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At dusk, you park your bicycle next to a damp and moss-covered tree trunk, then you begin your trek towards the beach.
You’ve left your earphones at home, with you, are your phone and your wallet. The shoes you’re wearing don’t match your attire. When you left the office and went directly back home, you didn’t bother changing out of your dress pants and blouse, but simply landed on the couch as a bundle of nebulous, anomalous melancholy and buzz. You’re wearing your bright orange running shoes because they were the only pair of shoes left at the genkan when you had made the dash to escape your house.
So here you are, in black trousers, a white shirt and neon sneakers, sinking your feet into the grains of the sea, listening to the waves hug the seashore like reunited lovers.
The way the remaining sunlight glistens onto the sea surface makes your eyes water. When you force yourself to look past the blinding sun and into the unending shadows that loom with each of the sun’s impending steps, it’s done with great difficulty.
The seas and the sands here are familiar. You feel that you can navigate this beach blindfolded.
Behind you, is a wall where couples and the like come together to carve their initials onto rock, as if laying down evidence that proves you were once here could guarantee a future where you can be here together again.
You walk over to look for yours. A small, unassuming heart at the furthest end of the wall, you run your fingers over its uneven cracks and dents, you’re touching it because you’re not sure whether all of him was just from your imagination. With every passing minute, the sun dips lower and behind the sea, the pinkish haze settles over the stone like a warm blanket and illuminates the surface, it makes it look more heroic than anything. And like the last remainder of streaking rays, you think that your memories of him die with it.
One year ago, your boyfriend died in a villain attack. The news outlet had played the story repeatedly for two minutes before the channel switched to more important information about emergency services. He was a fireman, at the news of the attack, he was called on site as his unit’s captain, but before he was able to make any calls for putting out fires and collaborating with EMTs and heroes, the attack continued, and with his body, he saved the life of a young girl.
You think you hate her. She probably doesn’t even remember his face right now. The last person your boyfriend ever saw had forgotten him in a less than fortunate time.
In this future where your boyfriend could not keep the promise of ‘here with you forever’, you kick the rock wall because if you hadn’t come here for your two year anniversary, perhaps his death wouldn’t have been set in stone.
Not yet, anyway.
“You look miserable,” In your daze, you were unable to notice the stranger that had joined you in the glaring towards the cliff side. Something wet trails along your cheeks and it’s when he snaps you out of your stupor with cruel words that you realise you’ve been crying.
“Misery loves company.” You make a light hearted jab at him, but you’re sure it doesn’t have the desired effect with how you’re dressed, frivolous and inane.
Ineptly, you try to swallow your hiccups and put on a professional face, the one you use when interviewing a celebrity, it’s embarrassing, to cry in front of a stranger, let alone in such an intimate place where your sniffles are all that a stranger can hear aside from a bird’s song and the waves’ dance, but maybe you’re just lying to yourself, maybe, you think, if you pretended everything was okay for long enough, life would eventually right itself until it is.
What an awkward way to meet new people.
With your unmoving position, your feet are almost entirely submerged into the warm sand, grains infiltrating into your shoes and socks through the nets and it’s uncomfortable, if you were with your boyfriend, you’d hold onto his shoulder and dump it out, but you’re not, so you bask in the discomfort because it reminds you that you’re still alive.
(You revel in the sand, you revel in his memories.)
“It’s an evening on Boxing Day, go home to your family.” You debate between continuing to look at the rockwall and turning around to let the leftover light shower you in its salvation.
You look at the stranger instead. If you paid less attention, maybe you would’ve already attributed features to his croaky and rotund voice, but when you look at him– you’re reminded of the dulcet waves crashing. At first glance, his hair looks dyed, pink and orange juxtaposed with his crimson eyes, but it’s with contemplation that you realise he’s ash blond, made peach by the sun. You wonder what his occupation is. He looks the type to have meaningful service jobs, but the way he’s looking at you, perusing you up and down, you think that maybe he’s an artist. He looks at you purposefully, like he’s trying to find your flaws.
He’s also dressed in trousers and a shirt, but the lack of dark circles beneath his eyes suggests that he’s in control of his life, and not a corporate lap dog.
(You revel in the sun, you revel in his judgement.)
(You’re alive.)
“Don’t have anyone to go home to. Not anymore anyway.” A bitter laugh escapes, you’re not sure why you’re entertaining his shitty attempts at conversation, a stranger who came up to you with insults and stupid comments.
“Why are you even here?” You find yourself filling the blank of silence that settles uncomfortably between you. He glances at you.
“Reason why you’re here.” The way he says it makes you doubt yourself, does he truly know why you’re right here, right now?
…
“Can we stop staring at the wall, we’re at a beach, you’re supposed to look at the water,” He says, monotonously.
“I’m not supposed to do anything.”
He pisses you off so easily, despite having only met you for three minutes, he knows exactly what buttons he should press to get your face to flare up in that ugly red, he chuckles because he likes it, your cheeks mirror the sky, and he turns around, for some reason, you follow.
This stranger toes off his shoes and plops them down beneath his heart. He lifts one knee, takes off his sock, then the other, and he begins walking to the edge of the waters. He meanders, it’s slow and you think it’s intentional, you strip yourself of your sneakers and leave them next to his, haphazardly.
When you step onto the sand, it crunches beneath your weight, leaving footprints behind you, in your shadow.
You ponder whether it’s appropriate to walk up next to him, with your feet deep into the sand, or should you stand behind him, with a security provided by a hidden face.
The peach clouds. Dulcet waves crashing.
You walk up to him, shoulders aligned, and look into the remaining sunset. Maybe he’s actually looking at it, memorising its patterns and committing it to his memory, but you’re not, you’re thinking about that heart on the rockwall and in your periphery, you’re mindful of his smooth, blemishless skin.
You briefly recall the first time you visited this beach. It was your sixteenth birthday, and with this bay being the only beach that’s within a commutable distance, your small group of friends dragged you here after school to celebrate your birthday. Two girls holding a small box of cake carefully between them, with you in a blindfold tumbling and rolling behind, trying to keep up with their excited pace whilst sand nudges itself into your shoe and sinks between your toes. The beach smells of salts and wood. Something akin to a put out fireplace.
The second time you went to the beach, was when you were seventeen, alone. It was a Saturday, and you had been dumped by your first boyfriend. You had looked more dead than anything, without the streaks of tears and makeup streaming down your face, you looked into the sunset from atop a granite rock. You were only chased out of your fantasies when the blooming sounds of explosions begin nearing you. And when you look back, someone was holding firecrackers behind you with his friend. He had his hands in his pockets, and even more so, a scowl drawn on his face. And perhaps if it weren’t for the vehement grin on the red head’s countenance, you would’ve assumed something had occurred between the two.
It clicks in your brain now that the stranger next to you isn’t a stranger at all. You’ve seen his face when you were still bright with youth. You’re positive he doesn’t remember you anymore. So with newfound confidence, you chase forward, falling into the dulcet waves, its cold, its bite on your thighs, shoulders misaligned.
The legs of your pants become drenched, sticking to your legs like a haunted memory, but you revel in it, you revel in its freezing familiarity.
Now, the sun has fully melted into the darkness, clouds darkening from a pinkish hue to grey, streams of tears falling into step with gravity, hidden in your face’s shadows.
Firecrackers won’t distract you now.
“Whatever you’re crying about, whoever you’re crying for, I’m sure they won’t appreciate it. They just want you to move on, and if they don’t, just more the reason to.” Somehow, his voice sounds particularly muffled after nightfall, but it feels lighter, as if the promised disappearance of the sun takes responsibility and weight off its shoulders. You think you get it.
“Ah, screw it.” With little announcement, the ash blond crashes into the waters, in the midst of it, he splashes you with salty water that leaves your skin feeling dry.
It takes a second or two for him to resurface. When he leaves the waters, his hair has gone unruly, gently toppling over with the weight of the seas, his skin remains silky smooth, but what your heart halts at, is his million-dollar smile. It’s contagious, because before you notice it, you’re also collapsing into the dulcet waves crashing at your feet and laughing into the waters.
It’s Boxing day, it’s cold, and now that you’re wet, warmth is further away from your body with dripping fabrics drape onto you like cling wrap, but that’s not what you’re thinking about.
Misery loves company, and as you fall through the periodic visits of Poseidon, washing your feet of the sunken sand, sticky with regret, you briefly let yourself forget why you’re even here. Sixteen year old birthday, cheating exes, dead boyfriend. And instead, you remind yourself of the nebulous bundle of peach clouds that don’t leave you even after the sun sets, you let yourself listen to the dulcet waves crashing, its laughs as he drags you beneath the waters to make fun of your choking sniffles when you resurface. You remember that even in darkness, firecrackers light up the path you take, and for a second, you’re lying under the stars, sixteen, in school uniform, with the chilly air nipping at your moist skin, hair tangled by troubles and headaches, but you let yourself feel okay.