George Nicholson had, always, been a guy with a plan. Nothing was meant to happen on a whim in his life.
As his last year of university loomed in the distance, George put together a plan to spend summer at his home town of Lakebay with his two best...
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In the dim light of the parking lot Leah was standing. She must have been there for a while. She didn't move and neither did I. At least we remained that way for a long time. People were leaving the bar and others were just arriving.
I was the first to make a step. I walked toward Leah in small steps. My eyes never left her as she stood there. She was wearing a white floor length dress. Her sun-kissed skin contrasted the white of her dress as her long brown hair danced in the soft breeze.
I stood right before her, our eyes meeting in silence. Leah looked tired and sad. My hand wanted to reach out to her, to touch her face and make the sadness in her eyes disappear. But, I didn't move and neither did she. We just stood there watching each other. She looked at me through her long lashes, the depth of her honey eyes pulled at my heart and I wished that the conversation we had this morning didn't happen because I really wanted to pull her to me. I wanted to breathe in her vanilla scent and kiss her until the sorrow in her eyes vanished.
I watched her hand twitch by her side, as if she was thinking and feeling the same as me. It was like she, too, wanted to pull me to her and to make the memory from this morning become obsolete.
When the silence became too heavy for the both of us to carry, I decided to break it.
"Hi!" a small word came out of me and my own voice felt like a stranger to my own ears.
"Hi!" she said in a small voice.
"Do you want to walk?" I asked her.
Leah nodded and we started walking. We walked toward the nearby beach. We were silent all the way there. I could feel Leah's eyes on me from time to time, but I didn't look at her. My eyes were glued to the road ahead of us. The journey to the beach felt heavier than it should be.
We got to the beach after a few minutes of walking. After we settled down on the sand, I decided to send a message to Cole to tell him about my whereabouts. I didn't want them to be worried about me.
"I am sorry." Leah said, her words were laced with sadness. The sound of the waves meeting the shores filled the silence around us.
I put my phone back in my pocket and looked at Leah. Her eyes were filled with unshed tears. The street lights from the boulevard reflected on her face, she looked broken and defeated. In the three weeks that I have known Leah I have never seen her like this. Not even when she had a fight with her mother. The weight of what she was carrying must have been weighting her down.
"I know." I managed to say, as I felt this lump in my throat. When Leah heard my voice she broke down crying. I instantly pulled her to me and hugged her tight. I kissed the top of her head and moved my hand up and down her back in an attempt to soothe and calm her down.
Leah, eventually, calmed down. We didn't talk for a moment. The only thing we could hear was the sound of the ocean and people's chatter not too far from where we were.
