Never Coming Home.

Mikey's never really thought about the size of the ocean before. He knew, of course, that about seventy percent of the world was covered by water and that the five oceans were really just one, huge interconnected mass of water, surrounding every continent from pole to pole. But he's never really truly absorbed these facts, never allowed them to penetrate into the emotional part of his unconsciousness. However, standing barefoot in the sand, water gently lapping over his toes, Mikey realizes that the ocean is startlingly huge, an all encompassing body of water that stretches to the horizon and beyond. Even up close, his mind can't figure out how something can just be so big, so absolutely massive, and still be considered beautiful.

Mikey hasn't thought that the ocean was beautiful for a year now, not since that sunny morning when the phone had rang downstairs in his mother's kitchen, where she was making pancakes for him and his brother. One moment he'd heard the gentle ticking of an oven timer and the next, his mother was sobbing, collapsed on the kitchen floor with the phone in her hands and all Mikey heard was she's gone.

A freak accident, they said. A failing motor and a radio that wouldn't work, combining like some fucked up potion to sink the ship his girlfriend had been on. She'd been studying dolphins, out in the middle of the ocean and now she was just fish food, buried in the sand at the bottom to be forgotten by everyone but him.

She was never coming home. She was lying somewhere in the middle of the vast expanse before him, her bones surrounded by darkness, and after a year, he really was the only one who seemed to care anymore. Her parents were back on the road to recovery, attending therapy sessions once a week. His own family had moved on, absorbed in their own lives, in work and, in Gerard's case, school. They didn't have enough time to sit down and talk to Mikey, to ask him if he was alright, because the answer, obviously, was that he wasn't.

Her parents had moved on because all they had to deal with was the fact that she had just died, out of the blue. His family just had to get over the shock of having someone who had been a part of their lives since Mikey's childhood being cruelly ripped away. Mikey didn't want to say that his grief was more important that theirs but he had so much more to deal with.

She'd only been his girlfriend for a few months, having made the transition from best friend half a year before her death. It'd been at that time that he'd started taking in her beauty in a different way; suddenly, her hair wasn't just blonde, it was strawberry blonde. Her eyes had been more than blue, they'd been a set of orbs that caught the sun's rays and changed colour. He'd noticed, for the first time, that she had a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose that only appeared in the summer.

He'd noticed all this and yet, he couldn't let three goddamn words pass his lips, no matter how much he meant them. He'd just wanted to take his time, to say it on the perfect occasion, to make it an I love you that she'd remember forever.

The water was cold against his skin as he sunk to his knees, shorts sliding up his legs. Hot tears fell from his eyes, disappearing as just another drop into the ocean. A pitiful wail bubbled from his lips, filling the otherwise empty beach around him.

She'd never said it either but he knew how she felt; he wasn't as oblivious as most people made him out to be. He knew that she had just been waiting for him and that had only made him love her even more. But now he knew that he should have said it as she was leaving on her boat trip, should have left her with a smile on her face instead of a grim frown as he'd kissed her cheek and left silently.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed, holding his face in his hands, saltwater flecking his cheeks. "I'm so sorry, I didn't think that you wouldn't be coming home, I should have said it." Looking up, water hit his glasses, blurring his vision. His blonde hair was plastered to his head and he knew that, if she'd been there, she would have laughed and called him a rat. But she wasn't there; at least, not really. There had been nights where he'd sat up, certain that she was standing in the corner of his room, watching him. For that brief moment before reality came back into play, he was almost certain that he'd heard water dripping onto his floor from her outstretched arms.

But he didn't believe in ghosts and she was never there when he actually woke up.

The sun was almost below the horizon, casting the abandoned beach into shades of indigo and gray. He knew that, if he was going to do what he had to, it would have to be now. Standing up, he slid his glasses off his face and put them in the pocket of his windbreaker, which was soon sitting on the sand. The wind coming off of the ocean was cold against his bare arms, transforming his skin into a battalion of goosebumps. His legs looked much the same as his shorts hit the ground, leaving him in a flimsy pair of boxers and a t-shirt that had seen much better days. When he hit the water, it took a moment for him to remember how to swim; the cold had knocked all of his breath out of his chest. When he finally regained it, he started swimming, dipping his arms in and out of the water at a decent speed.

He had no idea where her ship had gone down; all he knew was that it was off of the coast of New Jersey. But it was a start and so, he swam, kicking his feet, choking on salt water. The horizon seemed to stretch on towards the end of the world and the thought suddenly struck him that the world really did look flat from this angle. He kept swimming, determined to reach the end of his world.

He had to let her know. He had to tell her that he loved her, that he was sorry, that he wished he'd said it so he could have heard it from her lips. He had to see that smile that he'd cruelly erased.

So he swam.