Click

A horn blared from the car behind her.

“Goddamn it,” Amanda snapped, flinching. The light had turned green a microsecond before. His impatience made her want to dig her heels in and delay him further, but her fear to provoke him further won out, and she took off with more speed than she was comfortable with.

She gripped her steering wheel and glanced in the rear vision mirror. He was right up her arse, despite the fact she was in the left lane and going a little higher than the speed limit already.

What was his problem, she wondered, her heart racing and palms slick against the wheel. Why couldn’t he go round? Why didn’t he? The other lane was empty! She continued glancing back, trying to understand, but his face was unreadable. She didn’t recognise him, either.

As quickly as he’d accelerated, he hit the brakes and veered left down a side street. Amanda released the breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding, and returned her shaken focus to the road ahead.

A day at the beach, she thought mirthlessly, her naive plan for relaxation having taken a significant beating.

Even after another several minutes on the road, Amanda was still wound up. Her shoulders pinched and jaw tight, and eyes darting about even for the benign - a car park, her bag in the boot of her car, a spot to lie on the beach.

Like clockwork, she set down her towel, removed her dress, applied the sunscreen and lay on her back.

She waited for relaxation to come. Her teeth ground against each other and her fingers flexed.

She cursed that man in his car. She’d been having such a good morning before that. Her coffee had been perfect. The peaches just right. Bella hadn’t chased anyone at the park, and today the sky was cloudless for the first time in a week.

And then he’d come along to punish her for doing literally no wrong. She hadn’t been distracted, playing on her phone at the lights. She hadn’t stalled, or been any kind of deliberate inconvenience. And yet he blared his horn at her - God, it was so loud, and such a sharp sound, too - and tailgated her because he was pissed off!

And if he was running late, that was his fault! It had nothing to do with her!

What miserable life must he have to be upset at her for doing nothing? What shitty job had he just left, and what form of torture awaited him at home?

A screech, and a crash, from the road behind the beach. Amanda sat up and whirled around. She locked eyes with a nearby beachgoer, and they ran towards the road.

Furious shouts hurled from two drivers, their dented cars between them. Each of them convinced the other was at fault, their threats and insults escalating quickly. Amanda hung back while a couple of onlookers stepped in to separate them and calm them down. A siren called in the distance, and Amanda realised she was trembling. She retreated from the scene and returned to her spot on the sand as the sirens arrived and clicked off.

The beach was empty. The waves lapped against the shore. The breeze tickled the skin of her face.

Amanda walked towards the ocean and allowed the water to run between her toes. In the distance, the surface shone like tumbling wet diamonds.

She stood. She heard. She saw. She felt.

Her reverie was interrupted by the approaching sounds of frenzied conversation. She turned to see two people in an animated discussion about the crash. So entranced they were by their own story, they didn’t so much as look her way when they passed.

Amanda returned her focus to the ocean, but she felt rising irritation and fear. The memory of the tailgater fought for pole position in her mind. Ironically, the crash they could have had was what had driven him from her mind in the first place. She gave a small, sad smile of the painful poetry of it, and the requirement for such a significant thing to snap her out of her spiralling thoughts about him in the first place.

What could be done when she felt herself spiral next time, she wondered? What could retrieve her from the grips of anxiety to just… relax? She could hardly hope for a car crash, or anything of a similar magnitude, to break her out of her thought patterns.

Something quick, something snappy, something she could do herself.

A few moments passed before it occurred to her.

She raised her hand and clicked her fingers. The snap returned her to the present moment. Her shoulders relaxed, her jaw loosened, her face calmed. Her body settled.

She was in a paradise of her own making, in an instant.

She smiled. Just like magic.