Sweet & Low Tide
They take the Seawall like it’s a ribbon meant for them, four across in a sun-faded sedan that still smells like last summer. Windows down, shirts sticking a little, the Gulf throwing salt at their teeth until every word tastes like it could be a punchline. Fugazi’s “Sweet and Low” hums from a phone docked by stubborn gravity; no vocals, just that calm heartbeat of a bass saying: don’t rush, you’re already where you’re going.
Nathan drives like he’s balancing a glass on the hood; Tino leans out to name every bird a pelican even when it’s trash, and nobody corrects him; Gabe keeps time on his knee, swearing the snare hit is the reason the clouds are moving; Marco rides shotgun, map app open for show, because there’s only one road that matters and it’s this one, stitched to the edge of the world.
The Pleasure Pier glows like a dare. Neon ferris spokes blink, and for one block they’re lit the same color as the ride—sea-green, then carnival red—like they’re being chosen by electricity. Wind combs their hair into versions of themselves that laugh easier. A couple crosses holding french fries like holy objects; the car smells it, decides it’s hungry, doesn’t stop.
They loop the same mile because it keeps getting better. Headlights unspool on wet pavement; the water keeps practicing forever; the sky puts both hands on their shoulders and says, yeah. The bassline rolls under them—patient, simple, clean—and the car drifts a foot closer to the rail just to hear the ocean louder. Somewhere behind the song a cop radio murmurs, then forgets them.
Gabe says this is what invincible sounds like and nobody argues. Not the kind of invincible that shouts, the kind that exhales: we are here, we are twenty-something, our worries are coupons we’ll remember to use later. Tino points at the dark where the ship lights wink like slow applause. Marco thumbs a voice note he’ll never send and saves it anyway, proof that a night can hum in your pocket.
Nathan taps the brake for a gull with executive privilege. The car rocks, then settles. Palm shadows rake the hood, and the breeze threads through them like somebody tuning the city. The song dips; they pass the place where the wall’s spray freckles the windshield, tiny galaxies that live for one block and die perfect.
They talk about nothing and feel about everything. A plan for October that might be a campfire. A joke about who’s moving first and who’s lying. The bass is steady as a good promise. Life is grand in the way that doesn’t need witnesses—only air, and the road, and four bodies aligned to the same slow drum.
They hit the turnaround by the big hotel and go again. Of course they do. The song is already back at the top, sunlight pressed into sound. The ocean keeps saying its one word: more. They nod, kings of a narrow kingdom, salt on their lips, windows down, all green lights for a mile.
