She smelled like the sea. Her hair was salty. It had dried but still contained bits of sand which felt gritty against my face. Her brown hair was hot from the sun. I could've spent forever with my face buried so close into hers, every inch of us together. It had to end though. She broke apart from our wet bathing suit hug.
"Let's go!" She took off spraying up sand with her heels. Running her hands through the breeze, she giggled girlishly as her swimsuit skirt rippled against her thighs and extenuated her long legs. She left me far behind. I sighed. Those days were so filled with love and hate: my love for what made her so wild and free and my hatred for the fact that she was just that-wild and free.
"Come on, slow-poke!" She waved and ran towards our beach umbrella. "Last one gets there is a blue jay bird."
"I thought it was last one gets there is a lazy turd," I collapsed on the blanket next to her.
"Oh, it is. I just knew you were going to lose." She stared off with that quirky lopsided smile of hers plastered on her face.
"Why you!" I laughed and hugged her, knocking her over. She kissed my cheek and jumped up again. She pirouetted in the sand and started walking away. I looked at the junk that filled her worn converse. "Isn't this enough?"
"I'm looking for something special." She yelled from down the shore. "It still needs a pièce de résistance."
She kissed her fingers like chefs do and with that I lost her for a few more hours. With those inspirational blues of hers, she would search the shore for hours for "special" pebbles, broken shells, and trinkets, as she would call those pieces of junk, left behind by careless tourists. She would bring all these things back to the cottage with her and create. Washed up rubbish, things from nature, and an oddments here or there would in her hands be transformed into quirky and unique masterpieces.
That was how our days were spent: her creating and me tagging along in vain hope of being with her. She was never really there though. When she was creating, she did it with all of her heart as well as with her mind. I didn't care at the time though. I was nothing when I wasn't with her.
"Why are you laughing?" I asked her once.
"Why not?" She smiled.
"You're that happy?" I raised an eyebrow.
"No matter what's happening, you can always find something in the world to be happy about. If you have the right perspective." The corners of her eyes laughed at my silly question but at that moment, I wasn't thinking about myself. I was thinking that as cheesy and sentimental as it seemed, she could've made the most critical person in the world believe her. I hadn't known how to respond to that so I ended the difficulty by closing my lips against hers in a powerful kiss.
I had never felt so much before in my life. That is why life is so empty now without her. Life goes on, yes, but, without her, it is no comparison. There are other women, perhaps even more beautiful, that have tried to make me forget. But there is no one that compares to how she made me feel. Around her life danced. It must have been the cadence in her step which conducted the world.
The cadence of her step was the first thing I heard every morning. It was the tap-tap-tap across the rough wood floors of the cottage. I would roll over and try to fall back asleep. But, between the sun streaming through the yellow curtains she insisted on having and her tap-tap-tapping, I never could. She would continue her morning routine by banging pots and pans, humming songs from musicals, and running a rock tumbler she had in her craft room. Though her chipper attitude in the morning grated my nerves to a zest, it also made me feel like a bad person if I didn't play along.
I get up every morning and go through her routine. Coffee. Oatmeal. Water plants. Feed the neighborhood cat. Fold her clothes and lay her bathing suit out on their porch swing beside me. When I settle into that sunny spot and feel the sea breeze on my face, that's when I feel like she's beside me again. This is where she will always be, in the sun where summer never ends.