The acquisition of balance was a bitch with a spinal cord injury, and anyone with whiplash will tell you everything seems fine until you go a bit too far. Billy was cautious, he wasn't in a hurry, and he was serious about staying on his feet. He wasn't suspicious about Simon's presence, and he wasn't trying to catch him staring or doing something wrong. Generous with his space as much as anything else, Billy turned his attention to the paintings even before Simon was fully out of the way.
He'd always liked the ocean. He wasn't any good at surfing, never found any interest running up and down it, but he liked the smell and he liked the feel of sand in his toes. It was one of the best feelings out there, especially if you didn't have any feeling at all in your feet for three months. Billy definitely liked the beach.
So he was attracted to those that showed a lot of it, and not the seascapes that were preoccupied with the water and the way it pressed onto the land. He liked the beach, and he liked light. After some thought he pointed at a long canvas of a cove set in daylight. You could see the beach umbrellas in the distance, even if there was no people there. "That one. I like that one. That around here?" He didn't recognize it, but that wasn't important. There were a lot of oceans and beaches that Billy hadn't seen.