Our Place On The Sand

I dug my toes into the sand. Every time the tide reached my feet, the rush of ice cold water sent shivers from the tips of my toes to the top of my head, sparking every nerve in my body with raw electric energy.

The crisp, salty air expanded every corner of my lungs as I sucked a deep breath in through my nose. With every inhale, my body felt lighter, but with every exhale, my heart felt heavier.

Without looking to my right, I knew it was him who appeared beside me. A man-shaped shadow looked back at me from the sand. Even though the position of the sun in the sky twisted the shadow, the outline of shaggy hair and broad shoulders were enough to confirm that it was him.

How did he know I was here?

My eyes locked on the horizon where the dark blue of the ocean kissed the clouded grey of the sky. Two shades of blue blending and weaving into one another to become one indistinguishable and infinite entity.

This morning, there were no rolling waves and no hopeful surfers looking to catch a break. Close to shore, kids were clad in wetsuits as they built sandcastles, while adults, mad enough to forego a wetsuit, balanced on stand up paddle boards.

The calmness of the ocean should have soothed the rising anxiety in my chest that came with the towering presence of the man beside me, but it didn’t.

Of course he knew to find me here. The ocean was my safe place.

Years ago, when I’d lived here, not a day went by when I didn’t dip my body into the shockingly cold Souther Ocean. It dawned on me that maybe he walked up and down this stretch of beach every day hoping one day he would find me here.

Today was the day.

Orange buoys bobbed about a kilometer out to sea, and beyond that was the rare glimpse of a ship, shrouded by clouds and barely clear. If I wasn’t so focused on not looking at him, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it.

“You’re back,” he said softly. His voice had always been so hard and tense with me, like it physically pained him to have a conversation with me. There hadn’t been many times during our friendship that he softened and it always jolted me like an electric shock when he spoke with a voice that was liquid velvet and as calm as the ocean before us.

A nod was all I could give him. The mere presence of him was making my eyes sting with tears and my heart yearn for a hug—his hug. All I wanted was to be encapsulated by his arms, surrounded by every part of him like Saturn surrounded by her rings.

“For good?” he pressed, his eyes boring a hole into the side of my head. If he stared any harder, he would surely read the thoughts banging the inside of my skull and swirling in my mind.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, thick and hard, I finally squeaked, “Yes.”

His entire body relaxed beside me, but still, I couldn’t bring myself to face him. I would crack and fall apart like another knocked over sand castle on the beach if I let myself meet his grey-blue eyes. Despite their steel colour, they were warm and intense. They always ripped the air from my lungs and my heart from my chest.

“Does that mean…?”

I didn’t know what it meant. Was ready to give us one last chance?

Seven years ago, I fell in love with him and since then he had broken my heart a million times over. We had never even had a relationship, but it was barely even in one piece anymore.

Was I really willing to risk having my whole world crushed to smithereens one last time?

There were no more chances and opportunities left for us. We had used them all up like a cat who had used up all nine of her lives. This would be the last time I would let us destroy each other.

“I don’t know what it means,” I whispered, doubting he would even hear me over the rushing coastal wind.

He stepped closer to me, reaching his big, calloused hands towards my cheek and gently shifting me to face him.

I closed my eyes, tears stinging at my lids and collecting in my eyelashes. It was just the sea breeze, I told myself. I wasn’t crying. I couldn’t cry.

“Look at me,” he pleaded gently.

I’d spent years doing what he told me to do.

Don’t be in love with me. We can’t be together. Go follow your dreams. Move to the other side of the world without me.

My eyes lifted and I looked up at his six-foot-four figure under my eyelashes. I did what he said. Again.

Old habits die hard, I guess.

Somehow, I always forgot how tall he was. Forgot how rugged and strong and intimidating he was when he towered over me so closely.

The scent of his cologne, woody, sweet and manly, cut through the salty sea breeze, mingling like razor blades at the back of my nose.

“I’m so scared,” I sniffed, determined not to let the tears roll down my cheeks. His other hand planted gently on the other side of my face, his thumb making subtle movements up and down on my skin. “Five years ago, I moved halfway across the world because you told me to. You told me you didn’t want me in your life…” My voice cracked, hitting an unnaturally high pitch as I choked out my words.

“I wanted you in my life. But I would never have forgiven myself if I was the reason you sacrificed your dreams. All I would have done was hold you back,” he countered, his voice also holding an unnaturally lofty tone.

“So you broke my heart instead?” Finally, a solitary tear escaped and made a break for my chin, leaving a wet stripe down my cheek as it went. I would have followed him across the universe but he pushed me aside before we even had a chance.

He squeezed his eyes shut, my words physically hurting him.

I didn’t enjoy seeing people in pain, but part of me lavished in the way his face crumpled when each word I spoke stabbed a sword through his heart. I wanted to know that he felt the same pain I did when I left this place. Left him. Left us.

“I wanted you to have the world and I couldn’t give it to you. I’d hoped you’d understand one day.” His eyes pleaded with me to understand his reasons—and I could. I’d had five years to accept it. But still, I could never really, truly understand.

“Some days I think I hate you for not fighting for me, for not putting me first, for not loving me enough. But then I realised I don’t hate you because I can’t hate you.”

Because I love you. The words hung on my tongue like the bitter after taste of coffee. How could I possibly still love him after all this time? How could those feelings still linger, burning as bright and hot as they had at the beginning?

He bit the inside of his cheek and his lips twisted in a way that told me he was determined to hide a smile. He knew why I couldn’t hate him. Because he felt the same.

Shivers rumbled through my body. The wet, cold sand was making my toes numb despite the heat that settled in my stomach. Even the butterflies banging against my rib cage couldn’t flap their wings fast enough to warm me up.

But he could.

He pulled me to his chest so fast it almost gave me whiplash. Instinct took over and I wrapped my arms around his torso, burying my face in his chest. One of his hands tangled in my knotted sea salt drenched hair and the other snaked around my ribs, clutching hard.

Our bodies were super-glued together, not even the southerly ocean winds could tear us apart.

I thought getting on that Boeing 787 plane and flying for 24 hours meant coming home but I was wrong. This was coming home. His hug, his warmth, his words, his heart. All of it was home.

“I’m ready to fight for you,” he whispered into the top of my head, his warm breath wrapping around the blonde strands of my hair and twisting all the way to the base of my spine, melting me from the inside out. “I’m ready to choose you, put you first,” he added but I didn’t need to hear it.

I felt it. Everything we had been through had led us to this moment.

Maybe we had missed out on seven years of being together. Or maybe we needed those seven years to grow and learn and try to love others so we could realise that in each other’s arms was the only place that would ever feel right.

This place in the sand was where we almost shared our fist kiss seven years ago. It’s where we parted ways five years ago. And now, with the kids building sand castles on the shore and the ship on the horizon as our witnesses, this place on the sand was the start of our forever.

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