sunburn
NB: In Summer of 2023 and 2024, I began swimming at Sandringham Beach daily at sunrise. I would get on the 6.35 train and be in the water by 6.45, back on the train home by 7.30. Over the course of my days there, I met a grandfather, Neil, who I became good friends with. He had grandchildren in Geelong and he told me he’d had a heart attack months earlier, and he only had six months left to live. I told him of my plans to move to the United States; he was elated when I got accepted into my top choice college for study abroad, having been one of the first people I told, after receiving my acceptance email by midnight and being on the beach with him by sunrise. By March, it was too cold to keep swimming, and I stopped going, only to lose contact with him, when he stopped responding to my messages. I have no idea if he is still alive today; I do not know if he still goes to the beach at all.
In January of 2025, I applied for a creative writing class at Rutgers on a whim, needing to fill my final slot in my schedule. I thought nothing of having to send through previous work to apply for a class - it turned out I’d actually applied for one of their most prestigious courses, taught by Joyce Carol Oates, and was far bigger a deal than I had known it to be. By week six it was my turn to submit a story for workshopping and I was far more focused on my journeys in and out of New York than I was any class that required my attention. But I was also overwhelmingly homesick, beaten down by the weather and mourning the summer I was missing back home. I sat down at our kitchen table in our college apartment the day before I had to submit my draft and it was as though something came over me entirely, because before I knew it, I looked up and I had an entire story loosely based on Neil, and the summer I was missing back home, right in front of me. I downloaded the file without reading through it once and submitted it straight to the portal for my classmates to read.
This is a far more edited and refined version of that original draft, but when I went into class the next day, Joyce told me to remember her class and my time in the United States when I publish my first novel - I’ve held onto that comment since she told me it.
The water was still, and it was the coldest day of the year thus far when Richard first didn’t arrive.
Nothing about her routine shifted. The waves rippled only when she arched her hands to disappear under the surface, and she stayed under only for as long as she could hold her breath. Pushed herself back to air, ran her hands through wet locks.
There wasn’t much to regard his absence. The sky was grey and the wind bit her legs, and she thought of his frail hands, the thick blue veins cutting through them, curving into a map around his fingers. The unyielding grace with which he would move under the surface, slow and steady.
He wouldn’t survive the water in weather like this. She was aching from it, ice-cold and shaking all over. Incomparable to long Summer days poured out like water from the tap, all the words they’d let wind through the air in the hottest mornings January had to offer.
He’d wait for the warmer days. He would be here again, towel in one hand and goggles in the other.
Nothing shifted her on her walk home. The pavement was cold to the touch, and her earbud kept slipping out of her ear from seawater. She bought granola and blackberries and coconut water on her way back, the first person in the supermarket, unperturbed by her bare feet and cold fingers and the silence that enveloped her. Smiled at the till worker when he scanned her through, sleepy-eyed and rumpled.
‘Swam already? Certainly a day for it.’ Aaron on his name tag, chipped and peeling at the edge. Jerked his head towards the door. ‘It’ll be storming out there before we know where we are.’
Her mouth opened as she laughed, cut of flashing-white teeth in the early morning light. ‘Gotta take advantage of it now. You’ll regret not doing so later.’
Richard would be back, even if only to sit on the sand, and remind her to rub sunscreen into her shoulders if the clouds cleared. There was no pondering on this, because there was no question about it.
The promise of another day, another beach, another conversation lazily dripped out onto the shore, melted into her hands. Clea didn’t bother to pause to consider she had seen him for the last time unknowing.
It was the hottest summer on record. Named it El Nino on the news, rolled the towels out on the sand and threw their hands over their eyes when someone asked how they were coping in the weather. Nowhere to escape, nowhere to turn from how it hung and left you out to dry.
Christmas out on the decks to escape the oven-box heat in the house, the kind that trapped you in and suffocated you, roiling and cloistered and relentless. Cold meat and salad and champagne sweating on the table. Asking if the cousins could be excused from the table so they could walk down to the beach, past the shops, throw themselves recklessly into the ocean and hiss at the sting of the water on shoulders burnt tender and red from the sun.
There was a drowsiness to the annual Christmas day swim. Cooked to the slaughter, full of champagne and brimming commentary every time her aunts opened their mouths. Waiting as long as she could before her fingers turned to prunes, and she had to push herself out.
When she first saw him, it was as he was walking out of the waves, bathers clinging to his lithe frame. Crooked smile cocksure as an arrow painted on his face. He put his hand up in acknowledgement and she waved back. Her mother had always told her to be friendly.
‘Merry Christmas!’
She laughed. ‘Merry Christmas to you too!’
Blue water in front of them, heat coiling off the sand.
New Years rolled around in a flurry of bright lights and loud music and hot, long afternoons, the kind that left you exhausted no matter what you did to escape the heat. She’d asked her friends months ago if they wanted to go to a doof to celebrate the entrance into the new year and they’d all said yes.
The experience itself came back to her in flashes: screaming with laughter in the backseat of her best friend’s car on the drive down. Dirt on her hands, on her face, between her toes, in her eyes. Heat poured everywhere, days so hot she felt slick with it, stripping down at 4am to wade into the lake next to their tent. Tender red arms, the sun pulsating on the back of her neck. Dancing in the bush to house music so loud it pulsated through your entire body, made her feel like she was belonging to something bigger than this, and everything she could possibly experience transcended anything that anyone else could possibly describe. Ingrid pointing her phone at her for a photo, screaming the countdown to midnight and ignoring the empty feeling in the pit of her stomach when the music started again and it was suddenly a new year, curling her entire body around Dylan when they all collapsed on their blow-up beds at night.
They all woke up sweltering on the ground, her limbs aching as though they’d been partially rearranged by the experience. She spooned espresso into the broken silver coffee pot she’d stolen from her parents and put it on the portable stove. Tipped her face back into the sunlight, wondered if there could be anything further than this.
Dylan found her later, carrying a mug of black coffee and a blunt, when she was sitting lakeside with her journal and her pen. Clea was wearing a silver bikini top and her oldest jeans and had her speed dealers shoved into her hair. Already burning from the sun, on the skin between her collarbone and her shoulders. Laid out among all the yellowed grass and the scorch of the sunrise rays. ‘Morning to you too.’
She was writing about the inherent romanticism of dancing with her friends. Tracing her fingers in the dirt, wondering if there’d be a bushfire warning announcement today that would force them all to pack up, drive home. Smiled when Dylan approached. ‘Sleep well?’
Dylan sat down, dragged her lips along Clea’s shoulder. ‘Not when you’re gone.’
It was a line she’d roll her eyes at, said by anyone else. Instead, she blushed, leaned back and trailed her hands along Dylan’s arm. Grabbed the blunt from her hand and the lighter. Lit up and passed it back for her to take the first puff.
‘2025 goals?’ Dylan stroked her hair, matted together with dirt and sweat.
‘Become Californian sober.’ Took the blunt, dragged it between her lips and tilted her head up to blow out the smoke. Sky so bright it hurt to look at, Dylan looking down at her softly, lip pulled between her teeth. ‘Maybe go to California.’
‘If you go, I’ll follow.’
‘Eat a really good mango. Find the perfect orange wine. What are yours?
The weight of their arms tangled together burning up, ground hot to the touch. Tipped her head back, waiting for a response. Dylan raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Shave my head.’
‘If you do, can I bleach it?’
‘Of course.’ Dylan was smiling now, the pinprick of a dimple forming in the corner of her cheek. ‘Ignore my mum. Find the perfect white t-shirt. Meet Troye Sivan in Fitzroy.’
Clea laughed. ‘Get drunk with Troye Sivan in Fitzroy.’
‘Swim more, at the beach.’
‘Oh my god.’ Clea passed the blunt back, pushed herself up into sitting so she could wildly gesture with her hands. ‘You won’t believe this conversation I had the other day, with this man I met at Sandringham beach…’
Days passed. They drove back to Melbourne, Dylan pressing her leg against hers for the entire length of the drive home while maintaining her conversation with Ingrid, as though it was nothing. Burning up.
Clea lying out in her backyard, on her bed, in the backseat of the car, any surface she could find to escape the heat, long brown hair spilled all over the ground.
Calculating all the plausible ways to make the sweat dripping down the inside of her arms beautiful instead of mundane. Returning to the beach, over and over again.
Clea and Richard became friends later, when they were the only people who would walk down to the ocean at sunrise. He did laps to the buoy out adrift in the middle of the sea. She laid on her back and stared straight up at the sky, orange melting into pink with nothing to separate her from it. Clea would wave to him on her way out. He would lift his head from below the water, and grin as wide as he could.
He must’ve been around her grandfather’s age, a shock of white hair and white teeth and pale skin softened by time. Water rivulets running down his shoulders. Raggedy blue towel left out on the beach, used and faded. The kindest green eyes she’d ever seen, crinkled around the edges, lines weathered by how much smiling he’d done in his time. What a privilege, to walk around with the reminder of how much you’d loved permanently etched on your face.
Sun beating down on her shoulders, barely 7am in the morning. He was rubbing his hair with his towel and hers was falling in clumps down her back. ‘Scorcher, isn’t it?’
He laughed. ‘The whole summer’s been. Nothing out of the ordinary.’ Stuck his hand out. ‘I was waiting for you to introduce yourself again. I’m Richard.’
Clea smiled, enveloped his hand in hers. ‘Clea.’
They began placing their belongings next to each other when they walked down onto the sand, and telling each other the smallest details of their lives when they left the ocean. The growth of the tomatoes Richard had planted in his front lawn. Anecdotes about the regulars at Clea’s cafe, where she rode her red bike to the door and chained it up outside.
Alongside it all, they walked into the water at their own pace.
Clea had no other friendships akin to this. Confined to such a particular place, time, expanse of existence. She shared with Richard as much as he shared with her. He tipped his head back and laughed when she told a story that was particularly funny, and she laughed back at him, and they both dove under the tide when the next wave rolled through.
The days kept turning forward, and she kept returning to the beach, and smiling at Richard when he was standing next to her, and everything else could make her feel restless, but this slowed her down. Made her stand in the waves and think of nothing but the crystal-clear tide heading toward her.
It was February, and the air was so hot you could bake in it. It was a summer of goodbyes, a summer of sweating through the night, hair greasy and damp from where she tossed on her pillow, a summer of pouring the espresso onto the ice and placing it onto the tray for the waitress to carry to the tables. A summer of staring out the train window and placing her feet up onto the seat, trying to map an end to the endless expansion of blue water as it flurried past her.
It was a summer of feeling as though everything was passing her by, and she could do nothing to stop it.
She kept dreaming in fits and starts. Falling asleep, and waking in the middle of the night shaking despite the heat of her room, unperturbed by the fan she had set up next to her bed. Waking up in Dylan’s bed, from dreams so vivid they haunted her even after she jolted awake.
Measuring the days in the most unexpected turns, time dripping from her fingers and burning up. Clea was scooped out, hollowed from the inside, restless. When she went down on Dylan in the early morning, she stayed between her legs long after she’d finished, resting her head on her upper thigh, and tried not to focus on where the sun was beating down on her from the window.
‘You know you’re my best friend, right?’
Dylan looked at her with eyes softened by sleep, laughed. ‘Of course I do. It makes whatever this is funnier.’
The heat was relentless. The heat was inescapable. Dylan’s laughter traced her down, rooted her to the ground.
Clea could ask her anything, and Dylan would always smile at her the same way she did in the morning light, hair spilling over the pillow. ‘Can we go out for dinner tonight?’ She was restless. Perturbed, cloistered, brimming heat spilling over, trickling down her hands.
Clea found the least expensive Italian restaurant to them, wore her long black dress. Left her hair down and unbrushed, unshaved armpits, silver necklace nestled on her chest.
Dylan came out of the bathroom with hair wet and spiky from the shower, white linen shirt, green pants, took Clea by the hips and pressed her to the counter to kiss her before they could even walk out the door.
Sitting down in the restaurant, sweeping her hair behind her ear. Clea looked at Dylan over her wine glass, where she was studying the menu. ‘Can we share the ragu?’
‘Have you ever been in love?’ She blurted out the question the next time they both stepped out of the sea. Dripping wet and the sky a soft blue above them, sunrise already gone.
Richard laughed. Not in a way that suggested her question was stupid, which it had been, because his hands were mapped by blue pulsing veins and he wore a wedding band on a chain around his neck, not his finger. Rather, the softness of it gave way to something deeper, memories blurred around the edges.
‘Yes. Not as long ago as you might have thought. Why?’
Clea slipped on her sunglasses, already embarrassed by her uncouthness, her constantly probing nature. ‘Not sure. Just been thinking about it lately. What made you know that you were in love?’
Richard seemed to consider this for a moment, rubbing his arms with his towel. Finally, after the pause, he spoke again. ‘Oysters.’
‘Oysters?’
He nodded. ‘I was seeing a beautiful boy. We met on my football team - not the done thing, back in the day. And he was just… electric. I mean, we’d go dancing, and all anyone could do was look at him. He was the light of every dancefloor he was on. I couldn’t do anything without looking at him.’
Dylan spinning her in the middle of the bush and laughing without a care in the world. Tucking Dylan’s hair behind her ear and smiling down at her, as though everything that was good in the world could be funneled down to the expanse of freckles on her nose.
Clea stopped where she was rubbing sunscreen into her already-pink shoulders, looking at him all funny. ‘And where do oysters come into this?’
Richard laughed. ‘It was six months after we met. And I’d woken up in his bed, covered in sweat, it was the middle of January, what else? He said to me he needed to escape the heat, let’s go to the Saint Kilda beach house. So we did exactly that. He pulled my chair out for me and he ordered us champagne and oysters.’
His tone changed as he recounted the memory, something enveloped in his unyielding patience. Looking out to the endless expanse of the sea, as though his answer rested between the rockpools and the waves. ‘I’ll never forget that. The way he spoke for me, because he wanted the waiter to know that I was spoken for. He took such good care of me. Far better than I deserved.’
Her heart ached. It was barely the break of morning, and her heart was breaking, and here she was, sitting on this beautiful beach, with her deeply kindhearted friend. ‘What made you stop loving him?’
Richard finally looked back at her, an emotion she’d never seen before and couldn’t quite place in his eyes. ‘He died. About fifteen years ago, now.’
The words made Clea feel so ashamed and small she wished she could shove everything she’d said back into her mouth, shrink herself down to something palatable, someone who didn’t ask questions that changed the light in people’s eyes. She opened her mouth to say something different, offer comfort - but no words came out, there was nothing to be said at all.
Richard tilted his head back toward the ocean. Smiled at her, understanding, the weight of the world resting in his kind, open expression. ‘When I’m out there, I think he’s right beside me. And the time I spent with him… I’ll never get that back. But I can find him in everything else that I love, and know that he’s in every part of it.’
He paused, and reached to clasp her hand in his. No intention but the need to convey the importance of this, the importance of love experienced, and love gone. ‘How could I ask for anything beyond him?’
She nodded her head, and Clea held Richard’s hands in hers. They sat there, in silence, listening to the lilt of the waves. There was nothing else that needed to be said, regardless.
They all went out in the heat of the night to dance. Dylan and Ingrid and Clea and Isabella stumbling out of the train and walking down Lygon Street laughing, passing around the same bottle of cheap wine. Dylan pushing back her short hair, Clea transfixed on the movement of her hand. Ingrid brushing blue glitter eyeshadow on Clea’s face in the club line, Clea opening her eyes to Dylan looking directly at her, smiling.
Ingrid pulled her into the bathroom the second they got in. ‘What the fuck’s going on with you and Dylan?’
Clea shrugged. ‘We’ve been hooking up occasionally. Don’t look at me like that, it’s not serious.’
‘Not serious? You’ve never done anything by half the entire time I’ve known you.’ Ingrid’s words were punctuated by the unbuckling of her belt, pushing her jeans down, movement slurred from all the alcohol. ‘Why are you starting now?’
‘I like..’ Clea waved her hands between them, as if trying to transform the humid club bathroom into a transmutable human experience. ‘I like this. I like our friend group. I like her. I don’t want to ruin it by saying something stupid.’
‘And so you don’t say anything at all?’
‘It’s not what you think.’ She was struggling to find the words for it, hot and heavy, and there was sweat trickling down the back of her neck.
‘Bullshit it’s not. Are you stupid? You guys are going on dates - don’t look at me like that - and you think this is a casual hookup?’
Clea turned around. ‘That’s not what this is.’
‘I don’t think Dylan doesn’t care about you.’ Ingrid’s face was full of hurt, as though she was experiencing a visceral heartbreak on their behalf. ‘You’re not letting Dylan care about you.’
‘I don’t know.’ Clea washed her hands, and dried them with quick, rough movements. ‘I’m not sure.’
She went to pull the bathroom door open, and Ingrid stopped her with a soft touch on her arm. ‘Clea. You know what I mean.’
Clea did know what Ingrid meant.
They poured themselves back onto the dancefloor, found Dylan and Isabella talking to the bouncer as they waited. Dylan smiled when she saw her.
‘Want a shot?’ Grabbed Clea’s hand and pulled her to the bar, put her hand around her waist. Pushed her nose into the side of her neck. Gestured to the bartender and lined up the salt before he’d even finished pouring.
Clea stuck out her hand for Dylan to pour the salt on, laughing when she spilt it all over the counter. ‘You’re a goose.’
Dylan leaned down and kissed her, quickly, tasted like the cheapest sauvignon blanc Dan Murphy’s had to offer and the sea. ‘Just do the shot, babe.’
Tequila swallowed in rapid succession. Shoving the lime between her teeth, snaking her hand around Dylan’s waist. Pulling the skin out and smiling. ‘Let’s dance.’
Clea brought a mango with her the next time she walked down to the surf. Ripe to the touch, the sharpest knife she could find tucked into her bag. Sat next to Richard when he walked out of the water.
‘How should I know if I’m in love?’. Sliced the skin from the flesh, passed him the first piece of fruit. Realised she never offered him an opening greeting when she asked him about things like these.
He took the slice of mango from her, unconcerned as he ever was. Sucked it between his teeth. ‘I mean, I’m not sure. I can’t answer that question for you. What makes you think that you’re in love?’
Music so loud she felt it pulse through her ribcage. Laughter poured into her mouth, hot and sweaty and restless. A leg pushed against hers in the back of the car. Limoncello spritz and condensation sweating down the glass, spilling all over her hands.
Clea shrugged. ‘Not sure. Thought you might have the answer.’
‘Unfortunately for these philosophical questions, I find I never do.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘All I can tell you is if you find something that makes you feel alive, hold onto it. Laugh as much as you can. Put yourself on the line, and everyone else will follow too.’
The sound of the ocean, the salt in her hair.
‘I think I’ve been in love with her since the first time she kissed me.’ Clea dug the knife deep into the mango, hit the core. ‘I don’t know if it’s the same for her.’
Richard looked at her, considerate, pushed his damp hair out of his face. ‘You’ve still got plenty of time. Really, we all do. But if you love someone, you tell them. You don’t let it chew you alive.’
She focused on the motion of her breath, the feeling of the sea air hitting her face. Richard seemed overly aware of her lack of response, gestured at her hands, characterised by his unwavering gentleness. ‘Eat some mango.’
They sat in silence and ate their mango.
Richard never comes back to the beach. Clea keeps swimming. Clea keeps kissing Dylan, Clea tells Dylan about her beautiful friend, isolated and rooted to just their expanse of sand, their portion of the sea.
Weeks later, after mornings spent swimming by herself and searching for him along the entire expanse of the coastline, Clea searches his name and suburb online in a last-hope attempt. Finds his obituary from the queer and transgender youth support he volunteered at, knees buckling beneath her in the wait to order at the cafe. Wonders if she was to start howling, who in this line would reach to comfort her first.
The loss is so specific in time. She has nobody to reach out to. No connection to him other than a crooked grin on a warm morning. A mango shared, hands sticky on the sand.
She calls Dylan with steady hands, and she starts crying the second the call connects. ‘It’s… I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t know who to talk to.’
Dylan pauses on the other end of the phone. ‘It’s okay. You have me.’ Clea cries harder as she walks out of the cafe, cradles her phone between her hands. ‘Oh, baby. You have me.’
She’s lying motionless on her bed when Dylan slips through the door. Her mother must’ve let her in. Would’ve offered her orange juice, as she always does. Sometimes Clea thinks her mother loves Dylan more than she does. She’s always wondered if she suspected the two of them.
‘All this grief feels so misplaced.’ Clea’s voice feels small, forced in on itself. She thinks if she wrapped herself any further, she’d cease to exist. ‘He was just some guy I swam with in the morning. I didn’t know him, not properly. But…’ Voice trails off. She starts crying again.
Dylan strokes her hair. Runs her fingers through the strands. ‘You don’t need to justify yourself.’
How far gone this is, from the first time they kissed. Tongues heavy with vodka, the heat of the night burning up their skin as they touched.
Clea wonders when she realised how soft Dylan is with her. How light her touch, how much she cares.
She tilts her head back. Eyes watery from crying and her hair damp from the heat. In her oldest shirt, and Dylan looking down at her with such unyielding patience, eyes warm on hers. ‘Do you know I love you? Did you ever suspect it? Even when I was pretending otherwise?’
Dylan looks surprised by this confession. So far from their conversation, so misplaced in time.
And then, her shoulders soften. Her mouth slips into a smile, just at the corner. Her hands continue their movement. ‘Of course I did. Love… I always did.’
She leaves Dylan in the sheets of her bed the next morning. Walks down to the water by herself while it’s still dark, just in her biggest shirt, bathers underneath. Spreads out her towel and sits down so she can watch the sunrise.
There is no second towel next to her. She thinks of the time that he told her he found the boy that he loved in everything he did. Hands clasped together, diving under the surface, coming up for air.
Begins to consider this time as repurposed, something that she was meant to experience, the impact of even the smallest connection. Knows that she is meant to find this kind of love everywhere.
Clea thinks of how good Richard has been to her. How kind. How considered his answers, how wide his smile. There will never be another friendship like theirs.
Quietly, she pulls her shirt from her shoulders and steps toward the water.
i love this so so so much
So so beautiful Amelie