Page 74 of Meet Cute Reboot

I laugh. “Let’s just try to be ourselves, okay?” I release his arm, but my hand remains warm with the memory of his skin against mine.

“Hey.” Luke points to a hole in the sand. “A sign of life. Should we dig?”

“Sure.” I nudge Luke so he’s facing the camera and position myself in the shot. Luke starts digging carefully beside the hole. At a foot and a half down, he crumbles the sand around the tube and pulls out a red, slimy worm. It’s over a foot long.

I gag. Luke laughs at me, and then he dangles the thing in front of my face.

“Don’t hurt the worm,” Sarah calls from behind the camera.

“Do you want to hold it?” Luke asks.

I wave my hands between my chest and the vile creature. “No. Just no. God should have never created that. He made a mistake.”

“I think it would go nicely in your hair.” Luke moves to lay it on my curls.

“Oh no, you don’t. This isn’t second grade. We’re all adults here.”

“Speak for yourself,” Luke says. He winks at me, and then sobers a bit, placing the worm in his drop net for safekeeping.

We wander back to Alice and show her our find. She tells us the name of the worm—a strange word starting with a “P”—and tells us they usually live two to three feet down and feed on plankton when the tide comes in. We leave the creature for others to see and then we head to the jetty to search the tide pools.

I find a crab skittering about one of the salt-water puddles. It’s under a rock, so I can’t use my dip net to capture it. Luke dares me to use my hand.

“Are you crazy? That thing might bite me.”

“I don’t think they bite.”

“Look at its hands. They could clip a fingernail.”

“Those are pincers, not hands,” Luke chuckles. He reaches under the rock and grabs the crab.

“You’re crazy.” I look at the camera and point at Luke. “He’s crazy.”

With his fingers safely out of pincer range, Luke carries the crab over to Sarah, gives the Instagram audience a good look, and then we meander back to the touch tank to learn more about the species of crab and how it interacts with its environment.

When we return to the jetty, we wade into the water a bit and peer into the crevices between the rocks for more finds. Luke keeps looking, but I pause for a moment, enter the water to my shins, and suck in the salty ocean air, with its hint of decay that somehow comes off smelling sweet.

It’s been awhile since my last beach day. Whenever I come, I bring a low beach chair and set it at the shoreline, letting the waves come in and wash over my legs.

The waves are gentle this morning with long intervals between surges. Water sloshes against my shins as they arrive and sand sucks away from my feet as they recede.

I turn to see what Luke’s up to. He’s still intent on finding marine animals among the rocks.

We used to come to the beach often in the summers. One Saturday we decided to buy boogie boards and bring them along. The waves were calm that day too, so riding the boards wasn’t particularly exciting. We saw young kids perching their boogie boards at the water’s edge and running to them from a spot far back in the sand. When their feet met the boogie board, they glided over the water for a bit before jumping off into the waves.

I’m not sure whose idea it was to try the same, but I do remember that Luke went first and successfully rode the board several feet, deftly hopping off to avoid crashing face first into the water. I wasn’t so lucky. When my feet hit the Styrofoam board, it stuck to the sand, and I took several clumsy strides into the ocean before face planting in the water.

Luke made sure I was okay, which I was, except I hadn’t intended to get my hair wet that day. It hung like a mop against my cheeks and my back. I tried to twist it into a bun to no avail.

Stupidly, I made a second attempt, gathering speed as I ran from the sand. This time, my board skidded onto the water, but my body’s forward momentum was greater than the board’s, and I somehow managed to do a flip. I landed on my back in shallow water, knocking the wind out of my lungs.

As I lay there blinking the stars from my eyes, Luke’s concerned face appeared in my vision.

“Are you okay?”

The waves tickling my scalp and cheeks made me laugh. Soon, I was clutching my stomach, laughing hysterically.

“I guess that means you’re fine,” Luke said, still leaning over me. Water slid down his cheeks and formed droplets that fell onto my face.