(I'm having an awful time with words and with boundaries and I don't feel like talking about how I feel anymore for this day so...here. Figure out if it's a memory or one of those juicy short stories like from a magazine you take to the beach. Answer is at the bottom, no cheating.)
It was....uncharacteristic to say the least. And I don't know what I will find.
I shove the shifter knob hard into fourth and squint at the faded grey ribbon ahead of me. It stretches west and I know I have to crack the whip if I want to be on sand by nightfall.
I roll my window down with my left hand and stick my elbow out, resting my arm on the uncomfortable edge of the window frame. My cigarette crackles quietly as I take a long drag and then I impatiently tear it out with my left hand, tapping it in midair as my old Volkswagen counts miles with it's worn tires and overhot engine. I look in the back and check to see that I do have my denim jacket and then I resume my bored stare through the windshield, a smirk playing around the corners of my mouth, too timid to reveal itself in full. I let my hand go slack and the end of my cigarette bounces off the pavement in a shower of sparks behind the van as I speed away. I haven't smoked in years but for this trip it seemed as necessary as packing my gas card. Priorities don't come easily for me.
I wipe the back of my hand across my ear. Damn mosquitoes! Were they following me? I had expected to encounter only rude drivers and truckers on this last-night odyssey, not a legion of the bloodsuckers I had come to despise. Maybe if I lean a little harder on the gas I could make them a recent memory. I fumble on the seat next to me for another cigarette. If I have to chain smoke all the way to the coast to keep the mosquitoes at bay, then I have a full pack and a new zippo and a six-pack of diet 7-up to keep me from turning to dust along the way.
Dammit. I spill ash on my blue t-shirt. It was my last clean shirt for the trip and I had hoped to stay somewhat presentable. My hair is windblown into knots and parted haphazardly. My jewelry, left behind. My favorite jeans are baggy and cinched in with a borrowed belt to keep them up and the jacket stolen from an old boyfriend back in high school. My bag in the back is stuffed with previously worn clothes and dogeared romance novels, I have hours to daydream but no time for laundry or second guesses. I have no home and I wonder if I will find a new one tonight or if this is a wild-goose chase that will never end.
The smirk surfaces at last and I turn the radio up loud, singing along with Don Henley while I make an attempt to shake the ash off my lap. Done. Suddenly I spot the sign for the exit I need. Begun as a boring chore, the endless twilight drive becomes a real-time emergency as I sit straight up, smash the signal knob and glance over my shoulder before changing lanes. In seconds I am off the freeway, headed down a forgotten highway from which I can now get my first taste of salt air. A few choice words later I find the dirt road hidden behind the younger roadside trees, unmarked, the road to what will ultimately be my salvation or my demise.
His phone call, haltingly made in the dark of the previous morning left me in knots as tangled as my hair. Asking me if I would come. Telling me he needed me, now, an urgent cadence in his voice, his breathing harsh in my ear as I softly console him. He just kept repeating that he wanted me.
And yet I paced up and down in the driveway for over an hour tonight, kicking the dust, tearing out weeds, and staring at the van as if it were an eight ball that I could shake and turn over and etched into the undercoating would be my answer. Is this the right thing to do? Do I go to him after all this time?
Fuck it.
Yes.
Yes, I will come to you. And you'd better fucking be there when I arrive, unlike the last time I tried to meet you and you never showed up, but somehow you snuck past me and broke my heart and now I'm giving you one last chance to fix it.
I reach the end of the dirt road and the view stops me in my tracks. The fiery golden ball is slipping into the ocean in front of me. It never fails to take my breath away and at the same time I find the strength to give a heavy sigh as I cast my eyes around and realize I am still alone.
He isn't here, he didn't come.
I sink into the wet sand, no longer caring if my jeans stay clean or even dry and I slam both fists down together in front of me, a sob escaping with the force with which my hands strike the beach. Tears follow their path down my face, painting lines in the light coating of dust from the long drive and I smear them from their patterns until my face is filthy and now I am crying hard at his betrayal and at my naivety to trust him again after hurting so much for so long.
An engine drowns out my sobs and suddenly he is there, screaming my name as he jumps out of his truck and runs the rest of the way to where I sit. He falls to his knees beside me in the surf and suddenly I am desperate to be next to him, to be pressed up against him. His hands are in my hair, holding my face, touching me all over in his attempts to gather me into his arms. He kisses the tears, my cheeks, lips, eyelashes and ears. He tells me over and over again that he's here now, that he missed the turn and was five miles down the highway before he realized he had gone too far.
He whispers that he is sorry. For what happened when I left, for the time since, for everything. And I don't hear him over the crashing of the waves but it matters little, because in his arms I am finally home.
(If you guessed that this is a true story, you're right. Only it wasn't about Jacob. The man who fell to his knees in the sand? That was Cole.)
