Summer ends

You were 21 and a college dropout. Your brother just took his own life.

It was the summer of 2007. I saw an empty bottle of xanax slip from your shorts pocket and land onto the sand when you crouched down to take a seat next to me. You didn’t see me see it, though. You told me you were ready to leave here. Vividly, I remember the grains of sand between my toes​ and your slow-spoken anecdote, layered over the distant waves. My hands stayed in my sleeves from holding a cold soda can. I thought about how close you sat to me. I thought about whether that might have been coincidental or deliberate.

We stayed at the Beach Town Alley in a two-story beach home. That night, we ate breakfast, scrambled some eggs, and baked biscuits. Close friends gathered near the coffee table but I stayed in the kitchen pining for quietude.

I’d just finished washing the dishes, a chore I passionately abhorred. You kindly took my dogs out.

My mind still has the sound of the squeaky faucet memorized. 

I heard the dogs, their collars rattling, as you ascended the steps to open the blue front door. I patted my hands dry on an apron, and the dogs were panting. We locked eyes, but I was the first to look away.

You invited me to an evening stroll. 

We stepped out; the evening stayed cool. My face felt sticky from the salty sea air. We ambled into the sound-deadening street; the waves crashing into the jetty were barely audible. It was late summer, and the lamp posts, delicately streaked in gossamer, anchored along the sidewalks glowed, drawing moths and gnats. Fireflies were sparse in the darkness, deep in the brush past the parking meters and vacant newspaper stands.

Fall was leaving traces of itself already. 

We meandered the streets and pored over a cemetery to the right. To the left, we saw a man through a bay window, setting out plates on a dining room table. We ambled by more trees, some shedding their leaves and others serving as canopies, decorative elements to an already sublime night.

No modicum of me preferred someplace else. We wandered leisurely on the uneven brick street constructed to fit clown cars, according to you. The silence between us carved out room for overthinking. I imagined walking barefoot with you, and a scarf over my shoulders, my high heels hooked by my fingers, and you walking alongside with rolled sleeves and a loose tie.

But we weren’t in love anymore. 

​I used to finish your sentences. Now, you can’t even finish explaining your thoughts.

We shared some anecdotes, and our steps filled the silence between sentences and responses. We stopped to look through a window of a closed bookstore, getting a glimpse of our reflections. We then walked around a puddle.

(I wish you had stopped pretending that you were okay.)

Our bodies strolled patiently down the patchy brick road, our shoulders nearly grazing. The sea glowed far into the distance. The sea’s horizon glittered from the full moon, demarcating the sky from the ocean’s foreground. The otherwise dark, bleak firmament lit up courtesy of the clouds glacially moving across its canvas. 

The sea was calm as the waves lapped on the shore. No one was on the sandy coast. Everyone stayed indoors. 

We confabulated about contentment and grief. I spoke lavishly about space. We talked about borrowing someone’s home for the weekend, sleeping in someone else’s bed, and using other people’s bed sheets and towels. Temporarily living someone else’s life. The things we borrowed.

I watched the sky, catching sight of a shooting star. I was going to tell you about it, but you were fervently raving about a movie you saw back in 2002. We passed by a cottage playing muffled and distorted 1930s music on vinyl.

With everything unfolding in the time it did in the places it had this evening, I thought dismally about our borrowed time.