The Sea Turtle and the Labrador Retriever

They want me to write about an unlikely pair that meets on an island," Eve said into her phone after touching call icon.

", not even a hello?" Adam replied over . Was he actually annoyed with her? She didn’t think so.

What was the point of saying hello, anyway? Her phone already told her who was calling. It wasn’t the olden days her parents told her about where you had to a connection before telling the person what you wanted to say.

"Hasn't every kind of mismatched pair been somewhere, so there's no such thing as unlikely anymore?" Eve put her headphones on.

She sat on the city bus, in her usual seat. Wednesday afternoon, on her way from creative writing class to her job at the diner.

"Uh, an old man and a kid, something like that?" he replied through her phone.

"Haven't you seen the movie "up"? Or like ten other movies like that?"

"Yeah, but none of them ever meet on an island, he laughed. That little half chuckle, half giggle he liked to do. One of the she first liked about him, back when he was a regular customer at the diner.

The diner had been a magical place for them. Everything was perfect, until he had to move home to help his mother deal with his father’s death from a snakebite.

She missed those days, the two of them spending every day together, talking about their dreams, laughing at each other’s jokes. They still talked every day, but different. She missed the feeling of loving his little laugh.

On this day, though, his laugh was annoying. Didn’t he realize how stressed she was? How she needed to do well in this class?

She wasn’t sure what it even meant to “do well” in a creative writing class. But she could sense her dreams of becoming an author drifting away, while she was going to end up stuck in the diner forever, stranded and alone.

“Why does it have to be the tropics, anyway? I don't know anything about the tropics,” she complained. “Do you?”

“No, not ,” he mumbled.

“How is it fair to have to use a place that I've never been to as a setting for a story? How can I possibly get someone to feel like they're somewhere if I can't even imagine what it would feel like to be in that place?”

“I don’t know," he said. “I guess be generic in your description of the setting.”

“You know I love writing the setting.”

Eve took a deep breath. a couple more stops until hers. She was afraid she was going to cry. On the bus, in front of strangers. And Adam. Again.

She had wanted to come up with an idea before her shift started, and he was supposed to be helping her.

“It's a short story, right? I mean say 'they were standing on the beach.' You don't have to find the exact words to describe the whiteness of the sand or the blueness of the sky.”

“The sky is blue everywhere.” Except here. The view out the bus window was dark and gloomy.

“Right, so don't worry about it. a different blue on a tropical island, a lot less clouds, but you don't have to worry about taking the time to describe the sky in your short story. Focus on the characters and the plot.”

“Yeah, I guess you're right. It still sucks though.”

“A lesbian and a straight guy?” Adam said. “I guess that's sort of unlikely, if they're different races. It has to have been somewhere along the line though.”

“Eh, forget I said anything,” she fumbled in her bag for a piece of gum. "I’ll figure it out myself. I’m almost at work.”

“Hey, you’re going already? We even talked.”

“I know, I know.” She unwrapped the gum and put it her mouth. She put the wrapper in her pocket for later. “Sorry.”

She looked at him on her screen for the first time this conversation. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. That was strange. His crumpled black her curled out from under his cap.

He smiled at her. Why was he so happy? Didn’t he know she was miserable? The thing she had been clinging to as an escape was disintegrating in her hands the more she tried to cling to it. She wasn’t going to be an author. She wasn’t going to be able to move west to be with Adam. was going to be waiting tables at the Pineapple Diner forever.

“Listen,” he said. What about something with an animal? How about a turtle? That's something that would be on a tropical island. Like, a big sea turtle.

“Hmm,” she mused. “But what if its an animal that wouldn't naturally be on a tropical island. A raccoon and a sea turtle. That doesn't seem too .”

The bus whined to a stop a block away from the diner. “Hey,” she said. “I’ve got to go. Call me tomorrow, okay?”

“Sure,” he said.

She pressed “end” as she got up and walked down the aisle. She got off the bus into a light drizzle. perfect. She wished she was on a tropical island right now, even if she didn’t feel like writing about one.

“How does the raccoon end up on the island?,” she texted him an hour and a half into her shift.

Ugh, she noticed she had gotten ketchup on the back of her phone. There was still some on her palm from when that kid covered his whole plate in ketchup.

Why hadn’t she said “I love you” before she hung up? Why hadn’t he? They always said it before saying goodbye. The woman at table 4 asked for the check and Eve found herself back in the grind of waiting tables, not thinking much about Adam.

When she got home after work she looked at her phone again. He hadn’t texted her back yet. He was probably out with the guys. She sat on the couch with her laptop and a glass of wine. She started typing.

The Sea Turtle and the Labrador Retriever

Did you know that sea turtles don’t pull their heads inside their shells like land turtles do? Max had no idea. But you can’t blame him for not knowing it. He didn’t have a ton of use for facts like that.

Max was a dog. A big mess of black fur and love. He loved to run, his tongue hanging out and ears flopping in the wind, as his muscular body ate up the distance between point A and point B with forceful yet graceful strides.

He had never been to a beach before, but his owners had brought him to Cabbage Beach in the Bahamas because they had no place else to leave him. The flight was terrible, but once he left the airport, Max was in heaven.

What a place. The sights, the sounds, the smells. Yes, the smells! What wonderful smells in the Bahamas.

Running on the beach wasn’t easy, but there was so much room. And the sand was so soft as he landed and took off again on his mighty runs. And what about that big, clear, blue thing making all that noise? Was that water?

It looked and smelled so different from the streams and ponds and puddles he was used to. He decided to take a closer look. The cool salty water felt great in his mouth and on his skin. He splashed and frolicked and ran and had the best time ever as the waves and relentlessly crashed onto the shore. His playing took him far from where he had started on the beach.

On his way back he spotted something moving in his direction. He barked at the thing and ran a quick circle around it. But the baby sea turtle kept flopping its way nearer to the ocean.

He noticed another baby sea turtle flopping along toward the ocean, and another behind it. There was a long parade of baby sea turtles fluttering towards the sea. Max barked at each of them as he wandered through the parade, but none of them responded.

Off to the side of the back of the parade, Max discovered a giant piece of driftwood. Back home, nothing made max prouder than carrying gigantic sticks with him on his walks with the family.

This stick was extra thick and extra long, but no way was he not going to try to bring it back with him. Sticks were his favorite. And retrieving them was his thing. It’s who he was and what he did.

As he went to pick it up, he realized one turtle had veered off course from the others and was taking a different path towards the water. A path blocked by the giant driftwood.

“Hey dummy,” Max barked. “You’re not going to get past that big piece of wood. Go this way.”

The turtle didn’t respond as it methodically flapped its legs toward the driftwood. But he seemed to acknowledge Max, more than any of the others had.

The turtle reached the driftwood and kept going, directly into a small opening in the wood. He couldn’t go through or turn around, but he also couldn’t figure out how to back up. He was in a crevice in a giant piece of driftwood.

Max barked again. Why was this baby turtle so ?

He picked the driftwood up in his mouth. He had to stretch his jaw as wide as it could go, but he could handle the big block. The thing was so long and irregularly shaped that he struggled to keep it balanced. He grabbed it on the opposite side from where the turtle was, and did his best to make sure the little guy didn't fall.

Max made his way back down to the water, keeping the driftwood out of the sand, loving every second of it. He took a different path from the baby turtle parade, not wanting to disturb any of his new little friend’s friends.

Max arrived in the salty water again, pushing the big log into the waves. The water filled the holes of the driftwood and the baby turtle was able to swim free. The turtle didn’t even look back as he let the current take him and attempted to swim, but Max could sense his gratitude.

He dragged the driftwood back onto the shore and a small chunk broke off. He snatched it up and trotted back to his people, more satisfied than he had ever been.

When Eve woke up the next morning to get ready for work, she read what she had written the night before. Ugh. Why had she thought she could be a writer? No one was coming to come rescue her. Her writing was not the answer to her prayers. Adam was never coming back. She was inside an imaginary crevice.

She walked from her apartment to the diner. dark. Thursday breakfast after the Wednesday dinner shift. a blast. At least it had stopped raining, but still cold.

She had emailed Adam her story last night. Ugh. He had texted her back while she was writing. “He got dropped off by a giant goose!”

Huh? Oh the raccoon. She was by the time she saw it, and had already decided a dog was better Than a raccoon. Dogs are better than every animal. Plus it made more sense that a dog could be on an island on vacation with his family and is more as a character anyway.

She realized that she and Adam were an unlikely pair themselves. He was a farm-boy who went to college in a far away big city and fell in love with a waitress five years older than him, and she had lived in the city her whole life.

T​he breakfast shift was busier than usual that day, but she was glad her mind didn't have time to wander. She tried to call Adam during her break, but he didn't answer.

W​hen she came out of the kitchen at the end of her shift, she thought she saw someone at the counter. Were her eyes playing tricks on her? Her brain? There, in the exact stool that she first met him, sat Adam.

"​Hey," he smiled. A smile that told her she wasn't alone. " good."

"What are you doing here, Adam?"

"​I needed to see you," he said. "And I needed yo to know you're going to be okay."