flip-flops (3)

They were not his guitar or his hoodie or the terrible drawing he had taped to the fridge. They were just flip-flops. But somehow, they stayed. And every time she stepped around them, her breath snagged, like a stone in a stream.

It was summer again. The season he had loved the most. The season that had taken him. She’d stopped going to the beach since it happened. Couldn’t bear the smell of sunscreen.

Could not bear the way the ocean sounded like someone calling her name and then not. But she still remembered that day. Perfect sky. Idiot-blue.