I could see him walking up the beach. Just a blur at first, features coming into focus as he got closer to where I was watering the snow-in-summer flowers in the big grey half-barrels at the end of the walkway. The sand is blinding in the early fall chill, my favourite time of year. The beach is empty again, all mine again and I am selfish and quiet. I want to keep it this way. I want to be here by myself.
Hey. A kiss on the top of my head and then on my cheek as I stand to greet him. Crinkles around his eyes and white in his beard take my breath away as I still see us like a mirror of who we used to be.
Hungry?
I shake my head. Not yet. We can open wine though. He follows me inside. I leave my watering can and my shoes on the step and duck through the curtain that keeps the bugs out as I never close the door during the day. I like the salt air. I like the curtain. It billows out into the breeze just enough that it feels romantic and cozy to be here. Exactly like I planned.
He opens the wine, I put grapes, crackers, cheese and olives on a small plate. He likes to graze. I put on some of my favourite winter jazz cafe music and he smiles and sits back.
You don't change, Bridget.
Maybe no one does, I avoid his question.
Maybe we all would benefit from living a little outside of our comfort zones.
I tried that, remember? I smile gently. I shake my too-long bangs out of my eyes and my hoops jangle against my cheek as I pick up my newly-filled glass and clink it against his.
This life will be wasted if you're alone.
Says who? I raise my eyebrows and take a sip. It's a dry viognier. It's the only kind I'll buy now. It's easier on my body and my mind than my beloved whiskey, and it's easier to find too. Up at the tiny bottle-shop in town they don't have Lagavulin off the shelf and I wouldn't ask for it if they did. The taste reminds me of death, and time, an undercurrent of terror I don't ever wish to revisit. This is new. New for the new me, reinvented each time the tide snakes up to leave treasures on my doorstep in the sand. Why I ever left I'll never know, but I'm back and that's the important part here. This is probably the only place in the world where my brain doesn't engage in an endless distance-sprint, overclocked and overwhelmed. Here it doesn't even simmer, it just hums to itself and I haven't had to push a panic button on myself in years. Here if something breaks I just try and fix it and if I can't someone else will. Here things are different and better and the way they are supposed to be.
Says me, maybe.
Sorry, I can listen to advice but at the end of the day I do what's best for me.
It's admirable as much as I hate it. He looks out the window, smile leaving his face. I don't think it should be like this.
It needs to be. I follow his gaze. There's a sailboat way out on the horizon heading home. I may have seen it before, maybe not though, and it's really not something I focus on. The horizon is my backyard and I feel like I can breathe here.
We should start cooking. He finishes his wine. I haven't really touched mine and so I bring it as I follow him to the kitchen, bare feet on wide softwood floorboards, cool to the touch, the occasional grains of sand reminding me I am home.
After dinner (he mostly cooked, and I cleaned up and packaged up leftovers) we go outside to the big Adirondack chairs on the patio to watch the sunset, turning our chairs to the west.We slide back into our seats for the show and he reaches out with his right hand for mine. I let him take my left hand and he holds it, cool in his warmer one. He gives it an abrupt squeeze and lets go.
I'm thinking of heading somewhere warmer for winter. I'd like you to consider coming with me. Then in the spring or whenever you need to, you can come back here. My bones hurt in this cold. I guess I got used to the milder winters out west.
I nod and say nothing. I know my answer. He knows my answer.
What would it take to change your mind?
Maybe next year. I soften it with white lies, bleached from the sun, from years of use.
We don't speak any more and once the sun has set we head back inside, leaving our glasses on the weathered turquoise table, a practiced routine but never a habit. He kisses the palm of my hand and old feelings well up around the edges even as I work hard to push them down. Once in my room with the beautiful old quilt he turns back, pulling me against him, taking me up in his arms tightly so that I can scarcely breathe. He kisses me, a long familiar motion and then he takes our clothes off, putting them carefully on the back of a chair instead of leaving them on the cool floor. We remember everything for the next several hours. We lose years from our history in the dark and then as the sun begins to come back up the past comes rushing at us, a dark tunnel in front of a runaway train. A reminder that we can't go back or forward but we can remember any time we like.
That's the joy of this independence.
What if we winterize?
What do you mean?
I mean if I put in better insulation and rewrapped the cottage? Make it safe for you for winter. Then would you stay?
I would stay if you truly want me to stay.
You seem so sad.
It isn't your problem, Bridget.
Sure it is. I care for your feelings.
If you did we wouldn't be in this predicament.
What predicament?
The one where I became a drifter and you dug in and made the life you really wanted.
Everyone can change. This works for me.
It doesn't work for me.
Then you need to change it.
I will but she won't listen.
I look to the ceiling for peace. I don't want to do this. Every time he comes into my life he turns the screws and I promised myself I wouldn't let him. Ever again.
'She' made you an offer that would see you have company for the winter. That's generous but if it's not what you want then move on.
That's my cue to go. And we waste another six months when things could be different.
But maybe not necessarily better.
From your side maybe. I still say I'd rather be miserable with you than miserable alone.
I know.
Get some sleep, Princess.
I put my hand up against my chest to quell the impending lurch but it happens anyway. I will. Drive safe. Safe flight.
And he is gone, into the early morning. I watch the headlights as they disappear around the curve of the highway along the coast and the solitude crowds back in. Any regret is engineered, I tell myself. He's still trying to manipulate me emotionally. It's not exactly true but it helps me when I feel like I might bend from my convictions, sort of like the old One Day At A Time coin Ben stared at for decades. It didn't mean you will get through this one day at a time. It actually meant I will haunt you one day at a time until you give in, give up or give out.
And I refuse.
I rattle off a quick thanks for the night to his phone from mine and leave the phone on silent on the desk afterward. I pour a glass of orange juice and throw a load of laundry in the washer. Once it's done I'll hang it on the line in the front yard (the little cozy garden between the cottage and the highway) and then have a nap in the sunroom, where I'll dream of what life would have been like had I stayed.
***
Who is it? Who is the man in this?
Does it matter?
This is not what I expected when I asked you to write your future.
It wasn't what I expected either.