If there was just one thing I could have changed about the fact that I uprooted my life to chase a passion that swam around in the ocean, it was that the entire day was shifted an hour earlier than what I had gotten used to for eighteen years in West Virginia.
"How am I supposed to get anything done after work?" I asked out loud to myself. "I mean, look. It's four thirty and it looks like midnight."
And it wasn't an exaggeration in the slightest. With plenty of cloud cover, there were no stars or moon in the sky to give us just a little bit of light.
"You were up by five though. Aren't you tired?" Logan said.
I shook my head.
"Oh my god, Rea. I don't know how you have this much energy. It's fucking ridiculous."
The problem was that the darkness was sapping the energy right out of me, and if I wanted to make it long enough until I could accomplish something with my day, I was going to need a little help.
When I walked over to the coffee pot, Logan let out a long, dramatic sigh. "What do you need to do so desperately that you're willing to sacrifice your sleep now?" Before I could answer that, he continued. "It would be one thing if you only did this occasionally, but dammit, I just want to sleep with you, and you can't sleep when you drink coffee this late."
"It's only four thirty," I said, but with no light coming through the window, it seemed like a pitiful lie on my part. I took in a breath. "I just don't like letting days go by without doing something with them. I could drop dead at any moment, and would I feel like I accomplished something with my life if it happened today?"
I thought about my life. I spent my time chasing whales around the ocean, and when it wasn't field season, I studied data to make sure they were healthy. I was married to my best friend. I had friends—human friends—when I never thought that was possible for someone who kept to herself like I did.
It was crazy how I turned one trip to the ocean into my entire life.
But today? All I had really done to help someone out was buy a latte and a bagel from a small business. That wasn't much at all.
"Today I would feel like a failure if I died," I said.
Logan didn't respond to that right away. Instead, he sat down and put his head in his hands.
Shit. There was nothing worse than accidentally hurting him. Again.
"I'm sorry. I'm not trying to make you upset, but—" I began, but Logan interrupted me.
"I'm not upset. I'm just trying to think of a way that we can salvage today."
"It's okay. If you want to relax tonight, we can do that." I forced a little laugh. "I probably need it honestly."
Once again, he stayed quiet for a moment longer than I expected, and just when I was about to tell him that I really meant it, he spoke. "Can it be a little bit productive, but definitely more fun than anything?"
I was thinking I was going to end up deep cleaning the bathroom, but something barely productive was an intriguing option.
"That's pretty much my favorite way to spend an evening," I said.
"Not to say that you're not the most gorgeous person to ever exist, but I'm gonna need you to get a little dolled up for this," Logan said. "Because you are the hottest person on the planet."
I looked down at my sweatpants that I immediately changed into after work. In the back of my mind, I could hear Darrell crying about them and how unprofessional they were. But on the bright side, he would also say the nice sweater I had in mind was unprofessionally provocative or something. I shook my head. I really thought I had life figured out at twenty-one, but resisting the overwhelming urge to care what people thought about me was an important lesson young Rea had to learn the hard way.
"I think I can manage that," I said.
"And don't take longer than half an hour, okay? We're on a time crunch."
"What? How are we suddenly on a time crunch when you were just complaining about how you don't want to do anything?"
"You have twenty-nine minutes now."
For someone who thought I had too much energy, he sure liked to add his own stress to the mix, too.
***
"A surprise date night," I said to myself as we pulled up to a Mexican restaurant. "You're my favorite person ever. I love you as much as I love tacos."
He smiled. "Yeah, I'm great. You really lucked out that we were stuck on an island together."
"I really did," I said. Of course, it wasn't easy getting to know each other, but when we did, it was like we both knew it was right. But that didn't mean that it wasn't a lot of work to keep being right for each other. We both had our immaturities and issues, but didn't everyone? What really mattered was that we tried to keep getting better for each other. And Logan and I were pretty damn good at that.
As he led me into the restaurant, we skipped right past the hostess's station to a table in the back of the restaurant. Before I could ask what was going on, I saw some familiar faces that I hadn't seen in a while: Jia, Brett, and even Darrell.
I let out a breath. "How did you manage to trick me into this?"
"I didn't trick you. It was a surprise. Now act happy," he said.
"I am happy. I just—"
Logan interrupted me. "You can clean whatever you want tomorrow, but tonight, you're gonna relax and have fun, dammit." He then spoke up to the group. "No Carter?"
Darrell shook his head. "He said he didn't want to come. Environments like this are too overstimulating sometimes."
Logan nodded. "I get it."
I definitely got it too. Logan knew damn well that I needed more than half an hour to emotionally prepare for the Paradise City crew. We were quite the rowdy bunch back in the day.
"How's everyone doing these days? I haven't seen you guys since our wedding," I said.
It wasn't the private ceremony I thought it would be, but it was better to share those moments with people I cared about. At least, I liked to imagine it was. I didn't have any way to know for sure.
Jia laughed. "I barely remember that day. No offense. I was just trashed. Beautiful wedding, though."
I put on a smile. An open bar made anything beautiful. "I remember how trashed you were. You threw up in one of the table centerpieces." I turned to the rest of the table. "To what do I owe this lovely surprise?"
"I was back in the area, and I wanted to say hi to my Paradise City people," Brett said.
"You came back to Maine from California in November?" I asked. "That's quite a downgrade."
Of course, moving away from the fresh Atlantic seafood in the first place was an even bigger downgrade for a chef like him. But I remembered him telling me that California was where he wanted to cook, and sure enough, he made it there as someone's private chef. He refused to tell me whose, which made it seem like it actually wasn't someone famous. Otherwise, he would have bragged nonstop out of that mouth he could never keep shut.
Brett shrugged. "It's a vacation, though, and I'll take whatever I can get. I don't remember the last time I could take any time off of work."
"Yeah, that's what field season is like. I spend half the year working my ass off, and I love every minute of it, and I then spend the other half bored as shit." I laughed.
"Slacker," Brett said.
It wasn't that I had nothing to do between my studies and job during that time, but nothing fulfilled me like following the horizon. Nothing ever would. It was just reality.
Logan put his hand on my leg for reassurance that I was anything but a slacker, but I didn't need it. It still felt nice, though.
"You're next, Darrell. How's life treating you?" Jia asked.
Ever since he finally completed his project successfully and graduated (albeit a few years behind his peers), Darrell could hold a conversation with any one of us without someone wanting to die. Finally moving on to the next step in life must have lifted a weight of stress off his shoulders. It wasn't surprising either. He seemed like he was emotionally ready for retirement and yelling at kids to get off his lawn at the age of twenty-three.
I liked to think I helped him out by not vouching for him once upon a time. He needed a little time to grow up. Plus he and Hailey broke up. That was another problem solved.
"Well, the sales job pays the bills, so I really don't have any reason to complain," Darrell said. Selling marine equipment wasn't exactly what any of us wanted to do, and even though I knew he wanted to complain, he didn't.
"And Carter's doing well?" I asked.
Darrell nodded. "He really loves his lab job. He never has to talk to anyone."
I wasn't sure any of us knew exactly what he was doing, but it didn't really matter. He was happy, and he didn't have to tell us anything. That made him ten thousand times happier.
But I still had my guesses. He was probably working with life on a much smaller scale than what we used to know from him. I thought something molecular, but Logan thought that was crazy and that he was still on copepods. Either way, it was cool.
"Then that leaves you, Jia," Logan said.
"Nope. You still gotta talk, Logan," she replied.
Logan crossed his arms like a kid. "Why do you get to go last?"
"Because I'm special, asshole. Now tell everyone how great your life is," Jia said.
"Well, for those of you who don't know, I'm married to Reagan. She's pretty cool. A solid nine and a half," he said.
I was just about to tell him that everyone knew that when Jia jumped in. "A nine and a half? Dude. What's a ten to you then?"
"I mean, probably myself. I set the bar really high," Logan said, and I rolled my eyes. He certainly did, but we were the same height.
"So you're sleeping on the couch tonight. That's cool," Jia said. "Sorry you have to throw your whole man out, Reagan. You guys had a good run."
Logan smiled. "My life is great."
Mine was too. I definitely didn't have it in me to throw it out.
"Then that brings us to you, princess," Brett said.
Jia smiled at the mention of her well-earned nickname. "Well, I live in California now."
I blinked a couple times. "When did you move out there?"
"It was for a job. I know I'm cheating on our one true love, the Atlantic, but an ocean is an ocean, right?" Jia said.
Well, yes, but did she really have to one-up our ocean like that? Was bigger always better?
Many would argue yes.
"What kind of job?" I asked.
"I've been doing some marine ecosystem restoration for the past few months, and I couldn't be happier. Best decision I've ever made. And that's coming from an East Coast girl, not born but raised," she said.
As the conversation turned back to Darrell, I let the boys talk as I turned my full attention to Jia. "You doing okay? Even if you're chasing everything you want, it doesn't make uprooting your life and everything you know any easier," I said quietly.
She put on a small smile. "It sucked for a while, not gonna lie. You know I'm never gonna be the type to let opportunities pass me by for whatever reason, especially a guy. That'll never be me," she said. "But when those two things line up perfectly, you can't throw that away."
She looked up across the table at Brett.
"You two?" The words fell out of my mouth before I could remind myself it wasn't my business.
Jia nodded, and that was all I needed to know that it was, in fact, my business.
I turned to Logan. "Paradise City has to be more successful than The Bachelor at this point."
"You need to stop watching that shit. It'll kill all your brain cells," he said, then he laughed. "Must be something in the water, I guess."
"Must be," I said. Brett and Jia always had a way of making each other smile and sticking by each other no matter what.
They put up a rookie time compared to Logan and me, but life sometimes took its time working itself out. I may not have had the patience for that, but I was glad they did.
I should have seen it coming, though. I spent that summer looking through binoculars.