Oceanside

And life is short, she told me while we sat on the edge of the beach and looked out at the ocean.

I remember nodding and dragging on my cigarette and doing my best to throw off the air of someone who was cooler than I was. Shoulders hunched forward, eyes cast to where sand meets water. Weight of the world on me like I know too much for my own good.

Before us the ocean glittered and shone under the moon and the cloudless sky.

She talked to me like I wasn't even there, espousing her theories on the world and life and music with the passion and earnestness of someone who only ever had once chance to say what she wanted to. I listened and nodded and only stole the occasional glance at her, but it was only to admire the tan on her thighs as the wind ruffles her skirt towards her hips.

She had this sad look in her eyes and when she spoke it sounded like her voice might break into tears. All I could think was that I might be able to exploit this to get some action.

In retrospect I was a bit of a jerk about the whole thing. No one at the party had ever met me, and in truth I wasn’t even sure why I was there. Dragged along by a friend who came out west a year ago and fell in with the hipsters.

She came up to me and asked if she’d ever met me before and when I said no she asked me to come outside.

It was clear she was trying to make a connection but I was too drunk to do anything but keep up the façade that I was just like everyone else. Any other day I might have genuinely been interested.

So as she spoke I pictured her naked and tried to remember her name and sipped my beer and pulled on my cigarette but really I couldn’t have cared less. All of her earnestness was just making me uncomfortable.

I wondered why she was telling me all this and what it mattered.

And life is short, she told me, turning to look at me and holding out her hand for the last few drags of my smoke. I handed it over and said, Yea, life is short.

No one wants to die a virgin, after all, she said to me, and I said, Yea, that would be a tragedy.

She nodded, finished the cigarette and dug it into the fine sand of the beach before grabbing me and kissing me.

We melted into one another and when it was over I lit two cigarettes and handed one to her and we sat in silence.

Satisfied and conscious of the fact that she was sitting naked and staring at the waves I stood and asked if she wanted anything from inside. She shook her head, didn’t say anything.

Inside some people clapped me on the back and told me Good Job because they could see the scene from the balcony and I just shrugged and told them to fuck off and I felt like a new man.

Suddenly my attitude had crystallized and I was the man I pretended to be earlier. Cocky, self-assured, but low key and not one for drawing attention to myself.

I grab a beer and pop it open when someone screams.

On the balcony I see the girl on the beach, laying down on her back. Two people are running towards her, moving in slow motion through the sand.

From her wrists the blood spreads and glistens like the ocean before being drawn into the warm, soft sand.