[Edit: 17 Oct 2021]
[Hello, have some sad wolf hours with me.]
Emily nudges my side and sends me one of those infuriating secret smiles, which at any other point in our lives I would have returned with enthusiasm. I can't now. Not now.. My lack of response does not deter her though. She rolls her eyes and links her arm with mine, forcing me to lean closer and look in the same direction in which she is gazing.
Sam, the object of her adamant observation, is helping Seth lift driftwood onto the back of that stupid red pickup truck. Shirtless, why the hell is he shirtless? In all the years we had dated Sam had never expressed the need to show off his body, not that he was shy with it. This is different though, it's deliberate. Why does today have to be different? Why did Emily have to look at that bare chest in interest? Why?
The ache from earlier has not waned. This morning feels light years away. How can it have been this morning? It can't possibly still be today. I swallow, forcing bile back down my throat.
"Come on!" Emily whines, pleading and frustrated at my lack of response, she shakes my arm. "You can't possibly tell me you don't find him attractive,"
I want to yell at her that I know. I know he's good looking and funny and his eyes are intense. I know what his lips taste like in the morning. I know that he prefers to wear green socks. I know his voice past midnight, whispering in the forest as both our chests heave. I know so well how attractive he is, how the ladies at the supermarket waggle their brows and giggle and how mom will nudge me with a gleam in her eye.
I wanted to shove away my cousin and best friend, run screeching into the ocean hopefully to be swallowed by frigid waves and never allowed to resurface. But I don't, I can't, because Seth looks our way and waves bright and unfailingly oblivious. He is a beacon of light in the dull fog that is clouding my mind. I won't cry in front of him. Never in front of Seth, when I'm sure he is all I have now.
I can't be weak, not with Sam iright there/i.
The world is spinning, my stomach cramping, and someone has unfairly sucked all the oxygen from the air. It's so difficult to breathe. Emily doesn't seem to notice that the air is thinner or that maybe our breakfast was poisoned. She is smiling and her eyes flitter excitedly over Sam's back when he bends to pick up more wood. Her cheeks are slightly flushed and I'm reminded of a teenage Emily, all blushes and giggles. I didn't think I'd see that girl again, not now, not when it was Sam.
But it was Sam. Oh fuck,, it's Sam.
Emotion chokes me and I have to break from Emily's hold to walk away from the whole thing. I clutch my sides, my fingers digging against my skin, and I stare at the damp sand, willing the blurry film to disappear from my eyes. I'm trembling, I can't make myself believe it is from the cold. I try to breathe and it's like drowning.
I just want to stop thinking, stop feeling, stop existing.
My legs carry me to the edge of the water where my toes start to numb from the cold. It is there that I stop; simply staring into the waves and watching the water create white foam. The liquid sucks at me, dragging the sand from beneath my feet, trying to drag me back into the ocean with it. I want to let it but my knees are locked and they stay rooted, slowly letting me sink down and down.
Wind roars in my ears, whipping hair against my cheeks, creating stinging streaks of fire along my skin. It forces my eyes to water some, not enough to unleash the cries, but enough to make my lips part and gasp for breath. The sea is salty on my lips, as if the ocean breeze is weeping in my stead, and its clammy air dampens my face.
"Le-le?" My body stiffens and I blink away the moisture in my eyes, licking my lips as I draw in deep breaths. Emily comes up beside me, her sweet face scrunched in concern. She places a hand on my cheek, gently stroking the unusually pallid skin. "Are you getting ill?" She frowns, "You're cold. Come on. Seth and Sam are finished with the wood, let's go get you warmed up,"
I look at her with downturned lips, feeling tired and burning and fragile as a butterfly wing, "No," I step away from her kind hands; they make me feel worse. I want to hate her. I want to wallow in self-pity. I can't accept her sincerity. I can't be made happy by her gentle words. It's spiteful, I think distantly, and I don't want to be made happy right now. So I shake my head and firm my lips around my words. "I don't want to go back yet, just leave me."
Emily blinks in surprise and steps toward me, her feet finally entering the surf. The sand has sucked me down to her height. She cringes at the cold and glances uncertainty from me to the icy water, "Really, Leah? I think you need to get out of this and get warmed up. We don't need to have my stupid secret welcome party. I can make you some soup."
"I don't want your help," I rasp, my brows dropping lower over my eyes, my face scrunching. "Please, just leave me alone."
"Le-le, I -"
"Go!" I say and lurch from the sand to push at her, my breaths are laboured. She is blurry, but the look of shock on her face is too much. I curl back in on myself, focusing my eyes out to sea. "I can't look at you right now. I don't want you to do anything, please leave me alone. Can't-can't you at least give me that? Let me be alone. Please."
She blanches but does not reach for me again, "Leah, I don't understand. What did I do?"
My breath hitches and a tear escapes the corner of my eye, I dash it away angrily and glare at her bare feet. Of course she doesn't know, Emily would never think someone was capable of hurting me. Emily with her compassion and her innocent joy; Emily, beautiful and smart and graceful; Emily would never understand something as ugly as this. Something as nasty as my need to feel the pain and bare it alone, no, it wasn't something she could ever hope to understand. "Nothing, nothing," I squeeze my eyes closed and sigh, "Please, just give me some time. I'll come home in a short while… I just need to think and breathe."
She hesitates, "Okay, but if you take longer than a half hour I'm sending a search party to bring you back."
I nod and keep my eyes closed. I wait. Several minutes pass before I open my eyes and survey the absence of people. It fills me with bitter satisfaction and a dark hole in my chest radiates loathing. My feet burn with the cold as I trek back to the sand; leaving the sucking water behind me, bereft of a body to drag into its glacial depths.
The damp ground makes a compelling sitting place and I settle here to watch the ocean churn back and forth across the beach. It engraves a lulling numbness to where before there was just pain. After a while I can almost forget that there was ever hurt to begin with and soon my chest feels hollow and my mind empty. The numbness is so thorough that I can hardly tell if my heart is beating or if I'm breathing.
It doesn't last long though.
When I blink again the sun is starting to set over the ocean and just a ways up the beach there are two figures coming towards me. I push to my feet and meet them halfway.
Sam moves fast.
The numbness makes way for a dull throbbing that brings back the nausea.
They both move fast, I note.
Emily and Sam walk so close that their hands brush. Sam's eyes are trained to the top of Emily's head, gaze openly burning with...something. A something that despite our years together, I never saw on his face when looking at me.
"Leah," Emily says, concerned but quietly happy.
My throat clenches and all I can manage is a silent nod in their direction.
In my head, raw static overtakes the calm repetitive crash of waves. I've never felt so broken.