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Matthew Hooper had not intended to stay in Amity for more than a week after the incident— there were some tests to run, reports to type up, but nothing long term— and yet more than a month had passed and he was still sleeping on Martin and Ellen Brody’s pull-out couch. The Institute didn’t particularly care so long as he kept sending them data, not at first, anyway, and so he set up experiments, researched shark aggression, talked to the townsfolk about prior attacks and fishing conditions, and followed Martin on his rounds, taking notes and photos and water samples. He had been roped into a campaign to use his Scientific Acumen, as the mayor had described it, to convince shy swimmers that it was safe to go back in the water.
He would have stayed in a motel, but the tourist season was in full swing, and besides, Martin had insisted he stay with them. Accustomed to sleeping on cots in the bottom half of nautical vessels, this was more than acceptable. Free lodging was hardly a necessity, and though he offered repeatedly to cook or at least pay for groceries, he was consistently rebuffed, mostly by Martin. He slipped money into Ellen’s purse when no one was looking.
Martin seemed to appreciate his company; Ellen less so. Matthew wasn’t stupid. He could see the smile leave her eyes but linger on her lips whenever Martin suggested they do something like see a movie together— all of them— and her proprietress-manners had permanently dissipated the very first time she found him drinking milk right from the container in the fridge. The kids appreciated his company, even if he was a bit more ambivalent on theirs; he had taken them on a lot of nature walks, and they had taken to calling him Uncle Matthew. And Martin was good company, of course. It had been a while since Matthew had made a friend who wasn’t an ichthyologist, and although Martin had no particular academic background, he had a dry wit that affirmed what Matthew considered an outsized intelligence for a New York cop.
So, there were plenty of reasons he had chosen to outstay his welcome even aside from the recurring nightmares and the vomit-inducing stress headaches and the fact that he had not been able to get on the deck of a boat without breaking into a cold sweat. He was not relishing the ferry ride back to Wood’s Hole.
“Sean, don’t touch that,” he cautioned, snapping out of his reverie as Martin’s younger son went to caress the corpse of a washed-up jellyfish.
Sean looked at him wide-eyed, perhaps surprised he had been caught. Or something. Matthew had no idea what anyone under the age of ten was thinking.
“It’s poisonous, buddy. It’ll hurt if you touch it.”
“I dare you to touch it,” Michael goaded, arms out to the sides as he balanced on a rock.
“Michael,” Matthew sighed.
Ignoring his brother, Sean sat down on the rocky sand and started digging a hole with his hands. Both boys were in their swimsuits, but neither of them had been inclined to swim since their father had washed up half-dead on the beach those few weeks ago. Matthew felt no need to encourage them.
He shuddered and pushed down the memory of that long swim back to shore. He and Martin had laughed and joked at first, flush with adrenaline, reassuring each other, but the farther they swam, the quieter they had become, the paler, the more jelly-like their limbs, until when they finally rolled out of the water and onto the shore, they were both shaking uncontrollably. He knew the shark was dead— and he even knew, from a purely scientific and ecological perspective, that that was kind of a tragedy— but he also knew that it felt like they were being chased the whole way home, and that bile had risen in his throat every time his toes touched a fish or a stray piece of seaweed.
He and Martin had sat on the beach, shoulder to shoulder, teeth chattering, silent, for nearly an hour before they collected themselves enough to walk back to town.
Running his fingers through his wind-tousled curls, he looked down at the notes he had been jotting down. Wind direction, tides, relative humidity, moon phases— it was junk data, if he was going to be honest with himself, but it kept his mind off the paralyzing dread. The sensation that somehow, maybe he had died back there, and this was some kind of extended cosmic joke, a waiting room of the soul— islander purgatory— scraped at the edges of his mind.
He jumped as the rock he was sitting on suddenly doubled in population, but softened and relaxed immediately as he felt Martin’s hand on his back.
“Sorry,” he apologized, patting between his shoulder blades. “Didn’t realize you were lost in thought. Should’ve said something.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Matthew half-mumbled, embarrassed.
Before he could apologize for his jumpiness, Sean scampered over, inadequately wiping the sand from his hands as he ran, and scrambled into his father’s lap.
“Hey kiddo,” Martin smiled, kissing Sean on the top of his blonde head. “Having fun?”
Sean nodded. “I’m building a sand castle.”
Michael stood with his hands in his pockets, rocking on the balls of his feet on the enormous rock formation he had been scaling. “There’s a dead jellyfish over there!”
“Wonderful,” Martin lied, looking disgusted. “I hope neither of you touched it.”
“It’s poison,” Sean stated with the lisping certainty of a preschooler.
“Yes it is,” Martin confirmed. “What else do you know about jellyfish?”
Sean repeated the small amount of information he had heard from Martin, and then got stuck. “It hurts to touch. And they live in the ocean and they’re gross.”
Martin glanced at Matthew from behind his glasses, the corners of his eyes wrinkled with mischief. “Wow, you’re becoming a regular biologist. Do you want to intern at the Oceanographic Institute with Matt?”
The way Martin talked with, interacted with, his children, made Matthew feel a nebulous sort of something that made him incapable of joining the conversation. If he had to guess at the reason— and of course, he was going to guess at the reason, because what the hell, why not psychoanalyze yourself on the beach— it was some combination of three things. The first: awkwardness. He wasn’t good at kids. Martin was. It made him feel dumb. The second: some horrible Freudian kind of loneliness or jealousy or something he didn’t want to poke too deeply at. He hadn’t really known anyone growing up whose parents actually seemed to like their children, least of all his own distant parents.
Oh, and then there was the third thing: he was maybe a little bit in love with Martin Brody, married, heterosexual police chief, father of two. So that was a whole kettle of fish.
Teasing the feelings behind that out seemed like a real bad idea, so he didn’t.
Martin took off his glasses as Sean traipsed away laughing. He cleaned them on the hem of his shirt. Matthew had missed whatever had precipitated Sean’s giggling fit, but it didn’t much matter. Conversations with four year olds were rarely enlightening. He watched Martin’s face from the corner of his eye and berated himself for it.
Returning his glasses to his face, Martin stretched his legs out on the sand.
“So, how was work?” Matthew smirked, letting it be a joke.
Martin quietly snorted, and gave one of his stock answers. “Just peachy.”
He always seemed like he was just on the cusp of playing along— like the next word out of his mouth was going to be ‘dear,’ and then he’d ask Matthew if he had put the roast in the oven yet. Matthew wasn’t sure if that would make it better or worse— the sidelong glances and the muffled chuckles were acknowledgement enough that Martin knew exactly what it was that the joke was implying, but wholesale verbal affirmation might tip the scale from Funny Joke to Oh God Does He Suspect I’m Not Straight. It seemed unlikely that was a revelation that would go well for Matthew Hooper and his friendship with the goddamn Chief of Police.
“Arrest anyone?” He managed to respond, looking at the grains of sand that had found their way to the hems of his jeans.
“Busted a crime ring. Took down the Mullen gang.” Martin shrugged, very casual. He searched for something else to lie about, considering his day had probably been spent vaguely threatening amateur boaters not to dock illegally. “Uncovered a ponzi scheme. You?”
“I told your children not to touch decomposing animals on the beach.”
“Did they listen?”
“Well, we’re not at the clinic.”
Martin chuckled again. The way the lines around his eyes crinkled when he laughed made him stupidly handsome. Why couldn’t he have met this guy at Sporters and not on a barnacled dock shortly before an experience of imminent death?
“Hey,” he called out to the kids, “Two more minutes and we’re walking home, okay?”
Michael groaned. “Mom made tuna salad for dinner. Can’t we just stay out here?”
“And eat what, the dead jellyfish?” He stood up from the rock and offered his hand to Matthew. “Don’t be fresh about your mother’s cooking, either. It’s too damn hot to use the oven.”
Matthew pulled himself up with Martin’s assistance.
“Speaking of that, how are you not dying of heat stroke?” Martin gave Matthew’s jeans a dirty look.
“I don’t have any shorts,” Matthew half-lied. He had, legitimately, packed very little to come to Amity, since he had only intended to be here for a few days. But mostly he felt like the one pair of shorts he had brought read too metropolitan, too effete, too gay for Amity. He had resolved not to wear them when Quint had told him he had ‘city hands.’
“We do have stores, here, believe it or not.”
Matthew shrugged. “Yeah, but all they sell are bait and tackle, and I can’t exactly cover my ass with a bag of lures.”
Martin laughed his quiet squinting chuckle.
“Okay, boys, thirty seconds.”
“That wasn’t two minutes!” Michael crossed his arms.
Martin mirrored his son’s stance. “Do you have a watch on?”
The intrepid rock-hopper hopped down, rolling his eyes.
They walked home, Sean alternately taking Martin’s hand and then skipping over and taking Matthew’s. When they arrived in the Brodys’ yard, he had managed to solve his problem by taking them each in opposite hands, leading to a whole lot of laughter and dangerous child swinging. It felt very domestic, and Matthew felt very guilty. He had no desire to ever reproduce, but if kids were a package deal with someone like Martin, he might be able to tolerate fatherhood.
The illusion was shattered when they entered the house and Martin kissed his wife, his angular face made soft by affection. He looped his arms around her waist and kissed her cheek. Matthew jammed his hands in his pockets and wandered in the direction of the kitchen.
He heard Ellen groan and yell after him, “Don’t touch anything!” and Martin laugh and respond with, “What, you think he’s going to spoil his appetite before dinner?”
He poured himself a glass of water. Sean followed behind with a well-loved Superman doll, holding it aloft and making whoosh noises. He left through the other door, and climbed carefully into one of the dining room chairs, mashing Superman’s face against the seat as he pulled himself up.
“I’m ready for dinner!” He called, swinging his legs.
“No you are not,” Ellen called back. “Go wash your hands and face, young man. You too Michael!”
Matthew stifled a sigh and peered his head around the corner back into the living room. “Anything I can do to help set up, Ellen?”
She nodded, her expression only the tiniest bit reluctant. Or, Matthew reminded himself, he was projecting, and that’s not what her face meant at all.
“Can you put out place settings, and pour the boys some milk?” She smiled, without malice. “Without drinking half the bottle yourself?”
“One time,” he defended himself, “One time.”
Ellen chuckled, the same kind of dry quiet laugh as Martin. “I’m sorry, Matt, it just makes an impression on a woman to come into her kitchen at five in the morning to find a half-naked stranger guzzling her milk in front of the open fridge.”
“Is it too late,” he grunted, reaching for plates from the high shelf, “To lie and tell you I was actually sleep-walking?”
“Wouldn’t really make it any better,” she shrugged, getting food from the fridge.
He wished he knew what side of the line between teasing and honest disdain she fell on, but he found it incredibly hard to read Ellen without stirring his own feelings into the assessment. She probably didn’t really have much of a problem with him. He was helpful, and even if it was surreptitiously, he carried his weight financially. It’s not like she had any idea he was attracted to her husband. That is, unless of course she did, in which case, well, she probably had a pretty serious problem with him.
So when she made that face— that ‘really, Martin, when did our family become a five-person group’ face— it was hard not to assume it wasn’t coming from a place of suspicion, and jealousy, and disgust. That it wasn’t an ‘I don’t like having to entertain some random guy all the time’ face, but a ‘when is this fag going to stop making eyes at my husband and get out of my house’ face.
He set out plates, frowning. He wanted them to have a better relationship, but it also felt disingenuous to pretend they were friends. If Martin told him tomorrow, ‘hey, by the way, I’m getting a divorce,’ he wasn’t exactly going to cry for Ellen.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, not talking about milk.
“It’s fine,” Ellen dismissed with a wave of her hand. “I’m just poking fun.” She gave him a look somewhere between pity and antipathy. “I mean, you’ve been an uninvited guest on my couch for a month. I think it’s only fair that I’m allowed to needle you a little, you know?”
Matthew nodded, not sure how to respond to that. Maybe it was time to go home. Maybe there was some kind of allergy medicine or something that could just knock him out for the trip back, and then he’d only have to worry about being on a boat once he was back on the job.
“Hey, I mean,” he took the milk from the fridge. “If you need me to leave, I’ll leave.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. And besides, it’s not up to me, anyway.” She smiled disingenuously and looked, just for a second, at the floor tile.
He expected a chill to settle over the room, but that wasn’t the purpose of her words. It’s not like he didn’t know he was only there out of Martin’s good graces. The open acknowledgment of that between them only served to make him perplexingly sad.
He poured the milk, avoiding further eye contact.
“Martin,” Ellen yelled as she spooned tuna salad and cold elbow macaroni with mirepoix onto plates, “Are the boys done?”
Matthew continued puttering, unable to immediately look at either of them.
Dinner was blessedly cold; even with all the windows open and the fans on full blast, the house was sweltering. Matthew had no great passion for tuna salad, but at least it wasn’t warm. He ate most of the untouched sliced cucumbers off Michael’s plate (to the admonition of both Martin and Ellen), and drank far more beer than he ought to have. He was going to end up with the hairy round gut of all his pampered forefathers if he kept than up, but Martin had kept grabbing bottles from the fridge and passing them to him and Ellen. At least the conversation grew progressively more amiable the more they drank. Tipsy Ellen seemed to like him more than sober Ellen. Or, he realized, maybe he preferred tispy Ellen to her abstinent counterpart.
Trying to sleep that night was, at best, a fool’s errand. The hottest night of the year so far was no joke; even stripped to his y-fronts Matthew was drenched in sweat and sticking to the sheets. His hair was plastered to his scalp, and he could feel his testicles making a valiant attempt to escape from his body. Even if the heat hadn’t been enough to prevent him from sleeping, he had also caused himself to go into an endless anxiety spiral; he had thought, contemplating ways to cool himself, ‘I should just go sleep in the shallow water outside the house,’ and then immediately felt his heart rate rocket into the stratosphere. The idea of sleeping in darkened water was enough to give him the shakes for the next hour, and if that wasn’t enough, he started to feel anxious about how anxious he felt— after all, if this was how he felt about a stupid joke, or getting on the fucking ferry, how was he ever going to do his job again?
As he sighed and rolled over for the six-hundredth time, he heard the refrigerator door open. Of course, Martin couldn’t sleep either. Their cycles of sleeplessness usually matched up. He closed his eyes and, crushed by guilt, waited to hear the familiar sound of his voice.
“Matthew,” came the whispered invitation. “You awake?”
He nodded, and sighed. “You know it.”
Martin came and sat down on the floor in front of the couch, just a few inches from where Matthew lay his head on the pillow. He leaned his head back so they were more or less eye to eye, and raised another beer in Matthew’s general direction. Torn between wanting to stay horizontal so his face would be closer to Martin’s, and incredibly thankful for an excuse for that to not be the case, he sat up and took the beer.
Martin remained sitting with his head flopped back, his eyes lined with exhaustion. It had become a ritual; every few nights, when neither of them could sleep, Martin would end up here in the living room. They’d talk, or drink, or both. It wasn’t exactly therapy, but it was better than tossing and turning all night. Matthew had no idea if Ellen was just a very sound sleeper or what, but she woken up to find Martin asleep in the living room, sprawled on the floor, more than once. He had heard her in tears afterwards, arguing with Martin, more than once as well. He couldn’t tell from her overheard words whether she was mad at Martin, or just scared for him.
Matthew watched Martin’s eyes flutter shut. He wanted to smooth the hair off his forehead, but he had never been foolhardy enough to touch him during their nighttime meetings. Or, ever, really. If there was any physical contact between them, Martin initiated it. Touching him first seemed like it would be an admission of guilt, somehow.
“Too hot to sleep,” Martin mumbled, sipping his beer.
“Doesn’t usually get this hot out on the islands,” Matthew concurred. “These are like… downtown Boston in the middle of the day temperatures.”
“I keep thinking, ‘well, technically I could go for a swim, but,’” he opened his eyes wide, and brought his knees up closer to his chest. “Or I could just take a lot of cold showers, maybe.”
“I had the exact same thought just before you came in— I could just go outside, sit my ass down in the shallows,” he grimaced, catching Martin’s eye, “and, y’know, have my legs bitten clean off or some shit like that.” He sighed deeply, feeling nausea rise up to his chest, his eyes burning slightly. He blinked hard. He would not cry in front of the chief of police. “I love sharks, Martin. I didn’t even get hurt while we were out there. What the fuck is wrong with me?”
Martin looked at him with reassuring clarity. He loved that about him— it had never been pity or condescension with him. Only ever understanding.
“Matthew, when I worked in New York, I saw people dying every day. I’d help a store owner move their dumpster because they had a smell complaint, and some dead heroin addict with a half-rotted face would come tumbling out from behind. There were bombings where we’d find half of someone one place and half of the bastard somewhere else.” He bit the inside of his lip, shaking his head. “Gun shot wounds, knife wounds, endless spousal abuse and drug abuse. One time my partner found out about this pimp who had bashed some kid’s head in with the butt of his gun, and he shot him at point blank range in front of me, and then got in the patrol car and ran over his body four times while I screamed for him to stop.”
“Jesus! Was he suspended?”
“For two fucking weeks. He hadn’t even done his due diligence to ID the guy— he was lucky he hadn’t run over some other schmuck. I refused to work with him after that.” He sipped his beer, closing his eyes with unhappy remembrance. “Off topic. The point of this is, all of that stuff fucked me up. But when I close my eyes at night, I don’t see dead addicts or gun violence victims or Jim running over a dead pimp, I see that son-of-a-bitch shark.” He gave Matthew a look of exhaustion. “There’s nothing wrong with you that isn’t wrong with me.” He reached up and put his hand on Matthew’s arm, giving him a little shake of consolation.
Matthew wanted desperately to touch Martin’s face. It had been a long time since he had fallen this hard for a straight man, and he had forgotten how much it hurt every time they touched you in that unthinking, locker-room-comradery kind of way. He could feel his heart beating in his throat as Martin’s hand slid down his arm and returned to his own knees.
He felt it particularly strongly with Martin; obviously, they had been through a traumatic experience together, but even before then, he had liked him immediately. That first conversation on the dock and in the harbour office had felt more like rekindling an old friendship than meeting a stranger. He had even gotten kind of a vibe off him, enough so that he had forgotten any of his normal cautionary steps like checking if he had a wedding ring or asking about a wife at home. Martin hadn’t brought it up, either.
Needless to say, he was very surprised when he showed up at Martin’s house later with two bottles of wine and Ellen opened the door. So much for picking on signals.
He kind of wanted to get Martin in front of a panel of queer men and get their opinions. Was there something there? Or was Matthew just blinded by his enamorment with him? He looked over Martin’s skinny frame under his ratty plaid terry cloth robe. Usually he wore front-button matching pajama sets to bed, but the heat was apparently enough for even him to shirk decorum and go to bed in just his boxer shorts. He was hardly a Castro clone, but there was something about the way he dressed and behaved that suggested a pretending at blue-collar masculinity rather than a display of his inherent manliness. He was a little too buttoned-up to be Dirty Harry. Matthew found that exceptionally charming.
Heat lightning streaked across the sky, followed closely by thunder. They both looked up, startled slightly, and then returned to their drinking.
Tamping down his longing with a long draught of beer, Matthew cleared his throat. “Hey, can I be frank?”
“Sure. Hell, you can be Carol if that’s what you want.”
“Ha, ha,” Matthew rolled his eyes. “I’m serious.”
“I know. Tell me what you want to tell me.”
Matthew took a deep breath. “I’ve been getting progressively more urgent letters and calls from the Institute. I’m… not actually here on their orders any longer— they’re more than ready for me to come back.”
Martin sipped his beer, expression unreadable. “I mean…” he started, then stopped, then started again. “I think I kind of knew that? You babysit my kids more than you do research, Matthew.” He shrugged, just slightly. “I’ll be sad to see you go.”
“Oh sure, there’s nothing anyone likes more than a houseguest who never leaves.”
“I’m serious. You’ve been a big help around here.”
“Helping to eat all your food and take up your space, unintentionally teaching Sean to swear…”
Martin snorted, but then stopped short of really laughing. He stretched his legs back out and looked at the sky, strangely orange-tinted despite the dark. “So, when are you going back?”
“Not sure. They’re still pissed I didn’t go on the Aurora, but their messages have become increasingly clear on the subject of my return.” He tilted his head to the side, grimacing. “The problem is, I’m scared shitless to even get on the boat home.” He grinned self-effacingly. “And then what, I go on another eighteen month cruise, only to spend the whole time puking my guts out and shaking?”
“Could you pretend you’ve become very prone to seasickness?”
“No one gets that ‘seasick’ in port except maybe pregnant women, Martin.”
Martin put his beer on the floor and flopped his head back against the pullout. He watched the sky as another streak of lightning shot across the atmosphere. Tilting his head to the side, he blinked softly at Matthew. “I cannot believe I’m saying this, but what if you and I try to, y’know…” He scrunched his face up, wrinkling his forehead and mouth and eyes, looking a little like he had eaten something deeply spoiled. “Desensitize ourselves. I would think it would be easier with a friend for moral support.”
Matthew hoped his reddening face wasn’t visible in the darkness. He didn’t want to be babied, and the idea that Martin would be doing this out of a sense of compunction made his mouth go dry and his shoulders clench. But at the same time, he couldn’t help but feel like it was a suggestion utterly lacking in subtext or deception— Martin just wanted them both to do something to start feeling better.
“So what,” he joked, playing it off as casually as he could, “We both get our bathing suits on and stand in ankle deep water and try not to piss ourselves?”
Martin’s brows furrowed and he half-smiled. “I was thinking more like, we go have a couple of drinks on your boat. And then the next time, we go and have a couple of drinks on your boat and actually drive it around the harbor. And then maybe the next time we drive it out past the buoys, and have a whole lot of drinks. Training wheels, you know?”
“Sounds like you want me to get in a drunken sailing accident.”
Martin crossed his arms. “If you’re not interested, it’s no skin off of my teeth. I’m happy never getting on a boat again for any reason.”
“Wouldn’t that mean you’re trapped here forever?”
“I haven’t decided how I feel about being airlifted, but yeah, more or less.”
“I am interested,” Matthew sighed, meaning it in ways Martin couldn’t begin to fathom. “I just don’t want to crash my boat.”
“Okay. We can drink Tang,” Martin laughed.
Matthew made a noise of disgust, grinning.
They both let their laughter trail off into half-breathed chuckles. Matthew finished his beer and rolled over on his side, his face only inches from Martin’s. Physically speaking, it would have been nothing to take Martin by the nape of his neck and pull him in for a kiss. Dumb. This was not how men were supposed to behave with each other. They weren’t ten years old and having a sleepover; he wasn’t leaning in close to whisper about what girl he had a crush on.
But as usual, Martin either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
He sighed, smiling a false smile. “Who am I going to talk to in the middle of the night when you leave?”
Matthew rolled his eyes, unwilling to be unintentionally baited. “I don’t know, your wife?”
Martin’s expression grew sober. The lines on his face deepened, reflecting his long month of sleeplessness more than his age. “I can’t keep making her cry, Matthew.” He smiled weakly. “Every time I bring it up, she just…” He swallowed. “It’s not her problem.”
“I’m sorry.” Matthew felt like someone had inflated a life vest inside his ribs, painfully stretching his bones outward, pulling his sinews away from his core. Watching Martin’s face… he wanted to wrap his arms around his shoulders. He wanted to pull him up onto the bed and kiss him until he stopped making that face. He wanted to hold onto him all night long, like they were spinning together around the last piece of driftwood in the ocean. He wanted to be Martin’s life preserver.
But he couldn't even stand on the deck of his own boat.
And he could never touch him. No matter how much he wanted to feel those long, calloused fingers on his face, Martin was a married man. Even if there was even the tiniest spark of mutual attraction between them— he could not be the reason for breaking up someone’s marriage.
He needed to leave Amity.
He sat back up, and tucked his knees up close to his chin.
“If I’m not on an expedition,” he compromised, feeling his voice break. He swallowed. “You can always call me.” He faked a smile. “Just call up the Institute at three in the morning, ‘hey, can I talk to Hooper, I’m experiencing neurosis.’”
Martin laughed, continuing the charade. “‘Yes, I know it’s the middle of the night. He told me I could call. No, this isn’t a wrong number, I know he’s a shark scientist and not a psychotherapist.’” He held up an invisible phone and looked at it with theatrical distress. “The bastards hung up on me.”
“God, I bet it was Larry. That guy’s a real pill.” Matthew snuffled an abortive laugh. “I’m serious, though. I’m not going to call here and wake your kiddos up, so it’s on you.”
“You really want me to call you in the middle of the night and complain about my swimming nightmares?” Martin smirked at Matthew, daring him to make it clear he was joking.
Matthew gave him a non-answer, mimicking his smirk. “You really want me to sleep on your couch forever instead?”
“Fair,” he snorted. He stood up abruptly, picking his empty bottle up. “You done?”
Matthew nodded.
Martin took his bottle from his hand, their fingers touching just slightly.
“I’m going to go try to sleep.” He looked out the window as another flash of lightning illuminated the night-black water. “Looks like maybe the heat’ll break soon.”
Matthew nodded again. Martin headed in the direction of the bedroom.
“G’night, Matthew.”
“Night.”
He laid back down on his side, trying to feel something other than the noxious cocktail of terror and longing and guilt he’d been feeling for a month. When he did finally doze off, he slept fitfully, his mind an expanse of open sea and open mouths.
The next morning, he left the house before anyone else woke up. He chartered a local sailor to bring his boat back to the mainland, and bought a ferry ticket for the following morning. He thought about purchasing a same day ticket, but couldn’t bring himself to leave without saying goodbye. He owed that much to the kids, at least, he assured himself.
And just in case he couldn’t quite swing the trip awake and sober, he caught up with a surfer Martin had suspected of drug possession and purchased a couple of phenobarbital.
When he told the Brodys he was leaving earlier than expected, they reacted variously, all with surprise. Sean ran over to Martin and cried into the leg of his pants. With the capricious shyness of small children, he sobbed about Matthew leaving, but refused to actually wish him goodbye. Michael shook his hand, playing at being a grown-up. Ellen gave him an awkward hug around the shoulders and, with an unreadable expression and something akin to sincerity in her voice, told him he was always welcome to visit.
Martin seemed kind of hurt. Or maybe— projecting again— Matthew just wished Martin seemed kind of hurt. He patted him on the back and gave him a firm handshake. It was all very chaste and macho, like they hadn’t been through hell together; like Matthew hadn’t become like a surrogate uncle to Martin’s kids over the past month; like their friendship was a footnote.
So it was surprising when, about a week later, as Matthew was settling back in at Wood’s Hole, Martin made good on his threat to call in the middle of the night. And more surprising still when this continued on and off until just about the beginning of October. And then, less surprising, the calls just stopped.
Beach season was over, of course. Martin probably wasn’t dreaming about sharks any longer. The same couldn’t be said for Matthew, and trying to put Martin out of his head was no more possible than trying to put Quint out of his head or the Orca out of his head or that shark, that shark’s face and teeth and size, out of his head.
It was a hard few months that followed.
But then, more surprising still was when Matthew picked up the phone half a year later, on a cold wet day in April, expecting a call from his boss or his landlord or someone else who needed him for something he could only half-heartedly give them. It was Martin’s voice on the other end.
“Hey, Hooper.” The appellation was different, but the way he said it was the same.
“Martin?” Matthew pretended he hadn’t figured it out the moment he spoke. He wasn’t actually sure how Martin had gotten this number, anyway— about a month after they had stopped talking to each other, he had moved back to Boston.
“Yeah,” he laughed, the same wry chuckle as always. “I guess it’s been a while, huh.”
“I keep checking the Cape and Islanders papers for your obituary, actually.” Stupid. What the hell. Matthew crunched his eyes shut and waited for the fallout. It’s not like he couldn’t have just called Martin instead, but he had been so terrified of looking forward or desperate or overly familiar.
But Martin laughed. “Understandable. I’m just glad this is the right line, this time.” He stopped laughing, suddenly. Matthew could hear him breathe out slowly through his nose. “So, how’ve you been?”
“Are you asking honestly, or do we need to talk about sports and the weather for a while before we get into the truth?”
“Always honestly. I’m sorry I, uh, lost track of time, I guess.” He sighed again. “It’s been… a,” he faltered, obviously groping for the right word, “The past few months haven’t been the best.”
God, he sounded so sad.
Their middle-of-the-night therapy sessions had always been run through with dark humor— a lot of poking their proverbial fingers around the mouth of the wound, seeing what hurt and what scratched a satisfying itch. Or drinking. But even that had always led to the drunken melancholy of regret and nostalgia and shared hurt, not whatever this dry, empty despondency Matthew could hear in Martin’s voice was.
He sounded like if he had to tread water even one day more, he might drown.
Matthew took a deep breath. He decided to do something stupid.
“Martin?”
“Uh-huh?”
He threw him a line: “So, how would you feel about coming and staying with me for the weekend?” He hoped it wouldn’t drag both of them under.