Excerpt

I was sure my face was red and streaked and splotchy, but I had to look. I knew I’d be disappointed, but after all these years of wishing, I just had to look at him and see if this, too, he could fix.


He looked as though he hurt for me and when I met his eyes, he tried to manage a weak smile. He turned, then, and stepped off the boat and I looked back out over the water, disappointed. I knew it wasn’t fair, but I couldn’t help it. He had been my knight in shining armor, my fix-it man, but he couldn’t save me from the one thing that I needed saving from the most. I felt the lump in my throat release and I leaned forward and sobbed loudly into my hands.

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Standing at the water's edge, I seemed to feel something I couldn’t find anywhere else. Sometimes it was sadness, sometimes anger, sometimes even a calm, a sense of peace. Regardless of the emotion, staring out at that ever-changing and yet always constant water, it felt good to feel something. It was one of these nights, staring into the water that distorted reality in its rippling reflection, that I realized I was punishing him for things that had come before him, things he could not control or handle and to move forward, somehow, those things could not be a part of me anymore. But how do you rid yourself of your own past? How do you separate yourself from things and people who have defined you for so long?

I walked down to the water’s edge and stared at the wild water. I removed my shoes, stepped into the lapping tide and asked it to wash away the things I could not handle. I walked home and decided as I snuggled down into bed that tomorrow I would let him be my answer again.