Pictures in the Sand

Well girl, I’m sorry for disappointing you…

“No! You have to stay. Please, I didn’t mean for it to happen like this. You’ve got to believe me.” All she could do was plead. It wouldn’t have any effect on me anymore. Not this time.

“You don’t understand. Just let me explain.” Her begging was filled with desperation. Like I had to sit here and listen to this. Had I not already heard enough of her lies? I continued packing up my suitcase, not bothering to even glance up in her direction. I moved around her dejected form, standing alone in the middle of my temporary bedroom, swiftly, making a point not to touch her. I went from drawer to drawer pulling out the rest of my clothes and keeping a determined, stony silence.

“Please, can we at least talk about this?” Hadn’t we already had enough fights? Hadn’t we already had enough of those “discussions” that always landed us back here? Well, I was done with them. Nothing was going to change, but that was exactly what I needed: change.

I headed towards the door, eager to leave all of this behind. It was the end of summer; I could just forget everything and start over fresh this autumn. I would call Kevin later, on my way home, to tell him where I had gone, and to thank him for lending me the room, for putting up with me.

“Joe.” She reached out, her cool palm making contact with my wrist, closing around it. I cringed. “Joe, please. He doesn’t mean anything to me.” That was it, the last straw. Did she really think I believed any of it?

I was tempted to turn back, to just look at her incredulously one last time. I was tempted to yell at her, or even worse, ask in her in a deadly whisper: Are you sure it isn’t just me that means nothing to you? But instead, I yanked my arm from her feeble grip. Only feet from my car, even fewer to the doorway, and I couldn’t turn back now. She had no power over me anymore.

I saw my car, sitting patiently in the setting evening sun. It was my ticket to freedom. As much as I wanted to sprint right to it, I kept my composure with a rigid, tense back and resolute steps.

My suitcase went into the passenger seat. I didn’t look up until the ignition rumbled to life.

There she stood, in the middle of the porch just staring at me. Bailey, my girlfriend of the past few months. She really did look like a mess at the moment. One of her tank top straps had slipped off her shoulder, and her hair looked at bit tangled, lying limply around her face.

I backed down the driveway, and never looked back at her again. There was nothing left to keep me here.

But I’m done, with being up and down and pushed around…

Two months earlier:

I came to Kevin this summer looking for a break from everything, from life. The hectic, fast-paced atmosphere of the city had really started to wear on me, and Kevin owned a nice beach-front house. I was in desperate need of a vacation, and I had always loved the beach.

I was there now, walking slowly to the water, concentrating on how the sand gave way for each of my footsteps. The sun beat down on my exposed back and I made a mental note to put on some sunscreen later. The sun might’ve felt good now, but burns were killer. The beach was crowded, as usual, but I hardly noticed anybody else. I just wanted to unwind.

“Hello?” A girl’s lighthearted voice cut into my awareness. I looked over to see a tall, tanned beach blond standing next to me, clad in nothing more than a skimpy bikini and tiny shorts. I had to admit, she was hot.

“Oh, um hi,” I greeted her sheepishly, wondering how long she had been attempting to get my attention.

“Hey. I’m Bailey.” She smiled, showing off her pearly white teeth.

“Joe,” I said, nodding slightly. She kept my slow pace as she walked next to me, keeping up a conversation. Even though I had come here intending to be alone, I was surprised to find that I actually didn’t mind her company.

“So are you here on vacation?” She asked, sounding genuinely interested.

“Yeah, for the rest of the summer. I’m staying with my brother.” I told her, oddly willing to let her know anything she wanted. We finally hit the water, and then turned, making our path parallel to the shallow, foamy waves that washed up over the sand and danced around our feet.

“That’s cool. I live here permanently, and believe it or not, this place can get pretty boring. It’s nice to see some new, cute faces around here.” She smiled again, watching me. Feeling a sudden burst of courage, I asked her out.

“Are you busy later? Maybe you could, you know, show me around?” I grinned, confident she would say yes, even if there was a small part of me that feared rejection.

“Yeah, I would really like that,” She accepted, reaching out to give me a short see-you-later hug. “Meet me out here tonight.”

***

“Hey Bailey,” I said, welcoming my girlfriend to the group. I stood up, wrapped an arm around her to pull her closer to me, and planted a quick kiss on her lips. I sat down around the beach bonfire again and dragged her down with me so that she landed on my lap.

“Um, ouch,” She grumbled crossly. I glanced at her, concerned. Where had this moodiness come from? For the past three weeks that we had been going out, she had been nothing but happy, excited, or extremely sweet.

“Are you okay?” I asked into her ear, my arms encircling her waist, squeezing slightly.

“Yeah, I’m totally fine except for the fact that you just pulled me to the ground so now my butt hurts. Ugh and let go of me, that hurts!” Bailey complained with an attitude I had never heard. I let go of her immediately, not wanting to get scolded anymore. I had only wanted to make her happy, to show her that I liked having her around and having her close. She scooted over to the space next to me, crossing her arms over her chest tightly, as she stared into the fire with a bored frown.

I watched her for a few seconds, wanting to apologize, for what though I wasn’t exactly sure. I looked up, gazed around the group at the rest of my friends that sat around our small fire, trying to catch some one’s eye. ‘What’s up with her?’ I wanted to ask. But none of them looked my way, all averting their eyes or pointedly continuing loud conversations. She was my problem, they told me.

They were right. That night was only the first little hint of what I was setting myself up to deal with in the near future. She was my problem, and what a heck of a problem she was.

***

“This isn’t my fault okay? You can’t blame me.” Bailey cried in an obnoxious tone I had gotten very familiar with lately, raising her voice.

“Yes it is. You’re the one who suggested we even come all the way out here.” I pointed out. Thanks to Bailey we were stuck out in basically the middle of nowhere in the darkness of night, trudging down the side of the road in search of a gas station. We also didn’t have any cell phone service.

“Well whose stupid car stopped ‘cause it didn’t have enough gas?” she accused me bitchily, pointing the finger of blame back at me. We had only been going out for a month and a half, and this was a tone I was already very accustomed to.

“You said it was just a few miles down the road, not an hour out of town!” I yelled at her, my anger finally getting the best of me. There were lights in the distance, not too far off, and a sign promoting $2.50 gas. At the moment, both these things seemed like a pretty decent makeshift heaven.

“You didn’t ask for specifics. Sorry if I just wanted to have a good time.” She stalked of ahead of me.

“And I’m sorry I even agreed to come with you,” I muttered bitterly.

“Do you even have any money?” She called back over her shoulder. I did, and thank god for that. I couldn’t wait to drop her off at her house and get rid of her for the night.

***

“Kevin, has Bailey come by yet?” I called down the stairs, wondering if I had somehow missed the doorbell, or maybe Kevin had just let her in. “We were supposed to go out almost forty minutes ago.” After two months I should have expected her unreliability.

“No, I haven’t seen her since she was with you the other day,” he replied, a bit apologetically.

“Okay, well thanks anyway.” I decided to go out on the back porch to wait for her, in the warm afternoon breeze. I sat on the steps, gazing out at the beautiful beach scene before me. The day was too sweltering for anybody to brave the beach, but there was a couple out by the water, jumping around and splashing each other. I watched them with a sigh, wishing that Bailey and I could go back to the early days when we were carefree like that.

After a few minutes, the two seemed to be tiring out. They came farther up the beach, close enough to the house that I could almost discern their faces. They started kissing then though, passionately and completely oblivious to me. I stood up, prepared to quietly back away into the house. This was something I did not want to be privy to, and it was getting extremely awkward for me very quickly.

I was in the shadows of the porch when I stopped. There was something about the girl’s blond hair, and her tanned, toned legs…

“Bailey?” I gasped, loudly enough for her to hear me, hoping, praying that it wouldn’t be true.

“Huh?” The girl glanced up, confused. When she saw me, her expression turned to horrified and she shoved the boy off of her. It was Bailey. I turned away from her, disgusted, and barged back into the house, slamming the screen door after me. The coolness of the air-conditioned house hit me like a slap in the face after the humid air outside. I shuddered, from goose bumps and the thought of what I had just witnessed. Briefly, I noted that Kevin was gone, and that the door had opened and closed behind me, but I didn’t turn back. I didn’t care.

I was upstairs, in my room, already pulling out my suitcase and throwing in my personal items by the time she caught up to me.

“No! Joe, you have to stay. Just let me explain.” I wasn’t going to listen. I didn’t need this. I didn’t need her. I had already put up with enough of her shit this summer.

In record time, I had all of my belongings packed, and I was leaving my room for the car.

“Please, he doesn’t mean anything to me.” I shook my head, doing my best to ignore her.

It wasn’t until I hit the open highway that I started to relax, that my rough grip on the steering wheel started to loosen. Some drama providing girl wasn’t what I had come out here for, just the opposite in fact. I had thought that maybe a nice relationship would only add to this vacation, and I would maybe find what I had been missing in the city. I hadn’t, and now I was just ready to leave this whole summer behind me. Bailey really didn’t mean much to me, I realized, at least not as much as I had thought before. She wasn’t anything that I would remember months down the road from now. Soon enough, the memory of her would be washed away, just like water erased pictures in the sand. She was my past. She was just a summer fling.

No more.