Fortissimo

overture

This is not a smoky summer romance.

Unless the smoke is coming from a raging dumpster fire and the romance is slipped somewhere between the sprawling shelves of dusty Nicholas Sparks novels Aunt Hilary left downstairs. Then I guess that's exactly what it is. It's also not technically summer yet, but for now summer starts whenever Central Carolina University says it does. A couple weeks ago I walked across a stage and suddenly the sun started staying out until all hours, so happy summer to me.

But seriously. If love is what you're looking for you won't find it here.

I know people come to the ocean to search. To find. There's something about stepping off the edge of the land and into the wild waters that lends itself to discovery. Nowhere feels closer to nature, to where we have come from and where we will return, than the meeting of the sea and sky. And so we go there to uncover whatever it is we've lost. It's the last place we haven't looked.

And what better place to find love? Buried deep in the still-warm evening sand, or stuck in a waterlogged glass bottle washing up in the bubbling morning surf, or wedged between the slats of the weathered front gate, splintered with age but gently smoothed by afternoon rain, the fading white paint peeling to reveal memories of love loved and love lost.

Ok, enough of that. I mean, I guess here would, actually, be a good place to look if love is what you wanted to find. But I'm not in the market for love. So this is not a love story.

And anyway, my Aunt Hilary won this place in a divorce settlement. I'm not sure if she told anyone that when she offered it up for the summer, but by the selection of media she left behind, it's no secret. The wastebaskets are still full of used tissues and there's a whole collection of corkscrews lined up on the kitchen counter. The windchime dancing in the cool evening breeze blows constant lonely tones far out over the ocean, always to no reply. This place practically smells single.

Put that on a brochure.

You know, at one time, I thought I wanted the life most of the other CCU music department members got- ultra-committed relationships, early engagements, and marriage while your graduation gown is still warm. I guess it sounded nice when I was younger the future seemed like nothing more than something distant to be excited about. But now that the future is practically here, even the thought makes me anxious. I mean, I only just turned 21 like a month ago. I'm not ready to be engaged, and for sure not married. My idea of the good life still exists in rooms filled with someone's cotton candy-scented Juul vapor, drinking some kind of alcohol I've never tried before, vibing to music I don't know all the words to and just being happy to be there.

Just happy to be there is my whole personality, really. Belonging to me is basically the same as breathing. And I made it through a very long while of thinking I only got invited along because Oliver Mills, the organizer of this whole thing, was drunk when he asked, or because Aunt Hilary, the chief CCU staff pianist, is, in a shocking twist, my aunt. But here's the, you know, objective version.

This all started a few nights after I graduated college, somewhere in the sweet uncertainty of the graduation trip I had to share with my closest brother. I was on a rooftop bar with him and our two older stepbrothers, wasting away in a mist of Malibu, living a night I definitely wasn't cool enough for. My tight jeans creaked with every step I stumbled in my new shoes, like floorboards that hadn't been walked on in eternities. I was a new creation, both of the Central Carolina University College of Education and of the night, which made me ten times hotter than I really am. In elementary math you have to add five to a five to get a ten. In my life, all this five needs is a nighttime breeze and some nice dim bar lighting to move up to the tens place. And when I'm in the tens place, I don't have time to waste overthinking why Oliver just drunk texted me:

Beachtrip. Schuberts beahx house. 2months pesrlc issnlabd

I just have time to drunk text back:

turnup

Since then I've gone back to being five ones again and had plenty of time to overthink that garbled exchange, but we're not going to go back into that. We're just going to say I'm here now, for a reason, and a reason that doesn't involve politeness or pity.

In conclusion, I figure that maybe all I need is a set of sandy stairs to higher ground and a mint green bicycle with a wide banana seat to outrun myself, and maybe get to a wine shop too. Maybe a bonfire and a can of cheap beer and some pitchy acoustic music to listen to as my beach waves fly behind me in the breeze are all it's going to take to fill the days and the weeks and this feeling of incompleteness. A cute beach job, a tan, a sunburn- whatever will send me back to the real world glowing and content. It can't take that much.

For everyone else, I guess this sprawling beach house on the edge of the ocean would be the perfect place to languish into love, almost unintentionally. I'm sure someone here doesn't find the whole idea exhausting, so stay tuned.

As for me, the only thing I will be searching for for the foreseeable summer is some peace and quiet. And I definitely don't need love for that.