He didn't ask me where we were going when we got on the road. He just let me take him. I kept glancing over at him as I drove, just to make sure he was all right. The night before had been...interesting. I had read up on what withdrawal did to people so I knew that even though he was sitting there, looking fairly comfortable, he was most likely very uneasy.
Had he done anything when I was gone? I wondered. Had he used at all?
I didn't like thinking that he had done that when I was gone, especially since he had managed to get through the night. But if he had, well, today was another day.
We got to the beach and into our swimsuits. He had been really opposed to getting the swimsuit, but I managed to finally convince him, telling him that he was embarrassing me. He wasn’t, I had been teasing, but it had worked. He had let me pick it, and I had only gone with a pair of board shorts because getting him a speedo would have just been taking advantage of him.
He'd get a lot of stares whatever he was wearing. I had seen him naked before, but he wore the hell out of the board shorts. I had gotten him a blue pair because that had been the darkest color they had. They sat pretty low on his hips.
He was in great shape, muscular but not in that weird, gross way that bodybuilders were. Tall and built. Wide, broad shoulders, but trim in the waist and hips. He was lean and his tattoos were dark on his lightly tanned skin.
He had the kind of body men tried to build in the gym. I noticed both women and men checking him out. Not going to lie, it made me feel a little proud that he was there with me. It wasn’t a date or anything, and we weren’t together, but we weren’t just a tour guide and tourist anymore. We had passed beyond that, for sure, but I wasn’t sure to what.
The beach was smaller here than at the resort. We were at Shipwreck Beach, named after the famous WWII ship that had wrecked off its shore. It was more of a lookout than a beach where people came to lounge, but it was a pretty cool sight to see. It was almost fully above water, and the elements hadn’t completely laid waste to it.
There were ruins of ancient civilizations on the island and even though the ship was nowhere near as old, it fit the ruggedness and historic feel that the island had. I looked over at Nate as we walked the trail to the sand.
"There, isn't that better? Now you blend right in."
He smiled wryly. "I looked like an asshole, I know. I wasn't wearing it because I thought it was comfortable," he said, raising his left arm. His track scars. Of course. "Think anyone will believe me if I say they're mosquito bites?" he asked me, sarcastically. I had a scar I wasn't proud of either, but the difference was I hadn't given my scar to myself.
"Nobody's going to be paying close enough attention to notice," I reassured him.
"Doesn't matter if they see them; I know they're there."
"Are you going to wear long sleeves your whole life?" I asked.
"I've been thinking about getting them covered, the whole arm," he said. “I would have already, but my tattoo guy would never forgive me for shooting dope into his artwork."
"I'm sure we can head somewhere with fewer people; come on," I encouraged him.
“Can't take me anywhere, huh?” he said, jokingly.
“Not even when you let me,” I shot back. He chuckled.
“Come this way,” I said, walking away from the rest of the people on the beach. The beach wasn’t that big, but people were concentrated around the wreck viewpoint, which was a raised, rocky area close to the water’s edge.
Further away, on the sand, we wouldn’t get the best view, but his comfort was more important than an old, rusty boat. "There it is," I told him, pointing towards the ship from where we were.
"How old is it?"
"It wrecked during the Second World War. The wind makes the water between here and Molokai, which is the island you can see over behind it, really choppy. There are a lot of reefs, too. Many more ships possibly went down here."
"Huh, you guys must have a lot of ghosts," he quipped. I laughed.
"Maybe a few," I said, looking out at the wreck. "I hope they're friendly."
"What, like Casper?"
"Yeah," I said. "Like Casper. They've been hanging out here since the war and they just want to see what's changed. See if they can make new friends."
"You know Casper is the ghost of a dead kid, don't you?" he said. I was about to say that he wasn’t when I thought about it.
"That's so dark," I laughed.
"It's true," he said, smirking. I smiled at the thought of him enjoying cartoons. He probably had as a child. It was sort of nice. It was humanizing, thinking about him in more and different contexts. He was an entire person, I had to remember that. This Nate, the one who was just a guy on vacation had all but completely replaced the image I had had of him as a celebrity in a band.
I was really glad that I had gotten myself into babysitting him again. Anything that helped him with what he was going through. Besides the thing about his scars, he seemed pretty all right.