Thank you daggzandarrows for the incredible prompt. I hope you enjoy the result. :)
She'd been seventeen that summer.
She could blame the beach house they'd inherited from a spinster aunt, she supposes, a "dilapidated wreck" her mother had called it with its floor boards that creaked, blue weather-beaten shutters and a wraparound deck with several planks missing. A stray cat had made its home in one of those gaps, one she'd sneaked food out to when her mother went into town and dared to leave her alone, one she'd named Luna for her silver-gray coat that reminded her of the moon, one she'd missed when they'd had to leave as summer began its inevitable slow-fade into autumn.
To this day, she greets fall's approach with a measure of regret. It's been an inevitable submersion for over half of her life.
But that summer, Regina had found the cabin magical, far more enchanting than the condominiums they'd stayed in on past vacations, and she couldn't help but wonder about the history of the place—how long it had been standing, why had it been built in the first place, what stories it had witnessed as people strolled leisurely by on its uncrowded beach, murmuring into sand and surf, holding on to the pull of the ocean even as she had the month that had changed her life forever. She'd never forgotten the sensation of silken sand sliding between her toes, absorbing her atom by atom into the spray and the surf until she felt one with her surroundings, of being caressed with the lure of salt-water and cresting waves, of falling into a world in which she both lost and found a part of herself.
Yes—she could blame the house. It would be easy, a convenient scapegoat that did not possess the ability to dispute her or protest its innocence in the matter. But innocence was something she'd given away, a mistake that had marked her for twenty-one years, the magic of the beach house transforming into a pain so acute she would never be able to shake it. It was impossible. This she knew from years of trial and error.
Yet here she is, back at the cabin, noting the new coat of paint and repaired shingles, and she can't help but smile at its appearance, feeling as if they somehow understand each other. She—older, beaten down but still standing, forever destined to return to this spot no matter how far she tries to flee from it, made up and relatively successful to the naked eye, but still creaky and filled with gaps underneath. Perhaps there are mice in its foundation, she muses, skittering about with the same insistence as her own fragments of self-retribution and what-ifs. She hears wood creak as wind rushes past, billowing her skirt ahead of her, pulling her towards the sea already, inevitably towards her past, towards a future she can't begin to predict, towards lost dreams and self-forgiveness she's put off far too long.
It's time, she tells herself yet again. And here she stands.
The key presses into her palm as her hair flaps in the wind, shorter than it had been the summer that had changed everything, but longer than she's worn it in years. Was there a reason for this, she asks herself as she faces the ocean head-on.
Where is he now, she wonders?
He, the boy who had enchanted her with his smile and easy laughter, who had hung on to her every word as if what she had to say was actually worth hearing, who had unleashed a million butterflies in her stomach when he'd held her hand under the moonlight one night as they'd sat at the mouth of a small cave they'd claimed as their own.
He, who had shot her over the moon when his lips first touched hers, making her marvel at the possibilities opening up in front of her, at the rightness of what they were doing, at the wonder of what his kiss could do to her. He, whom she had loved and never gotten over, the boy who would now be a man, the man who had probably forgotten her even as he would a spectacular sunset, their time together nothing more than a warm memory faded into a new day as easily as air passing in and out of his lungs.
But he'd made it impossible for her to forget him. Unknowingly, he'd marked her for eternity, a part of him always etched in her body, the cavern he left behind far larger than the one in which they'd given each other their virginity as the sea crested and cried out alongside them.
If she closes her eyes, he's just there. He'll always be there.
She moves towards the cabin, shaking off the image of his eighteen year old self, that is until she spies the deck on which he'd worked alongside his uncle, helping with repairs and paint jobs up and down the coastline as he'd tried to put away money so he could transfer from a local community college to a nearby university.
"I want a degree," he'd told her as she'd burrowed into his side one evening, lost to everyone and everything but each other when the world was as young as they had been. "I want to get a job and make enough money so my mother won't have to keep cleaning houses for the rest of her life."
"There's nothing wrong with cleaning houses," she'd told him, and he'd kissed her on the tip of her nose as he was inclined to do.
"No," he'd agreed. "But you've never had to do it. My mum deserves better."
She'd never questioned his motives again.
So he'd moved in with his uncle and become his apprentice in carpentry, all well and good, he'd said, but he wanted more. A degree. His own business. A means of taking care of himself and his immigrant mother who'd come to America from Ireland after his father had been killed in a factory five years ago.
And a means of dating her in the manner she deserved. He'd never felt worthy of her, something she hadn't been able to put together in her mind. Her family had money—yes—her father being a self-made man her mother had latched on to as a young woman, a human means of dragging her from the dredges of her blue-collar family with whom Regina had had very little contact for most of her life. But she'd always been ordinary—just Regina, nothing special, a fact her mother had reminded her of all too often, a girl who squandered her own potential, who couldn't appreciate all she'd been given and would end up throwing her life away just as so many ordinary girls did on a daily basis.
Sadly, she'd believed that for almost forty years. It had been burned into her cells and every living memory she possessed. The one person who'd dared to tell her otherwise had vanished from her life just as she'd been learning to truly live. Sunrise, sunset, she thought to herself as a gull streaked by overhead, its mournful cry sending a shiver down the back of her legs.
He'd been proud and somewhat awe-struck that she'd been accepted to Vassar, a fact which she'd just accepted and her mother had down-played, but one that he'd celebrated with fresh shrimp he'd caught that afternoon and cooked over an open fire, served with fresh greens, blueberries and some cokes he'd put on ice. She'd burned her tongue on his catch, and he'd kissed her to quench the pain, a kiss that had led to more than she'd ever dared to dream about, one that had left her breathless in more ways than one as he touched her breasts for the first time in wonder, his caress leaving her breathless and aching in ways that were both frightening and beautiful.
It was still the most spectacular meal she'd ever eaten in her life.
They'd been together more than once after that, becoming addicted to each other as quickly as water soaks into sand, and she'd never regretted their decision to be together, knowing his touch was the purest she'd ever felt and would ever feel again. They'd been inexperienced yet trustful, learning and discovering with the belief that this was forever, that life would inevitably pull them together just as the tide seeks the coast, one unmoving, the other unable to rest, both a part of the other, intertwined, connected, forever changed and changing with the passing of each season.
Then he'd given her his child. Her heart clenches down as pain creeps into memory.
She moves away from the house, needing the sea and its enormity rather than walls and human structure. Her furniture arrived yesterday and should be where she'd instructed it to be placed, and she's thankful for her skills as an interior designer, the details and sketches she'd provided to the movers more than adequate for anyone with a I.Q. higher than 85 to make out. But she can't go inside, not yet, for to do so means that her new life begins, a life away from New York and cooperate complications traded for an existence of chance and fairytales at a seaside cottage she'd inherited from her parents, the very one her mother had wanted to sell, the one she'd pleaded with her father to keep.
He'd willed it to her just before he had died. Then her mother had passed three years later. From that moment on, it was inevitable that she'd come back.
She had more than adequate means to start over between her inheritance and what she'd earned when she'd sold her business and walked away from the life she'd so carefully crafted over the past twenty years, a legacy fading into sand and memory in the blink of an eye. But what to do with what she's chosen, she asks herself yet again, the few bags she'd packed personally into her car containing nothing but pieces of manuscripts she'd toyed with for years alongside one photo album she clings to with the passion of a lost child.
For the child in that album is lost to her. He has been since his third day of life. And it still hurts like hell.
He'd never known about their baby—she didn't realize what had happened until she'd been at Vassar for over a month and her body began to rebel. The slow discovery had been the most terrifying period of her life, and she'd cried for two months after her mother sent her quickly to an aunt she'd met only twice to live in New York, a place where a pregnant teenager was nothing to make note of in the city's unending bustle. She'd called him once, but the number had been disconnected, her letters sent back and marked impersonally "No longer at this address".
That was when hope had begun to dwindle as her waistline continued to grow.
She couldn't find him, and what would they do if she did? A seventeen and eighteen year old with no degrees or family support, with no skills or careers on which to craft a life for themselves, much less to care for a helpless baby conceived through no fault of its own? Reality was a cold task-master, she'd discovered those lonely months as the sensations of another human being moving inside of her became more than she could adequately process under the circumstances in which she was forced to dwell.
She'd given away what hope she had left when she'd given away their son. But it was time to reclaim her life. It was past time, actually. She's certain he's reclaimed his by now, and she can only pray their son has done the same.
What does he look like, she wonders yet again? Dark headed? Blue or brown eyes? Does he have his father's dimples or her thick, wavy hair? She's traced pictures of him in her mind since the last time she held him, memorizing the shape of his nose, the fairness of his skin, the way his mouth puckered just so, the feel of his tiny hand wrapped around her finger. If she doesn't stop now, she'll cry again, and today isn't a day for tears, she tells reminds herself. It's a day to start over, a day to baptize herself in the waters of rebirth and renewal and embrace the life she has yet to live with the same abandon in which she'd embraced her first lover all those years ago.
There had been change of address forms, the need to filter question after question of what was possessing her to do such a thing when she had nothing to run to and every reason to stay. But her mind had fixed on this course after an unexpected surgery that left her even emptier than she'd been after giving birth. She needed to go back to the beginning of where her life both began and unraveled, and here she stood by the same sea that had helped to implant life in her body, a life that now existed separately from her and the man still oblivious to its existence. Stretch marks had faded, stitches had healed, but her womb had never recovered from the child who had grown there, a living and breathing reminder of a summer she could almost otherwise dismiss as a dream.
She stands by the shore, allowing the waves to lick at her bare feet as her sandals dangle from her fingers. Her head is tossed back, her dress blowing in a mad sort of frenzy, and she almost feels like a water spirit—ageless and without form, mirroring foam floating on top of the sea. She loses herself in the sound of the waves, allowing her mind to go blank and her body to simply feel as her current and seventeen year old selves crash together in a crest of salt and spray.
This is who I am, she thinks, who I've become. A tentative peace prickles her skin as the edge of her dress gets wet.
It is time.
She turns back to the cabin, ready to take baby steps into the unknown, and she opens her eyes to her new reality, shocked to see she is no longer alone. There is a figure standing just by her door—a man, a lanky man, one whose stance takes her back to their cave and renders her breathless.
It can't be, she assures herself, knowing there is no reason he should be back her right now, standing by the cabin, looking at the shudders as if they possess the very magic she always suspected they did. She takes a few cautious steps forward, her heart pounding in time with the surf, wondering oddly enough if her mind is playing tricks on her, if her memory has conjured an image she'll never forget, for he is young, she notices, the man standing in front of her house, just as he'd been and would no longer be.
"May I help you?"
The man turns towards the sound of her voice looking as nervous as she feels, then he smiles at her, a disarming smile that is too familiar for her comfort. He takes three steps towards her and stares as if she were the person out of place here, and she wonders for a moment if he'd been staying in the cabin illegally while it had been deserted, if somehow she'd kicked him out of a home that he thought should be his.
"Regina Mills?" he asks, and she hesitates before nodding, now thinking perhaps he was one of the painters she'd hired from her apartment in New York when she'd decided to relocate. Then he laughs, no—chuckles, and he runs his fingers through a mop of brown hair, biting his lower lip in a manner that makes her heart stand still. She sees what remains of childhood freckles, and she thinks he must have been a cute boy, a boy who is now watching her too closely for someone she's never met.
"Do I know you?" she questions, remaining rooted to her spot, thinking that perhaps her passing thoughts about getting a dog were more intelligent than she'd originally judged them to be.
"No," the young man answers, shoving his hands even deeper into his pockets. "You don't. But you will."
"I don't understand," she begins, her mouth going dry as something begins to pound against her skull. He is familiar yet foreign, and her mind is spinning as her feet go numb, reality crashing in on her from all directions at once before she has time to prepare herself.
"My name is Henry," he states, tugging out one hand and extending it decisively in her direction. "And I'm your son."