A cold sea breeze blew her hair into her face. She tucked it behind her ears and looked at me. We were walking close to the edge where the waves crashed into the sand. The last time I came to the beach was when I was just twelve or thirteen. The feeling of the wet sand in between the spaces of my toes brought back nostalgia. Then I kept looking at her, the full moon in the sky barely illuminating the freckles on her cheeks and the nostalgia battles with some unknown feeling.
After the dinner, we decided not to let the night die young and instead live the most in one night, the plan to fulfill it was to walk barefoot on the wet sand of the beach. We scaled a dune and kept on walking on the never-ending beach.
"You should have seen your face back then" She said.
I kept silent. She didn't miss a chance to embarrass me.
"The confidence in your face dipped when I said the person is sitting in front of me" She continued.
"Not at all" I said, without being sure about it.
"Yes, you did. You actually believed it? Say nah" She asked again.
"I knew you were joking" I lied. I actually believed.
"Ohh, Mr. Romeo" She joked.
"Who is being stereotypical now?" I retorted.
"All right" She put her hands in the air and said, "Backing off"
I nodded. I took out a cigarette from my cigarette pack and struggled to light it in the strong breeze. She hunched down and picked up a seashell.
"I heard writers have a story behind everything, so what's with the cigarette?" She asked.
A wave crashed against my feet, the sand stuck in between my toes was threatening to give in to the nostalgia. I wished silently to let things go back to how it was before. I wished things to go back to the time where Mom had to just count how many candies I ate and not the money for hospital bills, the time when Dad nagged me to join the football team and not struggling to stand on his feet himself, the time when becoming a writer was a passion, not a struggle.
"When I was writing my book, I had to stay awake at night. I used to work as a delivery boy for a food delivery service and so after a long day's work it was hard to keep myself awake and that's when cigarettes helped a lot" I said the half-truth.
"But it's killing you slowly" She said, her voice softer than before. Perhaps she understood that there was something inside me that hurt still.
"Aren't we all slowly dying?" I asked.
"True" She said and pulled the cigarette from my hands before I could take a second drag.
But instead of my prediction of throwing it away, she touched it to her lips and breathed in the nicotine. She tried to hold it inside but then coughed and handed me the cigarette again and then coughed some more.
"Never again am I listening to a nihilist" she informed.
I laughed and then she smiled at me, her eyes a little wet from the coughing.
Suddenly the sound of the siren was back, I regretted not changing my reminder tune earlier. I took it out of my pocket as soon as possible. It was a reminder- "Fireworks at 11" and then the note that followed said that there was a firework show at 11 pm. Perhaps not calling it a night had its benefit.
"What's with the tune" She was curious.
"Heavy sleeper" I confessed.
She nodded and laughed and picked up another seashell.
YOU ARE READING
2.1.53
Mystery / ThrillerDREAM, DEATH OR VIRTUAL REALITY? Left with nothing but regrets and unfulfilled dreams, Shritaba stumbles into a sketchy site on the dark net which claims to give him the most peaceful death. Thinking it as a joke, Shritaba joins himself into it and...
