Love and the Sea and Everything in Between

chapter fifty-seven

Seven o'clock at night is what my phone reads as I pull into the parking lot of Canon Beach. Liz has been awake for a while now and when I turn Gus off, we just sit in the van for a few minutes, watching the ocean in the distance. The moonlight spills through the fog and into the waves, illuminating every fracture of the sea.

I look over at Liz and smile. "Come on," I say, opening my door, I jump out of the van and close my door behind me.

Stripping my shirt off and leaving it on the beach, I walk toward the ocean. The sound of the crashing waves overwhelms me and my heart races against my chest, beating against its prison of flesh and bone.

I hear Liz's feet on the sand as she follows me and I don't turn around because I feel the call of the sea as if it were calling me home. I can't stop myself. The cold air wisps across my exposed chest, sending goosebumps dancing across my skin, and I ignore the biting chill. The wind picks up and in the distance I see the silhouette of Haystack Rock, a long shadow cast across the ocean and the shore as they might. My hair flies with the wind, wild and unrestrained, subject to the currents of the atmosphere around me.

I don't stop when my feet hit the icy waves and I keep walking, deeper and deeper, further and further until the water is up to my chest and I'm swimming. It's dangerous, I know, but I don't care.

I let the waves wash over me and I hear Liz splashing behind me so I turn around to see her swimming up. Her teeth chatter, but she's smiling.

"You do know we are neither sea creatures, nor nocturnal creatures, right?"

I grin. "We are what we are."

She laughs. The moonlight shines almost perfectly down on her, illuminating every flawless feature.

"You are so beautiful," I say, tucking the loose strands of her hair behind her ears. I swim in the brilliant blue of her eyes, lost at sea, lost in her.

She smiles gently at me, her lips trembling with every shiver of her body.

"I want to be honest with you, Liz."

She furrows her brow at me.

"Can we do that? Can we just lay it all down and be who we are, no holds barred?"

"Yes," she says, pressing her hand to my cheek, wiping away a drip of water as it trails down the side of my face.

"I'm afraid, Liz."

"Afraid of what?"

"That I won't be good enough for you. That I won't be good enough for our kid. That I'll relapse and hurt you or myself. I want to be good enough, Liz. I want to give you the life you deserve."

"Oh, Adam," she whispers. "You have always been – and will always be – more than good enough for me. Neither of us is perfect and we'll make mistakes – lots of them – but we'll learn from them. We'll fight and we'll have our good days and our bad days, but we'll never stop loving each other because a love like ours doesn't just fade away. It's timeless and it endures because that's who we are." She rests her arms on my shoulders and toys with the hair at the nape of my neck, twirling it around her fingers. "So don't ever be afraid that you're not good enough for me because I'll tell you right now that you are. And don't ever stop being honest with me because the moment that you do is when a wall grows between us and I don't want there to be any walls. I want all of you, every part, forever."

"Promise?" I whisper. We're a breath away from each other now.

"Promise," she whispers back.

I smile at her. "I have something for you." I reach into my pocket and pull it out. I hold it between us, watching the way the moonlight shimmers across the golden band. The diamond sparkles like starlight between us and her eyes widen. Her mouth drops open slightly, but she doesn't say anything.

"My mom gave this to me when I left for college. She told me that I would find someone, someday, who would matter to me more deeply than a person ever has before," I say, staring down at the ring. "I have found my someone and I have found my someday." I pause, inhaling the salty air. "Liz, will you marry me?"

"Yes," she whispers. "Forever and always."

I lean into her, wrapping my arms around her, pulling her soul to mine and we kiss under the light of a billion suns.

I hear everything all at once as the world spins without us. She is the sea and I am the shore, lost in her depths once more. We sway with every wave and we exist within the currents of the wind and of the sea. We are hopelessly lost in each other as the stars sing their song around us and the wind carves its path across the deep blue sky and the fog buries itself in the sea. We exist above it all.

We are the ocean in a breath.

We are endless.

THE END

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