Page 6 of Swimming in Grief (Monster Match season two)

Glauruss

I was surprisingly nervous about meeting with Reuben. I don’t know why. Maybe it was just the whole “we were all planning to have sex together” thing. Or the awkwardness of knowing that his husband had passed away and my only connection to him had been online.

I strolled up the beach on Sunday, the sand clinging to my damp feet as I walked. The ground was burning hot, but I barely felt it. My sleek skin was designed to withstand both extreme temperatures and extreme pressure, as I could dive deeper into the ocean than any human could. The sun beating down on me did dry up my skin fairly quickly when I was out of the water, but as long as I stayed hydrated and went back in the water by the end of the day, I would be just fine.

My appearance drew glances from everyone on the beach. More than one group of humans stopped and stared. I didn’t blame them. While monsters were becoming more and more common in the area, a good lot of them were relatively humanoid. I, with my bright blue skin, elongated snout, long tail, and various fins coming off of me, only vaguely resembled anything close to human. I was not much taller or broader than most humans though, which was surprisingly helpful. If I had had to navigate the human world while being monstrously taller or bigger than the average human, I’m sure it would have been much more difficult for me. Luckily, the human world was over 70% water, if I remembered correctly, and I was able to survive and breathe in both fresh and salt water, my unique skin filtering out any unusable minerals from my body. So, I was at least able to navigate the human world with relative ease, though I loved its giant oceans best of all, as they reminded me of my home in the monster world.

I made my way up the beach to the boardwalk, where brightly-colored squat buildings sat. Various restaurants, treat takeaway counters, and overpriced souvenir stands lined the beach, and hawkers walked amongst the beachgoers with sunglasses, light-up toys, and other trinkets for kids. I had told Reuben to meet me at Bayside Breeze, a little tropical-inspired hut where my friend worked and had some of the best cocktails on the boardwalk.

I recognized Reuben right away from pictures Kyle had sent me. He was a big man, though it was hard to tell how tall he was, as he was sitting on a stool at the bar. He had on a faded, black tee-shirt, a pair of blue swim trunks, and sandals on his bare feet. His black, curly hair was cropped short on his head, and he had a moustache and beard that were also short. He had gray around his temples and in several other places. I knew humans often got gray or white hair when they got older or when they were stressed. I was sure that he was definitely the latter. He had on a pair of sunglasses, but he pushed them up onto his head as he saw me approaching. He had a kind, soft face, but his brown eyes looked tired, dark bags under them. I gave him a smile, careful to keep my mouth closed. My sharp teeth could sometimes be intimidating when I first met people. I lifted my hand to wave, and he waved back. His sunglasses slid back down his face and bopped him on the nose. He grabbed them and pulled them off with a sheepish look, setting them on the bar next to his glass of ice water instead.

I stopped a few feet from him. “Reuben?” He nodded, and I smiled again. “Hi. I’m Glauruss.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Reuben said. He held out his hand to me to shake.

That was rather unusual. Most people were rather startled by my appearance. I gingerly placed my palm into his own, curling my wispy fingers around his as best I could, giving his hand a polite shake in return. He looked rather surprised at the touch.

“Sorry,” I said, pulling my hand back and wiggling my fingers a bit. My palm was as solid as his, but my fingers were more like small tentacles; I could move them every which direction independently, even bending them completely backwards or scrunching them down into almost nothing. It was all very helpful when swimming or hunting fish. “That probably felt weird.”

He gave a slightly awkward chuckle. “That’s okay. I wasn’t really sure what to expect anyway.” He gestured to the empty stool next to him. “Um, wanna sit down? Have a drink?” I nodded and slid onto the stool, letting my tail relax and hang down behind me. He did not have a drink in front of him besides his water. “What would you like?”

“Whatever you’re going to have is fine,” I said. “I am not particular, as long as it’s alcohol.”

Reuben looked like he might laugh, but instead, just the corners of his mouth quirked up in a smile. “Even if it’s some super sweet, fruity thing?”

“I love super sweet and fruity! As long as it has at least one cherry,” I said with a grin. I was strangely partial to sweet things. It’s not like the raw fish I usually ate for food were all that sweet, or even very flavorful. Maraschino cherries had become my fruit of choice when it came to cocktails.

Reuben turned back to the bartender. His name was Mike, and he knew me very well from my couple years working on the oceanfront. So, when Reuben requested a fruit punch cocktail with cherries, I knew Mike would add a few extra to my glass. We sat for a moment as Mike turned to start working on our drinks. Reuben gave me a slightly self-conscious smile, but he didn’t say anything.

Was it better to just rip the bandage off? Or was it better to dance awkwardly around each other? I was not much for dancing. “I’m sure you’re tired of hearing it, but I’m so sorry about Kyle,” I said, tipping my head sympathetically toward him.

Reuben’s small smile didn’t change, but his face suddenly looked much sadder than it had a moment ago. “Thank you,” he said softly. And then he went silent again.

When he didn’t say anything else, I decided to keep talking. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet him in person,” I said.

“You would have liked him, I think,” Reuben said, drawing the tip of his finger through a ring of condensation from his water on the bar top. “He was everybody’s friend.”

“Do you want to talk about him?” I asked.

Reuben looked up at me, genuine surprise on his face. I stared back at him, afraid I had said the wrong thing. But he surprised me by saying, “No one has asked me that.”

I stared at him, tipping my head curiously again. “Really?”

“Really,” Reuben said. His right hand moved to toy with the gold band on his left hand. A wedding band, I knew, from the number of weddings I had been part of on my boat. “I think there’s this fear of bringing it up. Like it will be too painful to talk about.”

“I’m sure it is painful,” I agreed, giving him another soft smile. “But that doesn’t mean we need to hide from it.”

Reuben lifted his eyes to meet mine. They were a warm brown, with little crinkles at the corners of his eyes that only deepened when he smiled. I liked them. “I… I’d like to talk about him with you. But isn’t it weird to talk about past relationships with someone you’re just meeting?”

I shrugged. “I don’t find it weird. But we can talk about whatever you want.” If he was not feeling comfortable talking about Kyle with me, I was not about to pressure him into it.

Reuben smiled, and then it grew even brighter as Mike set down two cheery red drinks in front of us, with a whole ton of fruit on skewers in it, including extra cherries for me. He picked up his glass, holding it out to me. “Cheers to… being alive.”

I picked up my own glass and clinked it against his. “Being alive,” I agreed before taking a large sip.

Reuben took his own sip. “Oh wow, that’s pretty good!”

“Mike makes good cocktails,” I said, giving the bartender a nod and a smile that showed my sharp teeth. He chuckled and nodded back to me as he set about mixing other drinks. “So, what would you like to talk about?”

Reuben flushed a little. “I… I’m not great at small talk. What do you want to talk about?”

“I wanna know about you,” I said, crunching a chunk of pineapple, outside and all, between my teeth. The sour sweetness was delightful. “What do you do? For a living, I mean.”

“Oh,” Reuben said, seeming fascinated by me eating the spiny outside of the pineapple with no problem. “Nothing really interesting. I’m a financial analyst at a bank.”

“So, you like numbers?” I asked curiously. I had no idea what a ‘financial analyst’ did, but I knew banks were about numbers and money.

Reuben chuckled softly. “I guess you could say that. I went to school for business. I’ve always liked math. Numbers don’t lie.”

“Never been much good with numbers myself,” I said, smiling without teeth again. “But I only really learned them when I came here to the human world.”

Reuben nodded thoughtfully. “I doubt there’s much need for numbers in the monster world. What brought you here anyway? To the human world, I mean.”

I shrugged a little. “Sheer curiosity.”

“Really, that’s it? Just curiosity?” Reuben asked, taking a large swallow of his drink.

I shrugged again. “I didn’t have anything that I was living for in the other world. I thought, why not try something new? I wasn’t going to be missed anyway.”

Reuben frowned. “That can’t be true. Didn’t you have friends? Family?”

“We are not the most social of species in the monster world,” I said thoughtfully. “We form small family units. But mine…” I paused and gazed back at him. I had never shared my story with anyone before, and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to dump it all on Reuben so early on. Especially when I knew he was dealing with so much. “It’s a story best left for later.” I knocked back the rest of my drink, including the ice, in one gulp. I motioned at Mike, and he nodded.

Reuben blinked in surprise for a moment, but then he nodded and took another long drink of his punch. “Got it. Um, how about your work here? You take people out on boats?”

At least my job was something I could talk about a little easier. “Yes. I take people out on my boat for various things. Weddings, fishing expeditions, scientific work, whatever people want to do on the open ocean.”

“That sounds pretty neat,” Reuben said. “Do you like it?”

I chuckled as Mike set down a tall whiskey sour next to me, with a skewer of cherries. “Yeah, it’s pretty fun. I have to be near the water anyway, so why not make money from it, you know?”

Reuben nodded. “Makes sense. But obviously you can…” He gestured vaguely to me with one large hand. “Be out of water too?”

I grinned with teeth this time, and I saw him tense for just a moment. I quickly closed my lips around my sharp teeth again. “Yes. For about a day. And I can go in both fresh and salt water, so as long as I have a body of water nearby, I’m pretty good.”

Reuben crunched his pineapple between his teeth. He did not eat the spiny outside the way I did. “Is the water here different from the monster world?”

“A little,” I said. “Different acidity, different creatures in it.”

“I’d love to see your boat sometime,” Reuben said. “It sounds pretty neat.”

I sat up a bit straighter, even my tail perking up from where it drooped. “You would?”

He nodded. “To be honest, I’ve never been much of a water person. Or, I guess, I should say, I haven’t had many opportunities to go out on the water.”

“Really? Even living this close to the ocean?” I asked curiously.

Reuben looked sheepish again. “Yeah. I don’t know why, really.”

“Well, let’s change that,” I said, knocking the rest of my drink back with one swallow that burned all the way down. “Come on, I’ll show it to you right now.”

Reuben nodded, reaching into his pocket for his wallet, but I waved my hand. “I got it. Mike, put it on my tab.”

“Sure thing, Blue,” Mike said.

“Are you sure? I don’t mind paying,” Reuben offered.

I shook my head. “My treat, seriously.”

“Okay.” His smile was soft but so sweet. “So, you know the bartender?” he asked as we started to walk along the beach toward the docks.

“Yeah. His name’s Mike,” I said. “He owns that little stand. Good guy, was one of my first friends when I started working in this area.”

“He seems like a nice guy.”

“He is,” I agreed.

“So, what made you specifically decide to take people out on a boat as a job?” Reuben asked.

“It wasn’t my first job when I arrived here in the human world,” I said thoughtfully, side-stepping two kids who had stopped playing with a beach ball right in my path to stare. I gave them a friendly smile, and they still just stared. At least they didn’t scream or cry, which was not an unusual reaction, especially from younger children. “I first worked for a construction company; they had some underwater projects that I was able to help with, since I can dive deeper than humans can.”

Reuben was gazing at me with rapt attention. I wondered if he had ever met a monster before, or if he was just very interested in what I had to say. “But I left them, decided to start my own business.”

“You said you take people out for like weddings and stuff?”

I nodded. “Or whatever people want to do on a boat. I’ve had like birthdays, bachelorette parties, stuff like that. I took out some guys who were studying dolphins or something. It’s been interesting, seeing different kinds of humans.”

Reuben rubbed thoughtfully at his short beard with his hand. “What about the Monster Match app?”

“What about it?” I asked, and his cheeks flushed a deep red beneath his dark skin.

“What are you looking for on there?”

“Oh,” I said, giving him a smile that I hoped would put him at ease. “Anything, really. It’s good for networking, and people like the novelty of monsters, which is good for business.”

“So, you’re not like actually looking for a relationship?” Reuben asked.

“Why? Are you offering?” I teased.

Reuben’s face went scarlet, and I could have kicked myself. The guy had just lost his husband, and here I was making sex jokes. “Sorry. Bad joke. I can be a bit of a flirt,” I confessed.

Reuben smiled, his big hands twitching a little by his sides like he was uncomfortable. “It’s all right. Sorry, I’m just… curious. And nervous. Really nervous.”

“Why?” I asked in surprise.

“I don’t know,” Reuben admitted with a small shrug.

“Well, just to be clear, I’m not planning to jump your bones or anything,” I offered, trying to lighten him up.

He laughed. It was a nice sound, very deep and carefree. “I appreciate that. I’m not much in the mood for… that… right now.”

“I understand,” I said, dipping my head a bit. “It’s different without your husband here.”

He nodded, his eyes turning to look out at the blue ocean. “I thought that he and I would be coming out here together.”

We arrived at the pier where there were multiple boats docked, of various sizes and uses. My boat did not stand out very differently from the other boats anchored there. I stepped onto the dock and started toward my boat. I glanced back. Reuben was stepping cautiously onto the dock like he expected the whole thing to rock like a rope bridge. I tried not to laugh and offered him a hand. “Here. ‘Til you get your sea legs.”

He took my hand with another sheepish smile. “Sorry. I’m just really not used to water.”

“It’s all right,” I said, trying to soothe him without sounding condescending. “I won’t let you fall in.”

He laughed nervously, watching the wood beneath his sandals, and his hand tightened in mine. We walked down the dock until we reached my boat. “Here we are, home sweet home.”

Reuben looked up, and I noticed his eye immediately go to the name painted on the side in blue letters. ‘Dragon U2C Stuff.’ He let out another of those deep laughs. “Wow, that’s… that’s clever.”

I grinned. “Thanks, I thought so. Wait here.” I let go of his hand, hopping the distance onto the boat. He looked worried for a second until I extended the gangplank for him to board, offering him my hand again. He walked carefully over the gangplank and the few steps onto the boat, and I could feel him shaking a little bit. “You all right?” I asked as he made it onto the deck.

He let out a puff of air. “Yeah. Just, the water moving takes some getting used to.”

I motioned to the center of the boat where there was a covered dining-room type space. “Here, wanna sit until you’re used to the water?”

He nodded gratefully, and I led him inside, steering him into one of the chairs in the space. I headed to the bar. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Just water would be great,” he said. I grabbed a bottle of cold water for him and filled a glass with ice for myself before grabbing a bottle of birthday cake-flavored vodka and taking it all back to him. I sat down in one of the other chairs as he toyed with the label on the plastic bottle. He looked extremely awkward. He had said he wasn’t good at small talk, and I was learning that pretty quickly. “Would you like to tell me about Kyle?” I asked. “How did you two meet?”

He immediately softened at my words. I wondered if he had gone through the past week feeling like he couldn’t say anything, for fear of upsetting himself or someone else. “We met in college. He was in the year below me, studying education, and I studied business. But we actually met at the college’s gay-straight alliance club.”

“That must have been a long time ago,” I said.

Reuben nodded. “Feels like a lifetime ago. I had more hair then too.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, tipping my head curiously.

“Yeah, like a full…” He waved his hands a little, trying to demonstrate. “Wait, I have a picture.”

He pulled out his phone and started scrolling on it. I swallowed a mouthful of sweet vodka and poured another, taking two swallows before he held up his phone for me to see.

Young Reuben stood in a long, black gown. His hair was much puffier then, standing out on both sides of his head from under a flat, four-cornered hat, looking almost like pom-poms on either side of his head. He did not have his moustache and beard either, giving him a baby-faced appearance. He held a black leather cover and was giving the camera a big, toothy grin. Next to him stood a man and a woman that I assumed were his parents, the woman in a blue dress as she clung to Reuben’s arm with a smile just as big and bright. He got his body shape from his father, but I could see his mother all over his smile and the crinkle of his eyes. “This was when I graduated college,” he said with a chuckle. “First one in my family to go. My momma was so proud.”

“You did have hair then,” I said, waving at one of the puffs with a fluttery fingertip.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “I started cutting it short a few years later. Looked more ‘professional.’” He said this with a hint of bitterness that I hadn’t heard from him before. That made me wonder; I saw people with all kinds of hair on the beach. I had not a single hair on my own body.

“Isn’t your own natural hair professional?”

Reuben shook his head. “Surprisingly, no. Humans have very strange ideas about what’s okay and what’s not.”

“Huh.” I mused on this as I swallowed the rest of the vodka in my glass. Why would a natural part of your body not be considered professional? It wasn’t like his hair would get in his way doing bank stuff. “Do you still have parents?”

He blinked, and I realized my question was both oddly-phrased and also probably rude. But he just gave me a small smile. “My momma passed away about eight years ago from breast cancer. My dad is still alive, but he’s in a care facility about two hours from here. He’s got advanced dementia.”

“What is that?”

“Oh. It’s a… memory loss mental thing,” he tried to explain. “He doesn’t usually recognize people or know where he is or what’s going on.”

I frowned a bit. “That sounds rough.”

He nodded. “Yeah. My younger sister, Brenda, is the only other family that I have left on my side. She has three kids, my nephews and niece.”

He did not mention Kyle’s family, and I assumed that they were probably not in the picture either. I had learned early on during my time in the human world that ‘being gay’ was still not fully accepted by everyone, which seemed ridiculous to me, especially for such an advanced species. Love was love, and family was family.

Reuben held up his phone. There was a picture of two men standing side by side, both wearing white suits with blue bowties and shiny, black shoes. I recognized one of them to be a younger version of Reuben, still with a round, smiling face, but hardly any gray in his hair, and he had a beard now. Next to him stood a white man with brown hair, a hawk-like nose and kind, brown eyes. Their arms were around one another, and there was a two-layer cake behind them, decorated with white icing and blue roses. “This was our wedding.”

My species does not get ‘married’ in the way that humans did, but I had seen several weddings take place on boats and on the beach. I knew it was a happy occasion, with family and friends and lots of music, dancing, and drinking. Reuben and Kyle looked so happy, standing together, gold wedding bands on their fingers. “It’s beautiful,” I commented. “This doesn’t look like that long ago.”

Reuben nodded. “We got married when it became legal here. But we had been together for over 20 years before that.”

That made me a little sad, to think that Reuben and Kyle had been together in a committed relationship for so long but unable to make it legal. The human world was so strange sometimes, with all of its ‘legalities’ and ‘laws’ that dictated what people could and could not do.

“What about you?” Reuben asked, putting his phone back into his pocket and taking a sip from his water.

“What about me, what?” I asked, blinking. I was feeling very warm and heavy from all the alcohol I had drunk.

“Did you have a… significant other in the monster world? Parents? Kids?”

The words hit me like a blow to the chest. I cleared my throat hard, the sound raspy. “I, uh…” My throat suddenly felt too tight, and I swallowed the rest of my drink, ice cubes and all, the icy points digging into my esophagus as they traveled down my body. I knew this question had been coming, but now that it had, I suddenly had no idea what to say.

Reuben gazed at me for a long moment before I think he realized my discomfort. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said softly. “We don’t… I didn’t mean…”

I shook my head, much too hard and much too fast. “No, it’s fine. You’re fine. I just…” I held up my hands like I was holding words in them I couldn’t say.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Reuben said gently. “I… honestly should go anyway. Tomorrow is my first day back to work after… everything.”

I nodded, lurching to my feet and offering my hand. “Yeah, no problem. It was nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” he said, taking my hand and giving it a polite shake.

It was only after he was halfway down the dock that I realized I should have helped him on the gangplank and offered to escort him back to the beach. But it was silly to go chasing after him now, and, with my current state, I might possibly end up in the water. All right for me, of course, but not all right for him. I poured myself another drink.