Thank you to maineac for betaing.
He had been walking ever since. Away from his car, away from her house, away from his friend, away from his home, his job, and from everything he knew. He didn't know where he was walking to; he only knew what he was walking away from.
The hot and sunny weather stood in stark contrast to his mood. He couldn't remember it ever having been blacker. Or colder.
It had taken him two days to realize he had been given the Honeymoon Cabin. What brilliant irony. The flowers and romantic paintings all over the damn place should have tipped him off much earlier. Did people really want this kind of shit on their honeymoon? Everything was laid out in twos, and there was way too much pink in this place. He took down the second hammock outside. The extra wide bed was a plus, but the heart-shaped cushions had to go.
He drank, and he slept. He took Vicodin but most of the time the pills didn't help. He was still in pain and he was still alone.
The way it should be.
For the first few days, he didn't leave the hut. The only part of the outside world he let in was that rough looking cat that had shown up on day two. And technically, he had muscled his way in. He was a tabby, not all that young anymore, but maybe his looks were deceiving – about half of his left ear was missing and he moved carefully. In a human, he would have diagnosed arthritis but the damn cat wouldn't let him close enough to check anything.
The cat was hungry. He wasn't. It made sense to share what little food he did prepare for himself. No point throwing it in the garbage and letting a cat starve.
Not that the cat showed any gratitude. On the contrary, the moment he had cleaned the plate, he was gone without even looking back.
Ungrateful fleabag. Of course he couldn't prove the cat had fleas, same as he couldn't prove he had arthritis; he never stayed long enough or let him close enough to check.
Not that he cared either way.
Not that he cared about anything much.
The bottle he got on the way from the airport lasted two days.
It took him another day to find his way out of the haze.
He was tempted to make a trip up the beach to the bar to restock. He could just keep on drinking, maybe take a few too many pills one night – who was counting? What a pathetic way to check out, though, drinking yourself to death on an island in the Caribbean. He could do that at home.
Home.
Home was a place you returned to when you were done being somewhere else.
The way things stood, he wasn't sure if he still had a home. It was part of what he had walked away from. The longer he thought about it, the more he feared he had lost the right to call it home.
The water had called him to this place. The first day, before he ever entered his cabin, he had stood at the edge of the water, just breathing. The horizon was open and wide and had held his gaze until he lost track of time. Darkness fell eventually, and he turned his back on the horizon and the waves and took possession of what was to be his shelter for a while.
He didn't leave it again for days.
The first time he moved beyond the hammock on the porch was after sunset on the fourth day. It wasn't fully dark yet but the stars had come out already. Night came swiftly around here. The daylight sounds had stopped and the sudden silence drew him out. Nothing left but the constant background of the breaking waves.
It surprised him how warm the water still was. Warm and calm, it was like stepping into a bathtub. But the further out he waded, finally dipping in to move away from the beach with a few careful strokes, the cooler the water became.
He turned over on his back and let the water carry him for a while. By then it had become so dark, there was no difference anymore between the sea and the sky – he tried to find the line that separated both but couldn't see it. It was all one big dark pod that he floated in. The stars above him were far and yet he felt tempted to reach out and touch them. He knew they would be ice cold, colder than he could stand.
Out here the world was black and cool, and he finally felt a calmness arrive. He knew the cold water would eventually make the muscles in his leg cramp but he didn't care. For once he didn't feel like fighting anything. He just closed his eyes and became one with the darkness, the water around him and the stars above.
Everything was calm except for the eternal pull of the water around him.
He had lost all feeling of time and space when suddenly the surrounding darkness began to change. There was nothing supernatural about it; it had to be down to the change in body temperature. At some point, his temperature must have dropped below some specific point fixed in his memory because suddenly he was younger and in another, much smaller and much colder tub. Much, much colder.
His heart and his breathing sped up when the cold should have slowed them down.
The previously comforting darkness turned into a threat and began to close in around him.
Hoping that his thigh wouldn't seize up, he made his way towards the tiny lights on shore. Despite the physical exertion, once he felt his toes touch the sand, his breath slowed down almost immediately, and he felt the constriction in his chest beginning to ease.
He slowly picked his way back up the beach, only to collapse in the hammock, dripping wet as he was. Back on shore, it was still warm enough for him not to shiver, despite the wet clothes. Too exhausted to move, he finally fell asleep right there.