towards the ocean. It flew. And flew. It flew until she could barely make out the end of the lasso. Then it wrapped around the moon. He returned to his seat on the edge of the pier next to her, though he seemed to be a few inches closer than he was last time. She took a breath and closed the remaining gap herself.
"You know, you never told me your name," she said to him.
He glanced at her and grinned, "Oh? I'm sorry, beautiful. It's Calvin."
"Really?"
He nodded and turned his head back to the moon, starting to adjust his grip on the rope. "My mother named me after the little boy from the comics."
"Well that is adorable."
He chuckled, "I'm glad you think so."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Calvin. I'm Lisa."
"Hold onto me, Lisa. Let's see if we can get this pier up to eighty-eight miles per hour." The moon jerked a little as he grasped the rope and pulled. She barely noticed this, as the pier they were sitting upon lurched forth. She looked behind her and could see the wood stretching and multiplying. Planks would snap in half under the strain, only to flip over and reconnect. Each broken piece as long as an unbroken plank by time it settled, only to snap again a moment later. She grabbed Calvin's arm and held onto him tightly as he continued pulling. The next time she looked behind them, the carnival was only fading lights in the distance.
He got up and wrapped the rope around a post. As he tied a knot, he spoke quietly, as if to himself, "Lisa. What a pretty name." He returned to her, and they again sat in silence. She thought of thanking him for not making the same lame Simpsons jokes everyone else made when learning her name. Instead she quietly stared out at the water. As she did, melancholy began to wash over her. The man seemed to catch this and put a hand on her shoulder. "What's wrong?"
She sighed without looking away from the water. "Do you see?" she began. There was a pause. Not a pause like she couldn't think of what to say, but like she knew exactly what she wanted to say. She was simply struggling to get the words out. It was something she thought about a lot whenever she looked at the ocean at night. "Do you see what I see when I look out there?"
"The ocean?"
She gave a half nod, half shrug that said he was close. "And what do you see in the water's reflection?"
The man glanced out at the water and said, "The stars."
"They look like diamonds, don't they?" She clenched and unclenched her fist. She was trying to contain the despair that these thoughts always gave her. Especially since someone hearing her musings about the ocean water on a cloudless night for the first time probably wouldn't understand where that despair was coming from. "Diamonds of starlight shimmering just," she stressed the word, "below the surface. Whenever I look at them I have to resist the urge to dive in and grab one."
"You forget where we are." The man reached down into the water and plucked one of the stars out, then turned and offered it to her. She took it and held it. The light illuminated the pier around them. She looked up and tossed it above her head, where it hung a few feet above them.
She returned her gaze back to the water and said, "To be honest, I actually envy the ocean."
"Why?"
"Even though it'll never meet the stars that reflect in its water, it can at least shine that beauty right back at them." She looked up at the sky and said, "I envy the moon too. It gets to meet the sun so very rarely. But even outside those eclipses, it can reflect the sun's light and shine so fucking bright for it." Tears started falling from her eyes. "How could I ever compete with that? How could someone like me reflect so much beauty."
Before she knew it, his hand was on hers. Startled, she looked at him. He was clearly choking back tears of his own behind a stoic face. "You couldn't have this more wrong," he said.
She blinked her confusion.
He held her hand tightly and with his other hand he wiped her tears away. "You're not the ocean. You're the stars. You are not the moon, Lisa. You are the sun." He pulled her gently towards him. As her mouth was inches from his, he added, "If only I could be the one," so close that she could feel his breath, taste it in her mouth, "to shine in your bright light."
The kiss lasted an eternity and a heartbeat.
She laid her head on his shoulder for a while. There was a slight tremor as something bumped the pier underneath them. Then they saw a massive shape pass by under the water. "What's that?" Lisa asked.
"My guess? Great Cthulhu has awoken from his eternal slumber."
She chuckled as they watched the whale surface and spray water into the sky. Much of it passed through the star that hung above them and formed a sparkling rainbow in the night sky. "I love whales..."
"Oh you shouldn't have said that," Calvin said.
She was halfway through opening her mouth for a "why" when he grabbed a hold of her and pulled her off of the pier with him. They landed on the back of the whale and watched as the pier faded away into the distance. She couldn't tell if it was the whale swimming away or the stretched out pier retracting. She turned her gaze from the pier and into the eyes of the man she was laying on top of. She opened her quivering lips a little and said, "I think I'd like to kiss you again."
The whale blew water again. She could see it reflected in his eyes as he said, "Then do it."
She kissed him. She could feel his hands on her back. She continued kissing him as she grabbed his arms and slid the hands downward until they were firmly planted on her behind. She pulled her lips from his and sat up on him. She grasped her shirt and began pulling it above her head. She kept pulling at the fabric more and more, confused as to why her small tank-top was taking so long to pull off.
As she finished pulling the rest of her blanket from her face, she looked over at the clock and let out a sigh.
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