PLAYING . . . Your Hand in Mine by Explosions in the Sky
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THE BEACH during summertime is off-putting at best.
Well, maybe Eric is being too dramatic. There's nothing off-putting about sand, or the sun, or feeling warm and shit. He's hardly from San Diego— his grandma lives here, though, where Eric once spent a very uncomfortable, weird, and unsettling winter break at; it's a long story that involves Eric's parents being out of town, around five bottles of vodka in the span of four days, and his older sister that probably isn't psychic, but the fact that Eric still has to say probably after all this time is very upsetting. All in all, though, San Diego is a pretty warm place most of the time, and the beach his family usually goes to on "special occasions"— quote-unquote and capital letters, at that— is barely an hour and a half train ride away from where he lives. He's not sure why he feels so uneasy.
"You're wearing too many clothes."
Eric's eye twitches, but he still gives his sister a smile from where he's standing, just by the shoreline. Louisa gives him the finger, because apparently, she's the childish one in this relationship.
"You can try as many different ways to tell me to strip as you want, Lou, but it won't work," he tells her, cheerily. "Also, stop answering to my internal monologue. It was weird when I was six, and it's still weird today."
Louisa categorically ignores him, and turns back to the waves. Their family is scattered around— Mom and Dad stayed back at the inn and said they'd be there in a bit, which means that Mom was gonna go back to their room and try to catch up on thirty-six hours of sleep in the span of two, and Dad was going to watch old reruns of Seinfeld all by himself. That happens every time they come down here, though, so Eric's pretty used to this routine: get up too early for comfort, try to chug down a cup of coffee, be denied a cup of coffee, carry Lou's bag, and go down to the beach. It's not that he particularly dislikes it, but it's just something he does because he's always done it; his sister has a near-pathological need to be near the sea, and Eric is the younger child. No huge mystery there.
