“So now we’re talking about my therapist in front of Pat? You f**king bitch,” Tiffany says, shaking her head, and then she is walking away from us quickly.
“Christ,” Veronica says. “Ronnie, can you handle Emily?”
Ronnie nods solemnly, and then Veronica is running after Tiffany, saying, “Tiff? Come back. Come on. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
Ronnie flushes Emily’s eyes with bottled water, and after ten minutes or so, she stops crying. We get the blanket spread out under the shade of the umbrella, weighting the corners down with the cooler, our flip-flops and sandals, and Emily’s super stroller—but Veronica and Tiffany do not come back.
After every inch of Emily’s skin is coated with sunscreen, Ronnie and I play with her down at the water’s edge. She likes running after the waves as they recede. She likes digging in the sand, and we have to watch to make sure she does not eat the sand, which seems weird to me, because why would anyone want to eat sand? Ronnie carries Emily out into the ocean, and we all float over the waves for a time.
I ask if we should be worried about Veronica and Tiffany, and Ronnie says, “No. They’re just having a therapy session somewhere on the beach. They’ll be back soon.”
I don’t like the way he emphasizes the word “therapy,” as if therapy were some sort of ridiculous idea, but I don’t say anything.
After we dry off, we all lie down on the blanket—Ronnie and Emily in the shade, and me in the sun. I doze off pretty quickly.
When I open my eyes, Ronnie’s face is next to mine; he’s sleeping. I feel a tap on my shoulder, and when I roll over, I see that Emily has walked around the blanket. She smiles at me and says, “Pap.”
“Let Daddy sleep,” I whisper, and then pick her up and carry her down to the water.
For a while we sit and dig a small hole in the wet sand with our hands, but then Emily stands and chases the foam of a receding wave, laughing and pointing.
“Want to go swimming?” I ask her, and she nods once, so I scoop her up into my arms and begin to wade out into the water.
The surf has picked up some and the waves have a lot more height, so I quickly walk past the breakers to where the water is up to my chest. Emily and I begin to float over the swells. As the waves grow in size, I have to jump and kick really hard to keep both of our heads above water, but Emily loves it and begins squealing and laughing and clapping her hands every time we float up. This goes on for a good ten minutes, and I am so happy; I kiss her chubby cheeks over and over. Something about Emily makes me want to float over waves with her for the rest of my life, and I decide that when apart time is done, I will make a daughter with Nikki ASAP, because nothing has made me even close to this happy since apart time began.
The swells get even bigger. I lift Emily up and put her on my shoulders so she will not have her face splashed by the waves, and her squeals seem to suggest that she likes being so high in the air.
We float up.
We float down.
We are so happy.
We are so, so happy.
But then I hear someone screaming.
“Pat! Pat! Paaaaaaat!”
I turn and see that Veronica is running very quickly down the beach, with Tiffany trailing far behind. I worry that maybe something is wrong, so I start to make my way in.
The waves are pretty big now, and I have to take Emily down from my shoulders and hold her against my chest to ensure her safety, but soon we are able to negotiate our way back to Veronica, who is now running into the surf.
When I get closer, Veronica seems to be very upset. Emily starts to scream and reach for her mother.
“What the hell are you doing?” Veronica says to me when I hand Emily over to her.
“I’m just swimming with Emily,” I say.
Veronica’s screaming must have woken up Ronnie, because he has run down to meet us. “What happened?”
“You let Pat take Emily out into the ocean?” Veronica says, and by the way she says my name, it’s obvious she does not want Emily to be left alone with me, because she thinks I am going to hurt Emily somehow, which is unfair—especially since Emily only started crying when she heard Veronica screaming, so really Veronica was the one who upset her own daughter.
“What did you do to her?” Ronnie says to me.
“Nothing,” I say. “We were only swimming.”
“What were you doing?” Veronica says to Ronnie.
“I must of fallen asleep, and—”
“Jesus Christ, Ronnie. You left Emily alone with him?”
The way Veronica says “him,” Emily crying, Ronnie accusing me of doing something awful to his daughter, the sun burning my bare chest and back, Tiffany watching now—suddenly I feel as though I might explode. I definitely feel an episode coming on, so before I blow up, I do the only thing I can think of: I start running down the beach away from Veronica and Ronnie and Emily and the crying and the accusations. I run as fast as I can, and suddenly I realize that now I am crying, probably because I was only swimming with Emily and it felt so right and I was trying to be good and thought I was being good and I let my best friend down and Veronica screamed at me and it’s not fair because I have been trying so hard and how long can this f**king movie last and how much more do I need to improve myself and—
Tiffany passes me.
She runs by me like a blur.
Suddenly, only one thing matters: I need to pass her.
I start running faster and catch up to her, but she picks up her speed and we run side by side for a time until I find that gear women do not have, and I blow by her and maintain my man speed for a minute or so before I slow down and allow her to catch up with me. We jog side by side on the beach for a long time, neither of us saying a word.