Bright blue eyes cast their gaze over the long desaturated beach. This was a wet day, with a white sky that drained the color from the surf, from the sand, and from the skin of the kid wearing sandals, a dark hoodie over his wind-swept hair, and his favorite pair of jeans brazen with battle scars from its many years of use. He stood motionless with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie to keep them warm from the cool wind.
A presence crept up behind him and hugged him from behind, her gentle hands snatching at the soft cotton near his chest.
"Hey, good-lookin'..." a girls voice spoke to him with half a giggle.
He remained motionless, just staring out into the atlatic waves. She didn't seem to notice that anything is wrong with him, and kept smiling.
"Don't you remember? That's the first thing you ever said to me. It was my birthday," She smiled. "And I was riiiight over there," she pointed to a seemingly indistinguishable spot on the beach about 30 seconds away. "C'mon!" She took him by the hand and stood between him and the ocean.
He saw her, and the radiance of her smile infected his heart.
Her eyes, green gems that betrayed a heart of kindness. Her hair, a waterfall of golden swirls. It appeared to him as though her skin was illuminated by its own light. He watched as her flowered dress waved behind her, mimicking every move her legs made as she clung to his hand and led him to the spot that he had long forgotten.
By the time that they had arrived, a quiet smile had attached itself to the boy's face. He looked into her eyes for a moment more than he usually would. Her eyes squinted suddenly, and she smiled.
"What are you looking at?"
As if in a trance, he slowly averted his eyes once again to the horizon, while simultaneously sitting down in the sand. His chin rested on his arms rested on his knees. This time, she noticed, and the joy faded from her face.
Her hands came down around his face trying to comfort him. His head went down into his knees. Loss. Loneliness. She sat down next to him and leaned her head against his shoulder. He felt her breath on his neck, the beat of her heart through her skin. Then, she started to talk.
"Even though I'm gone, it doesn't mean what we had wasn't real. I know you thought that we would be together forever, but, I always knew... Nothing is forever." He closed his eyes now knowing that what he heard was true. She sighed, "I wish we could run away, you know? Just the two of us, to Mexico. They have beaches there, better than this one... or to some island in the Mediterranean, we could have a boat and just go wherever we want to." For a while, they sat together.
She took his hand and held it for a moment. She closed her eyes as if she were drifting off to sleep. Squeezing tightly, she whispered with all the honesty that was in her, "You know, I guess one thing... is forever. Love... Not forever in time, but forever in itself." She fell asleep.
On July 27, a boy sat alone on a beach in Atlantic City.
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