Never Again, Love

The night has gone still. A cold drought has crept into the beach to take the place of the previously windy, sun-baked tourist spot. If you could see the beach now, you'd think it was someplace no one knew existed – and never dream it could be so crowded that the crowds might crush you in second and leave you crumpled like a piece of discarded chocolate wrapper in their wake.

I wouldn't blame you. Looking at its white miniature sand dunes with not a speck of humanity in sight, it could as well be an entirely different planet.

It felt like an invasion into sacred ground when I stepped onto the soft sand. The contact of those velvet sand grains sent chills down my spine, memories flashing through my eyes like stampeding animals.

I had to sit down on the sand to let the onslaught pass, to drain from my bones those countless emotions the memories awakened in me.

When I could open my eyes to the distant sea and not see through another time, I made myself walk across the white expanse of the enormous beach.

It still felt like the first time. For all my heart and mind were telling me, this might be the first time I'm seeing that lighthouse in the distance, throwing its beam far and wide out into the sea, a beacon I'd grown to love.

Its light arced across the beach, and it felt like it was giving me a little wave, a little voice asking me, 'Where have you been, Maria?' It reminded me of all those windswept nights I'd spent with him at its top, just watching the stars and the world breathing through the night.

We'd done wild things up there, and given dares to each other that even the most insane person wouldn't do. Once, we'd dared each other to hang off the safety railing at the top for one whole minute.

I'd done it. He'd been a wuss about it, though. From that time on, we'd always had an inside-joke between us about safety railings, and almost all the time, he was the punch line.

My feet took the longer way round to the lighthouse near the shore, because I wanted to soak in the aura of our beach as much as I could. I could see those children by the shore now, screaming as they built sand-castles and tried to jump upon the others'. I could see the faraway ships, inching across the slight curve of the ocean and blowing little tendrils of smoke into the sky.

When I blinked, the memory evaporated.

Reaching the lighthouse, I stared at the locked door.

'You want a door to get in the way of seeing the world spread out beneath you? You want a door to tell you where you shouldn't and can't go? It's wood, Maria. You're a person. With a heart, a soul, an intention. It's wood with just...' he paused for a second, '... just termite food in it.'

I had to laugh. He wasn't being funny at all. His words weren't funny. But the sincerity in them, the sense that you can go anywhere and doors were just obstacles to be cleared away...

I'd never lived like that. I'd taken doors to be part of my life's path – a closed door here meant you need to go somewhere else. It was like how you wouldn't question a turning in the road or a passage turning left.

But to him, doors weren't forking passageways. They were things you need to get around to get to the real place.

And to me, the idea was new and exciting.

My wrinkled hand traced the rusted outline of the ancient lock, weathered and worn with many years of braving the sea wind. 'Do you remember me?'

Once, I would have laughed at myself. I would have laughed myself hoarse. What kind of loon would go talking to locks, asking if they remembered them? What kind of creep would see phantom people in rusted locks?

Now, I only smile at how shallow I'd been, how... thoughtless and boxed my mind had been. That was what growing old did to you – it un-boxed your mind and showed you how you were when you were younger, how you'd never thought beyond the surface.

Something weighed me down when I turned away from the lighthouse, still living in my twenties, running up the spiraling staircase and laughing with Fred like we had not a care in the world.

I walked to the center of the beach and eased myself flat onto the sand, relaxing into the familiar embrace of those sandy arms, hugging me close like an old friend. It whispered stories of times gone and faded into the past of my life – reminding me of days and nights I spent here – from the six year old girl seeing the ocean for the first time, through the sixteen year old girl learning to surf, the twenty year old watching the blond haired boy across the beach wearing a flashy hand-painted tank top that said 'Fred's Ice cream' in funny font, the twenty five year old girl blushing when the blond haired boy told her she was really pretty under the stars, the twenty seven year old girl standing atop the lighthouse and hugging the boy, telling him how much she'd miss him, and the thirty year old crying alone in a deserted beach clutching a bloody tank top, the thirty two year old smiling at a little blond girl named Maria, and the forty year old woman hugging a crying sixteen year old Maria, telling her how good a man her father was...

Something tugged on my arm.

I look up to find brown eyes sparkling at me, a thousand colors swirling inside, a color for each memory, a color for each word those eyes had spoken to me.

'Fred?'

He smiled, 'I'm not done pestering you yet, Mar.'

With a swift motion, he pulled me up and into a hug, snuggling his nose into the skin between my neck and shoulder, his little beard tickling. 'Do you want to go on a new adventure?'

I let myself melt into his arms, the sturdy shoulder holding me up, the minty scent of his shirt and remembered what it felt like to be young and wild and in love. 'Do you?'

He hugged me tighter, 'Yes. With you.'

I pulled away from him a bit to see his face, one eyebrow raised, 'I might talk you into jumping off the lighthouse next time we're high. And you might die.... again.'

He laughed and mock-slapped me across the cheek, the touch being more of a caress than a slap. 'But this time, I'm taking you down with me, Maria.'

I smiled and took a deep breath as I looked into those eyes, those little sparks inside them, colors as fragile as tendrils of smoke, and shades as enduring as the roaring sea, and I found myself within those eyes, the missing part of me that I'd been looking for all this time, the part of me that had truly lived.

And I nodded, 'Let's go.'

He hooked an arm around my elbow and we raced across the beach to the sea, to the sky, to the clouds above, and I told him the three words I'd never got to say to him. The three words that I couldn't say because I'd become the wrong person in the end.

'Don't leave me.'

He looked down and smiled at me, his smile fitting together the broken pieces of my worn heart.

'Never again, love.'