Author's Note: Thank you to everybody who has been reading this story and sharing their enthusiasm and encouragement over the years. I'm sorry I left you all hanging for so long, and I'm happy to be back and finally getting close to finishing this story. Thanks for waiting—you are the best! :D
Mike worked with himself that month. He practiced reading the newspaper without feeling uneasy. He practiced thinking about Renee without feeling hurt. And most impressively, he practiced not thinking about Renee at all.
He decided it might do him good to get out more often, so on his next day off, he decided to go out to the beach. And to prove that he was stronger now than he had been even a month before, he decided to drive out to Santa Monica and visit the beach there. It had been many years since he had visited, and he hoped that he could focus on the positive side of nostalgia.
Surprisingly, Mike enjoyed the drive, and being in Santa Monica again was a great feeling. He planned to spend some time on the beach, some time on the pier, and then surprise his mother with a visit before heading home. Pacific Ocean Park was gone now, it had been for several years, but many facets of the beach remained the same.
He ended up visiting the Santa Monica Pier first, with its carousel and cotton-candy-carrying crowds. Children dashed about in excitement, their parents telling them to walk, not run. Older couples threw French fries to seagulls and young couples walked hand-in-hand, slowly as if to make their time together last forever. He smiled, remembering the time he had done the same thing.
Not too much later Mike walked along the beach, looking out at the swimmers and sandcastle-builders and sunbathers, and even the seagulls that landed on the shore in hopes of finding a scrap or morsel left behind. Up ahead loomed the gloomy remains of P.O.P. Ride and attraction sales, years of abandonment, and a few mysterious fires had ravaged the former oceanic wonderland. It was sad to see a place he had loved so much in such a disheveled state, but times changed and the park had been fun while it had lasted.
Mike approached the pilings, feeling how smooth the years of saltwater and sand had made them. Charred pieces of Mystery Island hung twisted over the glittering waves. He closed his eyes and just for a while remembered how it felt to be young and in love at P.O.P.
He hiked up the sand toward the entrance of the park. A chain-link fence sought to deter trespassers, but as Mike neared he could see graffiti on what remained of Neptune's Courtyard. A woman in a white eyelet dress and wide-brimmed hat stood at the fence, looking into the park. Mike approached, weaving the fingers on one hand around the chain-link.
"Sad, isn't it?" he said.
The woman nodded. "Very."
"I used to come here all the time," Mike continued, his eyes sweeping over the tattered remains of the beloved park. He could still see the crowds in bright-colored dresses, madras shirts, and blue jeans.
"Me too," she replied solemnly. "I miss it."
Mike turned to look at the woman and offer a funny remembrance of one visit to the park, but when she turned his heart stopped.
Renee.
She looked so sad and wistful and yet so young and beautiful, much more like the Renee he had loved than the one who worked on the fifth floor of the Los Angeles Times building.
"Mike," she said, stepping back a little. She held a hand to her chest in surprise, but she didn't seem angry.
What were the odds? It was so fitting that Mike almost wanted to laugh. There they were, accidentally reunited at a place they had once loved that was now in ruins.
"It's too bad, isn't it?" he said, motioning to Neptune's Courtyard, a place where they had once laughed and held hands and lived for the moment. They had loved P.O.P, probably more than any other place in Santa Monica.
Renee didn't respond. She just looked at Mike for a long time with her sad eyes and then drew in a deep breath.
"Mike," she started. "Can we talk?"
He remembered how she had gotten mad when he showed up at the Los Angeles Times, and how it had hurt him to be turned away, and replied, "Of course."
She turned back toward the pier and sighed, watching two seagulls fight over some object they had found at the entrance to the park. "I'm sorry for the way I acted when you showed up at the Times. I was awful to you, I know it."
She paused, adjusting her hat. Mike thought about saying something, but decided it was best not to interrupt. She remained silent for a while longer, while waves crashed against the charred remains of Mystery Island and the gulls flew away.
"It just—caught me off guard—" she continued, "and I guess I felt tricked, cornered."
"Why?" Despite concealing his identity, Mike didn't understand how he could have made her feel trapped. All he did was show up and make a fool of himself. He didn't see how he could even have had enough time to cause any damage.
"Because there was nowhere I could run." She looked to him. "And that's what I've been doing for the last eight years: running from you."
Mike watched as her eyes misted up, feeling equally confused and sympathetic. Maybe he would finally learn the reason why she walked away all those years ago.
"I didn't want to break up with you, not really, but I didn't feel like I had any other choice. It wasn't that I didn't love you, Mike; I did. So much. And even after I left and went off to college, it seemed all I could do was think about you. But I was afraid, and I didn't know what to do so I ran."
He wanted to reach out and brush her tears away, but instead he gripped one hand around the fence.
"Why were you afraid?"
Renee reached up and wiped at her eyes. "You were always talking about getting married."
Mike thought back to that day at Pizza Perfect so many years ago when Renee had fallen silent.
When we get married.
And he remembered other times many years ago when he had mentioned marriage in passing, only because he thought eventual marriage was inevitable.
When we get married. When, not if.
Renee continued. "But I didn't want to get married; not yet. I wanted to go to college and have a career and live first."
While Mike looked at the girl in front of him in her white eyelet dress and wide-brimmed beach hat, his heart flooded with pity and regret. It seemed so obvious now, and yet he had never seen it. It was like that sausage in the fridge: it was staring him in the face, but he kept looking straight past it. He knew it was pointless to regret those things he had said all of those years ago, but for the first time he understood.
"You should have told me," he said softly.
Renee nodded.
"I know that now," she said. "But then I didn't know what to do."
She looked down at the chipped cement pathway, covered in sand and bruised by ocean winds and years of foot traffic.
"I was afraid of marriage, and I was afraid of how much I loved you. I didn't want to admit that it was possible to care about somebody that much, to the point of even thinking that I needed somebody else in my life. I was afraid those feelings would stand in the way of my dreams."
While he watched the tears trickle down Renee's tan cheeks, Mike felt a strange sense of peace. It was painful to hear, but at last he knew why Renee had left so abruptly and why she wouldn't reveal the reason. His heart felt heavy with old wounds and sympathy, but although regrets and what-ifs threatened to creep into his subconscious, he knew he was relieved from the burden of wondering.
And then he did something he had wanted to do for a long time and enveloped Renee in a hug.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed into Mike's shoulder.
Mike held on to Renee, suddenly feeling that the last several years of heartache and wondering had been so trivial. He finally knew the truth. No longer was he left to wonder and torture himself with "what ifs" and "whys."
"Thanks for telling me," he said.
My, how things had changed.