The Boy

Ella could still picture his face. Soft and round and pale, with eyes as blue as the sky and hair so dark it was like the bottom of the sea. She could still see the contours of his muscled body, wet with seawater dripping off him and onto the sand.

People said he came from the sea, and Ella could almost believe it. There'd been something ethereal about him, something magical, and it felt like more than just the feelings of romance and love he'd swept her up into. Something about his eyes, or his skin, or the way he'd come out of nowhere and vanished into thin air, the time between filling up ninety spaces on her calendar. Ninety days of her life had been given away to him, and despite the ache of his absence, she would never want those ninety days back.

Oh, what memories he brought. Stolen kisses in the night, under the shadow of her bedroom window, her parents asleep on the other side of her wall. His velvet voice whispering sweetly in her ear, conjuring dreams of paradises where they could be alone together for the rest of their days. A soft hand pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear. He was the best and worst thing that ever happened to her.

She remembered the day they met. He'd come out of the waves, the sun glaring off his wet skin, and it had been like love at first sight. She'd never seen him before, but when their eyes met, it was as if she'd known him her whole life. They walked to meet each other like old friends. They shared ice cream at the local cafe, hers chocolate and his strawberry. At one point, as they ate and talked and laughed, he'd leaned over and swiped chocolate syrup off her lip. The touch sent a zip through her, a feeling of desire so strong she thought she might explode then and there. It was then that she asked him for his phone number. It was then that he said he didn't have one.

Somehow, they still managed to get together. Every day, after school, she'd find him, whether perched on the hood of her car or on a wet rock at the beach, and they'd talk. They'd talk of many things. Events at school, the latest movies, their tastes in music, everything new friends might talk about. They went together like a puzzle, perfectly crafted for each other. She knew it and felt it every moment that she was with him.

And their first date. Their first real one. She'd driven a new Camaro she'd gotten for her sixteenth birthday, had taken him to see a new movie and, later, for a sushi dinner at an Asian place in a nearby town. It was that night that she asked him how old he was; she'd not seen him at school. "Seventeen," he'd said, and followed up saying he went to another school in another town, and that was why they didn't see each other in the halls. She drove him home, listening to him belting out whatever came on the radio, his voice the most beautiful one she'd ever heard. On the porch that evening, he'd given her her first kiss, soft and tender under the yellow light of her porch.

From then on, they were no longer friends, but lovers. He'd begun to steal away in the night to see her, to spin tales to her about fairy tale romances that she believed would someday be theirs, to kiss her for as long as he wanted. When he greeted her after school he only gave her quick pecks, but when they were alone the kisses became long and hungry, and each time he touched her it was like an electric shock to her very soul.

Once school let out, they spent their days swimming in the sea, their nights talking about their dreams. He played with her hair as she spoke of stories she made up in her head, of faraway lands with folk heroes and beautiful princesses, as they both listened to the distant roar of the sea. "She's powerful," he said to her. "The ocean is beautiful and powerful, just like you." He began to trace kisses down her neck, and that was the end of it. She gave herself to him, and it was like it was always meant to be.

The next day, he was gone, and he never returned.

He took with him a lot of things. Pieces of her. Her childhood, the color and music she'd once seen in everything, the bright parts of her life. He left behind a gray ache that lay deep in her chest, in the pits of her heart. She thought at first she might never love again, and she was partly right. She'd never love the same way again, but eventually she did get married to a well-mannered boy named Micheal, who had a sharp, angular face, and deep brown eyes and sandy blond hair. He was the very opposite of the boy she loved, the boy whose name she never knew, the boy who had come out of the sea.

She wasn't mad. Despite how he'd disappeared with no warning, right after taking her flower, she wasn't mad. Not at him, not at herself, not even at the world. Some part of her knew she should've been, told her he'd played on her naive teenage heart, but she couldn't bring herself to be mad. All she felt when she thought of him was love. Not regret - love.