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Grief, this time, was not what Charlie expected.
Grief often means anger for him. It means pushing over bookcases and punching wooden walls. It means lighting fires in his path and burning up anything that dares to affect him. It means acting out as a violent child would be in a tantrum. Has he ever changed since he was a child? Charlie didn’t want to think of the answer.
Today, it was slow.
It was holding on to a boat railing, smile falling, slowly, as fires began scorching the land he foraged on for so long. The thoughts didn’t even come to him until after he’d seen a fiery rock punch into the ground.
It was Mariana’s not on the boat, at first.
It was is he dead, at second.
It was the panic, at third.
You’d think the hurt would be sudden. It wasn’t. You would think after losing something he’s loved for the second (or third, or fourth) time he’d get used to it by now. He wasn’t.
It was, lastly; mounting, and mounting dread, it was freezing up and gripping onto the railing with all the strength he had to convince his mind and his beating chest not to jump into freezing cold water and swim back. It was somehow doing nothing, as the island got smaller and smaller in the distance.
As much as Charlie loses, and loses, and loses, he still gets surprised… when he loses. When it all crumbles down around him after he so carefully puts things back together with flimsy hopes and optimism.
His mouth dries, blankly looking out at the island. Much too far to swim back at this rate. Much too far from Mariana, the man he thought he could maybe start over with just a few days ago. Nonetheless, Flippa was waiting for him.
He muttered this under his breath, a few times at least. Only for him to hear, just so it felt more real.
"Flippa is waiting for me." Only for him, the wind, and the waves to hear.
It is fine. It will be fine.