A/N- Thanks for reading! Please review. :)
Sally asked Poseidon to spend her second to last day alone. As she stood facing the vast expanse of ocean, she pondered everything she had learned over the last few blissful weeks. Poseidon had mused that she had taken this new concept of reality rather smoothly. Sally figured perhaps he was right, and although he might he might contribute her easy acceptance to her gift of extraordinary sight (something he called being able to see through the Mist) Sally thought maybe it was because, deep down, she had always believed there has to be more than what the common person believed the world consisted of.
She wiggled her goes in the sand and watched as a wave of cool crisp water collided with her toes emerging her ankles in water. The undertow sucked the water back, and Sally shifted her weight under the sand that succumbed to the force of the ocean current. She stood this way for quite sometime, lost in thought when she realized that she was quite a bit further out than she had originally been, as if the sheer magnetic force of the ocean had slowly hypnotized her, pulling her in.
Science had never been her best subject in school. Sally hated how it stripped away life's mysteries and replaced them with confusing explanations that needed even further explaining. Although she knew that ocean currents had something to do with earth's gravitational field and the moon, it just seemed so much more quixotic to imagined a troubled man, who, somewhere in the back of his mind, had to remember to pull and push the tide.
Sally idly wondered If Poseidon knew that she stood on his beach right now, her feet in his waves, her heart aching for his. She wondered if he was keeping the ocean calm, the winds light, just for her. She wondered of she was on his mind at all, if she was really that important to him.
Deep in her heart, Sally knew that when she left Montauk the next day, she would have to leave Poseidon as well. For good. Her romance with him was simply a summer indulgence, like spa treatments, scuba divas, or guided tours. She couldn't subject herself to the emotional taxation that a long-term relationship with him would inevitably involve. When she left tomorrow, she would allow her feelings to be swept away with his morning tide.
But the more she thought of the dreadful "tomorrow" the more she began to fear it. She had always hated goodbyes, hated the separation, the awkward tension, the things she didn't say that she so clearly needed to. She had long since learned that goodbyes were worthless anyways. More often than not, Fate never allowed you a proper goodbye when the time came anyways, she simply ended things the way they were with no time for you to organize your affairs. Shallow, superficial goodbyes were for people who shared shallow, superficial experiences with others and if her relationship with Poseidon was anything, it certainly wasn't shallow or superficial.
Sally was suddenly seized with the thought that if she left now, right now, she could avoid the inevitable awkward goodbye. She wouldn't have to worry about his promise to visit that he would never fulfill or her inability to properly express the way she felt about him. The more she pondered this idea, the more it began to appeal to her and suddenly overcome by the ingenuity of her new plan, Sally resolved to return to her cabin, grab her bags, and leave immediately. She would return home, work hard and forget this had ever happened. She would forget Poseidon, forget all about him, lock every memory of him away and never revisit them again.
As if sensing her sudden intentions, the ocean began to swell around her. The low tide that had previously barely reached her ankles in its shoreward ascent now surged around her calves and the previously calm water seemed to turn hostile around her. The water ripped at her legs and its once peaceful embrace seemed to be pulling her out to sea. It took all of her strength and agility to maintain her balance on the unstable floor as she found the sandy incline constantly shifting under the rush of the suddenly desperate waves. Fear suddenly gripped Sally as she realized that the sudden sea squall had no intention of abating and as painfully close to the safety of the shore as she was, she could not move for fear of toppling into the rising water. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Sally whispered desperately. The hair on her arms stood on end and the sudden drop in temperature caused her to shake although she wasn't sure if this was from the cold or shear terror. The absurdity of her situation seemed to hit her all at once and raw emotion flooded over her, impacting her more than the flood of water ever could. "I'm sorry!" She suddenly blurted to the sea. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!" Her shouts echoed over the vast expanse of stormy ocean and just as Sally sunk to her knees in utter defeat, the angry waves subsided and Sally found herself once again surrounded by calm ocean surf.
While Sally and Poseidon ate a picnic dinner on the beach that evening, there was no mention of what had transpired earlier that afternoon. In fact, Poseidon was so nonchalant and normal that Sally began to fear that she had perhaps dreamed up the whole incident. Resolved not to let this experience, or delusion, color her last evening with Poseidon, Sally tried her best to push it from her mind, but she could still feel the ocean's greedy fingers grabbing her legs, refusing to let her go. It bothered her, her inability to drop the whole the thing and it occurred to her that it was because she had become to frightened at Poseidon's reaction to something that hadn't even happened. She hadn't actually done anything wrong. It was so very 1984, so very power abusive, and it really truly bothered her. She realized that there was no way she could just drop the whole thing when it clearly disturbed her so much and she decided to work her courage up to confront him about it.
"Sally." Poseidon interrupted her thoughts and she realized that she was still physically present, here, with him. "Sally I'm afraid I owe you vast and long due apology. Not only for what happened earlier today, which I am so utterly ashamed about, but for this whole summer. Firstly, do not misinterpret my apology as regret for what has occurred, for it is very far from that. When I met you, Sally, I had no intention of, well anything. I can honestly say I had no intentions. No good or bad ones, none at all. But you were so you and that was so refreshing. So I planned just to spend time with you, because there's no harm in that. But then that escalated far past anything I had ever dreamed would happen between us. And this afternoon, when you planned on leaving, it made me realize that I couldn't just let you go like that. I believe that I have grossly underestimated your allure, your power over me."
He was looking down at his hands. For the first time, Poseidon seemed to lack the godly confidence Sally had come to expect from him. "I admire your intentions to leave and never give this summer a second thought, but I don't want you to do it because you feel like you have to be strong. Do it because you feel like you need to. Do it because it's the right thing. But if it isn't, I will always be there if you need me."
Sally fought the urge to submit to his sincere apology. Her mind raced at a speed she wasn't familiar with. "And where is that, Poseidon? Because it's nowhere I'm familiar with. In fact, I'm not familiar with any of this. There is no social script, no right-or-wrong thing to do when you're romantically involved with a Greek god. You suggest that I should stay with you because it will be good for me, but have you ever considered that staying with you would do me even more harm?" Her voice remained steady but her throat felt tight, constricted. "You say you have grossly underestimated your feelings for me, but have you ever thought that maybe I felt the same way?" Tears began to pool up in her eyes and she furiously blinked them back., desperate to contain her composure. "Today, on the beach, was the only time I felt I could truly walk away from all of this. Honest-to-God just leave it all behind. And you took that from me. You took advantage of your power and stole my free will. And I don't think I could ever stay in a relationship with someone who doesn't respect me enough to let me make my own independent decisions."
As she walked back up to cabin, forbidding herself from looking back at Poseidon, she marveled how similar the ocean and her tears tasted.
