Transcend

When I woke up Friday morning to the sun shining brightly through the window of my bedroom, it didn't take long for the events of the past few weeks to come flooding back into my mind as well as the soreness of my eyes due to the tears I'd been unsuccessful at holding back the night before. I sat up in my bed and rubbed at my eyes before grabbing my glasses and slipping them on to look around my room. It was brightly lit from what felt like the first rays of sunshine since winter had taken over the world, and after sitting up and looking around my room for a few minutes, slowly waking up, I walked to the bathroom in the hall to put in my contacts before returning to my room. I pulled a teal tank top on over the black one I'd slept in, changed into an old pair of beige cargo pants, and put on a light brown coat to ward off the lingering cold winds before slipping on a pair of sandals and leaving my house, walking down my street until I came to the beginning of the seawall.
It hadn't been long after I woke up that morning before I realized the date, March 4th, and the fact that it had been the day I broke up with Liam two years ago when I'd thought he didn't love me anymore, though of course I'd discovered the true reason of why he was so distant in the last few weeks of our relationship. I climbed the wooden staircase to the top of the seawall, choosing to walk along the large concrete structure instead of the shoreline where the ocean waves rushed forward before receding back quickly. Besides, I'd always preferred to walk along the seawall instead of in the sand, though it turned out to be the place where Liam and I first met, now almost three years ago, though it felt like a thousand.
My family had been taking care of a neighbor's dog while they had gone out of state for vacation, housing the large golden retriever named Duke for two and a half weeks until the family returned and brought him home. It had been a lazy day in June and I was lounging on the couch in the living room watching TV when my mother bribed me with a ten dollar bill to walk the dog, something she usually made my Dad do but he happened to be away on a business trip for that week. My mom explained to walk Duke along the shoreline in the sand, and I nodded as I pulled on a pair of sandals then hooked him to the leash we'd been given, leaving for the walk along the beach.
I was about ten minutes into the walk down the shore, trekking through the loose sand and fighting against the giant dog trying to run off when the handle of the leash slipped through my fingers after one quick tug from Duke, causing me to gasp in surprise as it left my hand. I'd been anticipating the dog to sprint away from me, the leash dragging behind him, while I was forced to run after and try and catch him only to find a hand had grabbed the leash after it had left my own and had secured it, the arm of the hand reaching from behind my left shoulder. After realizing that Duke wasn't long gone, I looked over in surprise to see an older boy standing to my left with only a pair of board shorts on and still dripping from the water of the ocean, his arm extended forward and holding the leash as he laughed lightly. It was Liam of course, the guy I would fall in love with, though at the time I had no idea of what was to come and simply stared at him, admiring his brown eyes and his handsome face.
"Almost lost him..." He said as he pulled the dog closer to where we stood, turning to face me more as he held the loop of the leash in both his hands and said, "You should put the handle of the leash around your wrist and hold onto the rope instead, that way is isn't as easy to let go of it." He put the loop of fabric around my wrist still extended from holding it earlier, as he'd instructed, and smiled at me warmly. I'm sure I was blushing at how close he was, but I managed to smile back and say thank you before predicting that the meeting would soon be over and we would both be on our way.
"What's your name?" He asked with an awkward laugh, surprising me into stuttering out my reply, "I-it's Nora, well Eleanor, but everyone calls me Nora... What's your name?" I glanced around the beach and at the different groups of people all either talking and laughing or playing in the water until my eyes landed on a group of three boys all in the ocean watching us. They looked about the same age as Liam and I had recognized some of them from my school. "Do you go to the local high school too?" I added to my response at the last minute, glancing back up at him and away from the boys.
"Yea, I'm Liam and I go to the high school... You do too?" I nodded in reply to his question with a small grin, shifting where I stood and glancing at Duke wondering around me before turning back to Liam as he said, "I've never seen you around school, what grade are you in?" "I'm a sophomore," I answered quickly then after observing the surprised look on his face quickly added, "I was last year I mean, this year I'm going to be a junior." He nodded understandingly, explaining that I didn't look like I was only in 10th grade before saying, "I'm a senior this year."
"Really?" I asked, surprised that he was even talking to me considering how often times upperclassmen didn't socialize with anyone of lower grade for no real reason, other than to just assert the fact that they were older. "So you're graduating this spring?" I asked as I glanced behind him again and noticed the group of guys coming to shore, still watching us and laughing occasionally as they stepped from the waves. He nodded at my question, glancing back at the guys for a second before he looked back at me and shifted where he stood listening as I answered him, "Well that's great... I hope you do well your last year and graduate..." I awkwardly tried to end the conversation, not wanting to keep him from his friends any longer and return home, though he stopped me as I tried to walk away.
"Wait... where are you walking to? Are you just walking your dog down the beach?" I nodded silently in response to his question, stopping where I was instead of continuing down the beach. "Can... can I walk with you? Just for a little while?" He smiled awkwardly, most likely knowing how strange he sounded to be asking if he would join me in walking my neighbor's dog. My eyes went past him to his friends again who had no doubt heard what he'd said, then after thinking for a second said, "Okay" with a warm smile, turning and walking forward with Duke while he told his friends he would see them later and listened to the replies he received as he caught up to me, waking to my left along the shore.
Although I had intended for my walk along the beach with Duke to only last fifteen or so minutes, once Liam joined me the two of us ended walking for hours down the shore until the sun began to set. We talked about anything that came to mind, mostly questions that Liam thought up to ask me before giving his own answer to it. He asked about the dog and I explained it was a neighbor's; he asked about my age and I told him I was sixteen before he explained he was turning eighteen in August. He asked about my family, my friends, my favorite color or number, or anything just to make conversation and to get to know me better. By the time I told him that I needed to go home and we began to walk back towards the end of the sea wall, I was already feeling the beginning of a strong attraction to the guy I'd met on the beach.
"Can we hang out some other time?" Liam asked awkwardly once we reached the end of the seawall and I was about to walk across the sand dunes and to my neighborhood just on the other side. I stood a few feet from where he was standing near the seawall, smiling with an embarrassed blush at his words, finally telling him: "Well, I might walk Duke tomorrow around the same time. Maybe we'll run into each other again...?" He grinned at me from where he stood, now completely dry from having been out of the water for so long though he still wore only board shorts. I smiled back at him and made the walk back to my house, hardly able to pry the smile from my face after I left him with the promise that we would meet again.
The next day I left my house with Duke on his leash, hardly believing that I would meet up with Liam until I reached the beginning of the seawall and saw him sitting at the top waiting for me, this time wearing jeans and a shirt and fully dry. I smiled at him and he rose and walked down the seawall towards me, taking his place next to me as we both walked down the shoreline together. This ritual continued for a few weeks, even after our neighbors returned and took their dog back home with them, making Liam the only excuse I had to walk down to the beach every day to see him, not to walk the dog as I had lied about before. We walked down the shore almost every day talking and laughing, watching as the sun ran along the sky from the east until it reached the west and filled the clouds around it with orange before disappearing from sight. Only after we had walked down the beach countless times for two or three weeks did we venture to the boardwalk and sit on the bench at the very end where we had our first kiss, our ten month relationship beginning from there.

I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my beige cargo pants as I walked along the edge of the seawall, feeling that familiar pain in my chest from not only remembering the start of our time together, when the sun always seemed to be shining and everything was light and happy, but going back to where it all began and looking out at the sand that we walked across as we slowly fell in love. It was years later, after walking the dog all day long just to have conversations, after the boardwalk and the first kiss, and the sun that had shown itself this morning, much like the sun we'd both walked under years ago, had disappeared leaving the world cold and gloomy once again, mirroring my inner mood as I continued on.
The walk wasn't far from the end of the seawall to where Liam lived, a small two bedroom apartment in a condominium building that had been almost like another home to me when we'd been dating. The door was facing the ocean and was located next to a breezeway in the building it was housed in and despite my second thoughts, once I came to it I cut across the small strip of grass running along the seawall and moved towards the door, standing before it with a sense of nervousness I had never felt before when it came to his apartment.
Not long after Liam and I began dating, I took my first step inside the small home being led by the hand by him and glanced around at the clean, white living room. He explain to me, in fragments at first until I was able to piece it all together, that the condo had been something his grandparents had purchased and his father had inherited once they both died. Liam's parents, when they both lived in Montana, had met when they were young and it wasn't long after they had married and had Liam when they began to have troubles, eventually divorcing when Liam was only two years old. Liam stayed with his father and they left Montana to live in the condo, as it was the only place his father could think of. Liam grew up here and lived in the condo his whole life, only ever visiting his mother when he was six or seven years old.
Not long after Liam and I met he turned eighteen years old and his father moved back to Montana, something he had wanted to go through with for years, though had never done since Liam had insisted they stay here. However, once Liam could legally live by himself in the apartment he took a plane back to his home, leaving Liam his old grey car to drive and the apartment to live in, paying the taxes and insurance on the condo and even sending Liam a monthly allowance so when he entered college he wouldn't have to work and could focus on his studies. Liam explained to me once that he had never shared close relationship with his father, making the separation all the more easier for the both of them.
I finally pushed myself to knock on the glass window in the door of the apartment after standing there and trying to convince myself that it was a bad idea. The plastic blinds on the other side of the window prevented me from seeing inside, and after receiving no sort of sign that he was inside I walked away quickly from the door, feeling stupid for having even knocked, as if I had known what to say if he had answered the door. I moved back to the other end of the seawall and continued along the edge, glancing out at the grey ocean and the heavy clouds that had smothered the sun from shining, even after it had been so bright when I'd woken up hours ago.
After walking for another five or so minutes I came to the pier about half a mile from my house and stood on the edge of the seawall, my hands in the pockets of my pants as I stared at it blankly, trying to decide whether to go to it or not. I was already here, already walking along the places where Liam and I met and grew to love each other, where he had lived and had spent countless days and nights together. I might as well walk to the place where it began, to complete my gloomy journey through all of the memories the shoreline held. Finally deciding to take the stairs from the concrete wall to the sand, I walking over to the beginning of the pier, a long wooden ramp that led to a flat area that housed a small store before the pier jutted out into the water several yards.
After walking up the long ramp, watching as the sand below me turned into waves, I moved past the doors to the store which sold various things such as souvenirs, bait for fishing, as well as food such as ice cream. The journey down the long wooden pier was similar to the entire day, cold, painful, and raw, and I glanced down over the railing at the churning waves below until at last I came to the end of the long walkway, to the familiar wooden bench where it had all started years ago. I looked at the bench, letting my mind wonder back to all the times we spent together here for a second before I finally stepped forward and sat in the center of it, awkwardly looking around at the surroundings as I settled. After our break up I'd avoided coming here at all cost, knowing the memories it held and wanting to avoid them, making my first time back in two years feel all the more strange and uncomfortable.
The months after I had broken up with Liam had been some of the worst of my life, months in which I had spent entire days lying around my house feeling depressed, asking myself over and over again what had gone wrong, why had he become so distant, how could I have fixed it. My entire family, even my sister who was out of state during most of it, had been a witness to the change that I had taken on once my relationship with Liam had ended. No one ever was direct enough to point out the changes in me, knowing that I was in enough pain from the break up that caused it, but I became cold and detached following the months after I had gotten over the worst part of recovering from the break up. After the remaining months of my junior year as well as the summer, I returned for my senior year seeming to have gotten over the traumatic end to the relationship with my first love. Too soon however, my friends noticed that I was different from my old self; I was emotionless and distant from anyone and anything regarding love, and I was dedicated to hardly anything other than my studies. I'd never admit it, back then at least, but I was so scared of going through the pain of love once again that I spent my time alone in my room hoping to avoid meeting anyone and falling in love once again.
But despite how hard I'd tried to isolate myself my bedroom, hoping I could safely avoid love, it had been exactly the place where I met him, when he teleported into my room while I'd been sleeping one cold November night. Even as I sat on the pier I still didn't want to believe it, that after all of this time I still felt some love for Liam, but despite how I had tried to suffocate my feelings for him they had never properly left. I'd loved him this entire time, I realized, though I had tried to avoid it by pushing him away, and only when I realized there was nothing holding us back from staying apart did I allow those feelings to surface. He was still the guy I had met on the beach and was in love with, and even if we had taken a two year detour, we could still have a relationship like we'd had now we knew that there was nothing keeping us from it.
"I love him..." were three words I mumbled to myself while sitting on the bench at the end of the pier, before glancing down at my feet and the old board beneath them and shivering at the revelation I'd made. My words hung in the air around me and I stood from my seat and walked back down the pier and towards home, repeating the words in my head and thinking about, now that I'd finally realized these feeling, how I would I go about telling Liam.