***
One, two, three…
I counted the waves as they crashed into the beach, eating it away slowly, dragging shells away, and giving them new life. As I stared, the line between the night sky and the dark black sea became too blurred and soon I could not tell the difference between them.
But in the end, what did it matter?
I wished the wind was howling, that the few clouds above me could multiply and darken in colour. I willed the waves to increase in size and number, for them to charge the shores with a battle cry, instead of the leisurely pace they insisted on. The world around me should have matched my thoughts.
Chaos was what I needed, what I craved. This was the only time that night when it seemed to be escaping my grasp.
I removed my eyes from the sea and stole a quick glance to my right, where I noticed someone else standing on the sand. On closer inspection I saw that the figure was a boy, and that he was doing much the same thing that I was doing.
The sea held a hypnotising glare on those who sought it out.
His golden brown hair was being blown from his forehead as he stood on the seashore, right on the border where the sea danced against the soles of his shoes. The boy stared straight ahead, as if daring the calm waters to go any further.
As I looked at him, I noticed the disorder in my mind begin to clear away. He seemed to hold me to the beach, so that my thoughts would not lift me to places far away. He was acting as my constant, yet at the same time, the world around me became insignificant.
I began to wonder what had brought him down to the beach that night. What had caused him to seek out the beauty that lay before him. I wished that I could read him as if he were an open book, and that I could take delight in finding out what had happened to him to be there. I wanted to know his story.
Without realising it, I had edged closer to him. At first I wondered how I had gotten to be so close, for I was only a few feet away from him now. I looked back and saw the foot prints that had led me to where I now stood. They were tell-tale signs of my interest in the person who lay ahead.
Now that I was nearer, I could see that his hands were crossed in front of his chest, yet his eyes still scanned the shore as if they were searching for something.
“Are you okay?” my voice seemed to break the deathly silence that surrounded us both. His head whipped round to me, eyes still in a haze as if he were not really registering me fully, then turned back to the picturesque view that awaited him.
“Definitely,” he answered, without letting any emotion into his voice. I knew he just wanted to get back to his thinking, but I couldn’t help being drawn to this boy and the mystery that surrounded him.
“Um, what’s your story?” I asked without really thinking about what I was saying. I wondered what he must have thought of me, a random girl walking up to him on the beach and wanting to talk. Yet the atmosphere that night made everything seem so unreal, that I felt as if any question could be asked to anyone, and they would answer with the truth.
He turned to me once more and smiled, and I could properly take in his dark eyes and the fact that they seemed to be a tad swollen and red. I wondered what he had been crying about, but decided to wait to see if he would answer before I asked anything again.
“Not so simple as any story,” he finally replied as I thought about what he said.
“Why not?” I turned towards him, wondering when he would get fed up of all my pointless questions. He thought for a second as if he were finding the best way to phrase whatever he wanted to say next.
“If everything that’s going on was a story and was just made up by someone, sometime soon something amazing would happen that would turn everything around. There would be a reason for being here tonight.” I nodded in agreement to his answer, for that was word for word exactly what I was thinking. If everything around us was really just fiction made up by a human author, everything I did would not feel so meaningless at that moment.
“If this were a story, the world around me would be mimicking how I feel. Yet the sea is calm and the weather’s fine,” I thought aloud as he picked up a stone and threw it as far as he could. He turned to me once again and gave me another small smile that nearly reached his eyes this time.
I sat down in the sand, and was glad to see him sit down next to me slowly. Instead of looking at the sea, he gazed at the sand as he picked up a handful and let it slip through his fingers.
“I don’t think I believe in fate, but this seems as close as we’re ever going to get, don’t you think?” he asked me, I nodded in response and together we sat side by side, throwing stones and staring at the sea’s wild beauty.
Two complete strangers sharing each others hidden pain.
