Later that afternoon, Karen sat cross legged on a thin yellow beach towel, a fresh cigarette burning between the fingers of her right hand. Will didn't have to read the bold, black titling of the stack of papers sitting next to her to know what they were. Karen wasn't sitting in their usual little cove today, but instead was just a few feet from the water's edge.
"Two cigarettes in two weeks?" Will mused, sitting down onto the blanket next to Karen, the divorce papers between their bare legs. Karen responded by taking another drag, not looking at Will.
"What are you doing out here?" Will asked her, turning his face towards the grey sky, where a large rain cloud had just passed in front of the dim sun. "It's going to start storming any minute."
Karen shrugged and exhaled slowly.
"What can I say? I live on the edge," she dead-panned. The vacancy of her voice matched the look in her eyes. Will looked down at his hands. His eyes strayed to the left and began to scan the divorce filing sitting next to him. Karen had filled out the entire thing – her loopy, cartoon-ish handwriting betraying the true meaning of the words. He frowned as he picked up the papers and waved them in front of Karen's face.
"When were you planning on telling me about this?" he questioned. She looked down at the papers in front of her and then back to his face. He slowly dropped his hand back down to the blanket between them, still clutching the divorce document.
"I didn't mean to lie to you," was her only reply. She flicked her cigarette into the ocean in front of her callously before turning her upper body towards him, the corners of her mouth downturned. "Saying it out loud would have just made it too real."
Will lost himself in her sad eyes as the words washed over him and he nodded slowly.
"But why?" he questioned. "Why now? I thought things were going better." He studied her face, reading her expression. He hadn't seen this look in her eyes since the night he had saved her from falling off of her balcony. She was scared.
Karen broke their gaze and looked back towards the water. The sky was growing darker by the second.
"What happened that night on the balcony?" she asked, as if reading his mind. The tender look he had just given her, full of understanding, was one she had seen on his face only in her dim memory of that night. Over the course of the following months, she had remembered more and more about that night. But some things still weren't clear, and she wanted him to fill in the gaps.
Will hesitated for a moment. Lightning flashed over the water in the distance.
"You almost fell off," he answered simply. He didn't have the heart to tell her that she had fallen – that she would have certainly died if he hadn't been there. She nodded as she rocked her body back and forth, remembering.
"You know I was never planning on jumping," she told him. The calm expression on his face betrayed the shock of his thoughts. They hadn't ever spoken about the incident – he was sure she didn't have any memory of that night. It had haunted his dreams for weeks, though. He couldn't shake the image of Karen's terrified eyes as she dangled above the water, her fingernails biting into the skin of his forearms. He absent-mindedly rubbed the spot on his right wrist where she had left a little crescent-shaped indent.
Karen continued.
"But I wanted the option. I wanted to see how far I could push myself…I figured if I had really wanted to die I wouldn't have stood around up there for so long."
She pulled the divorce papers from his hand and flipped the page over before holding them in front of his chest. He looked down at it and took it from her.
"This was my balcony with Stan," she told him. Will skimmed the page, confused. It was then that he noticed the empty last line at the very bottom of the page – she hadn't signed it. Thunder clapped.
Karen stood up and walked towards the water, running her foot across the top of its most shallow point. It felt cold against her bare skin.
"You're not going to sign it," Will filled in the blanks.
Karen shivered and crossed her arms tightly in front of her body, looking out into the ocean as far as she could see. The wind whipped her hair around furiously, slapping it against the delicate skin of her cheeks like little whips.
Will stood and went to her. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she snaked her arm around his waist. She didn't look at him as she felt him slide the folded papers into her free hand. More lightning.
The thunder followed much quicker this time, striking loud as Karen broke their embrace and took several more steps into the water. The angry little waves of the shore licked and bit her knees. She took one last look at the papers in her hands before ripping them in half with one quick motion. Will watched, satisfied, as she crumpled up each half and chucked them into the ocean.
She ran back into his arms as the rain began to fall, soaking their hair and faces. She shrieked in mock terror as the drops fell harder and faster, and Will ran her back towards their blanket, scooping it up and holding it over their heads like an umbrella as they ran back towards the house.