Reclaiming the Sand

by A. Meredith Walters

  We went through the house, making sure lights were turned off, and windows were locked. Ten minutes later we were dragging our suitcases out to the car.

  Flynn had a system of stacking the suitcases that was more akin to Tetris. So I left him to it. I put Murphy in the car and got him situated on the back seat.

  “You ready to go to the beach?” I asked the dog, kissing the top of his head. He licked my cheek and I laughed.

  Flynn got into the driver’s side and pulled out a sheet of paper, placing it on the center console. Sandbridge Beach is three hundred and forty-three miles away. It will take us five hours and fifteen minutes,” Flynn said.

  “Depending on traffic,” I interjected.

  Flynn frowned but otherwise ignored my comment.

  “We will stop in one hour and fifty-one minutes in Lexington, Virginia to get something to eat,” Flynn continued.

  “Okay, sounds good. Let’s do this!” I clapped my hands together and Flynn finally smiled.

  “Okay. Let’s go,” he said and started driving down the hill toward the road. Flynn loved to drive. He was a horrible passenger so it was easier letting him behind the wheel. Sure, he drove like he was a seventy year old granddad, but it was a small price to pay to see his smile.

  He would listen to his music over and over again. Even though it drove me a little nuts listening to The Cure on repeat, he enjoyed it so I never said anything. It kept him calm. So I’d suck up my Cure aversion and deal with it.

  Murphy laid happily on the back seat as Flynn navigated us through town and toward the highway. He had planned our route down to the smallest detail. He knew exactly how many miles until we hit different points on our journey. He also gave me an expected weather report for Sandbridge Beach. Apparently it was going to be sunny in in the low fifties both days. Not exactly suitable beach weather, but nothing could dampen my excitement.

  “We’re going to the beach,” Flynn said happily after he had gotten onto the highway, albeit slowly. I had never seen him drive on the interstate before and I was more than a little worried at how he would handle the chaotic drivers and loud tractor-trailers. But he handled it better than I did. By this point I would have flipped off the driver behind me and yelled obscenities at the biker who had screamed passed us.

  I grinned. “We’re going to the beach,” I repeated, hardly able to believe it.

  We passed the time alternating between comfortable silence and random conversation. We discussed the many alternating story lines on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which he still watched obsessively, until we drove into Virginia.

  My stomach did a backflip. My entire life had been spent within the boundaries of West Virginia. I had only traveled outside the Wellsburg city limits when I had been taken to Mt. Hope after being remanded to the juvenile detention facility there.

  I held my breath until we drove passed the Welcome to Virginia sign as though any moment I’d wake up and this would all have been a dream. I was terrified that I’d find myself shivering under my thin blankets in my crappy apartment. Flynn, the beach, college, everything, would be an elaborate fantasy created in my delusional subconscious.

  “Why are you making that noise?” Flynn asked me, interrupting my mildly insane thoughts.

  I laughed. “I wasn’t aware I was making a noise,” I said.

  “Yeah, it sounds like humming.”

  I looked out the window as cars and trees and farms flashed in and out of view. Virginia didn’t look a whole lot different than West Virginia so far. Which was both comforting and disappointing.

  “I guess I do that sometimes,” I answered.

  “You used to do that in English class. I hated it,” Flynn informed me.

  If anyone else had said something like that to me, I would have been insulted. I would have gotten angry. I would have made sure that they regretted saying anything at all.

  But Flynn didn’t mean to be rude. He didn’t think twice before voicing a thought after it entered his head. He had absolutely no filter. He didn’t know how to. It was exhilarating to be around someone who had no trouble saying what everyone else thought but was too scared to say.

  “I won’t do it then,” I said.

  “I don’t mind you doing it now. It doesn’t bother me. It bothered me then. But you weren’t very nice a lot of the time,” Flynn responded. I looked over at him, sitting rigid in his seat, his hands curled tightly around the steering wheel, his eyes trained on the road ahead of him.

  I sighed. “No I wasn’t. I was pretty awful,” I agreed.

  “Why were you like that? You were my friend. You would come to my house and watch television and eat my mom’s banana bread. You said you liked me. Then you would call me names at school. You let your friends hit me. You watched them when they pushed me in the stream. It sucked.” His voice was deceptively flat. I knew that those particular memories had to make him angry.

  Hell, they made me angry. Angry with the person I had been and the things I had done and allowed to be done to him.

  “I was an ignorant, selfish, and shallow person, Flynn. I hated myself so much that I didn’t know how to be kind to anyone,” I found myself saying, not sure he could understand the truth I had just revealed.

  Flynn gnawed on his bottom lip. “You weren’t stupid. You were really smart. And you were nice sometimes,” he said as though trying to make me feel better, though I knew in reality he was only stating the facts as he saw them.

  “I was mean to you a lot. I’m more sorry than you could ever know. You didn’t deserve that,” I said. I thought about the ways I had hurt him that he wasn’t even aware of. The heaviness of the truth weighed down on my shoulders and I knew I should tell him what I had done. The guilt threatened to eat me alive.

  But I couldn’t. Not now. I was terrified he’d tell me to leave. That he’d never talk to me again. But I was just as terrified that he’d forgive me as he had done so many times before.

  I wasn’t sure I could stomach that. I knew I hadn’t earned his forgiveness and I didn’t think I ever would.

  Murphy poked his head up between the seats and sniffed my face. I scratched the back of his head. “I bought another Aqua Teen Hunger Force notebook. I still have it. It has a bunch of my drawings in it. It’s my favorite one. Maybe I could show it to you when we get back,” Flynn commented.

  It took me several minutes to understand why he was telling me this. What was so significant about an Aqua Teen Hunger Force notebook?

  Then I remembered.

  I had gotten him an Aqua Teen Hunger Force notebook for his birthday. I didn’t have a whole lot of my own money back then. I had stolen money from my foster mom’s purse to buy it. She had slapped me in the face for that later and I remember having to wear heavy makeup to cover the bruise. But it had been worth it. I had been able to buy Flynn something for his birthday that I was certain he’d love.

  And then I had given it to him. After that I had told him I wouldn’t be his friend anymore.

  I had always been my own worse enemy. I could never let myself be happy. So I wrecked the only thing that I had ever felt excited about. Flynn and his friendship and watching him draw.

  He had thrown the notebook I had taken a beating for into the stream and then he had run away. What he didn’t know was I had fished it out of the stream and taken it home, laying it across the radiator to dry.

  After that I used it as a journal. It was the only thing I took with me to juvie.

  I looked over at Flynn and knew how badly I had hurt him. I had hated myself for the way I treated him, even then. I had destroyed our friendship for what?

  Because I didn’t want to admit how much I cared for the school freak?

  Because I couldn’t trust my emotions around him? Because being numb was easier than feeling anything at all. Feelings brought pain and I had had enough pain for one lifetime.

  Or was it because I was young and stupid and destined to push everyone away?

  Every reason sucked beca
use it had been a coward’s way out.

  That had been a turning point for me. And not in a positive way. I had walked home from stomping on Flynn’s heart with a new layer of ice encasing me. I had hardened myself. Shut off and shut down. And that’s the way I had stayed until a few months ago when Flynn walked into JAC’s and back into my life.

  And he had gotten another Aqua Teen Hunger Force notebook. I knew exactly what he was trying to tell me by revealing that.

  Flynn couldn’t tell me he loved me. He couldn’t put into words the way he felt. But saying things like that told me everything I needed to know. That he cared about me. That he valued me. He valued us.

  “I’d love to see it,” I said, my voice catching.

  We were quiet for a long time after that, listening to the endless loop of The Cure’s Wish album. The two of us lost in memories that were too painful to share.

  “Are you hungry?” Flynn asked a little while later. I noticed we were getting close to our first stop and Murphy was beginning to get antsy in the back seat.

  “I could eat,” I said just as my stomach growled.

  Flynn gave me a shy and gentle smile. “That was funny,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

  We laughed together. Mine low and raspy. Flynn’s stilted and harsh. Sounds that didn’t seem to fit but somehow merged in a perfect fluidity.

  Flynn pulled into the rest stop. It was relatively empty. I got out of the car and retrieved Murphy’s leash from the glove compartment. Flynn popped the trunk and pulled out a small cooler he had packed before we left.

  We walked over to a picnic table situated in the middle of a small clump of trees. It was chilly and brusque but the air was refreshing.

  “I’ll walk Murphy, you set out lunch,” I suggested. Flynn nodded and I wandered away with his dog, letting him do his business.

  When Murphy was finished I walked back over to the table to find a sandwich, a bag of chips and a soda. I tied Murphy up to the leg of the bench and sat down.

  “Thanks,” I said, picking up my sandwich and taking a bite. It was turkey and bacon, my favorite.

  “You remembered,” I said.

  “I remember everything about you. Even the stuff I wish I could forget,” he said simply and that popped my happy bubble with the weight of an age-old guilt. This time his honesty only served to remind me of the thousand ways I had failed him.

  We sat in silence while we ate. When we were finished, Flynn made sure he collected every piece of trash and disposed of it. There was no time to sit and relax; it was back to the car. Flynn’s allotted time for lunch was over and we needed to get back on the road.

  “How long do you plan to stay in Wellsburg?” I asked Flynn a little while later when I couldn’t handle the sounds of The Cure any longer.

  “It’s my home. I hadn’t planned on leaving,” Flynn said, surprising me.

  “You want to stay there? Why? Wellsburg sucks! There has to be a million other places you’d rather be!” I was horrified by his answer. Now that I was making tangible plans for the future, my biggest goal was to get away from my hometown before it sucked me dry.

  With Flynn’s encouragement, I had started to dream about going to school. Of building a life far, far away.

  But how could I do that if Flynn stayed? How could I leave him now that we had found each other again?

  And more importantly how could I entertain the idea of a forever with this man if our goals and dreams took us in totally different directions?

  “But what if I leave?” I asked quietly, hating how sad and vulnerable I sounded but knowing he’d never make me feel bad about it. He’d never use it against me.

  “Then you’d leave. And I’d be there when you felt like coming back,” Flynn said flatly. Reading him was difficult at the best of times and especially now when I wanted so desperately to understand what he was thinking.

  I tried not to get angry by his blasé attitude. I fought the bitterness that pushed me to lash out. How could he be so comfortable with the idea of us being apart? How could he let me leave with no thought of fighting?

  Because Flynn wasn’t the type to fight. Not in the way I’d expect him to.

  But that’s not to say he wouldn’t fight for me in the only way he could. With support and quiet understanding and complete and total reassurance.

  I just couldn’t help but feel like there was an expiration date on our relationship and that made me furious.

  “That’s it?” I asked a little louder than was warranted for the close quarters.

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand?” Flynn asked, sounding confused.

  “So you’re okay with me leaving? For me to live my life without you?” I demanded.

  Flynn gripped the steering wheel tightly. I saw him start to work on his bottom lip with his teeth.

  “No. I don’t want you to leave me. But you hate Wellsburg. You want to go to college. I’ve already been to college. I can’t go with you. That should make you happy. Not angry. Why are you angry?” He was trying to work out why I was so upset. And in turn, I was upsetting him.

  “I’m angry because I want you to come with me! I want you to be there if I decide to do this! I don’t want to leave you behind, Flynn!”

  Flynn didn’t say anything in response to my outburst. The silence stretched between us. I had hoped he’d see how much I cared about him. How much I wanted to share my life with him. How I had planned for a future that included him in every possible way.

  It seemed I had only succeeded in freaking him out. He was rubbing his hands on the steering wheel. He was gnawing on his lip to the point he was drawing blood.

  “Flynn” I began but he cut me off.

  “Don’t say anything, Ellie. Just leave me alone,” he snapped.

  Well just great! So much for the perfect getaway. My inability to censor myself had always gotten me into trouble.

  Some things never change.

  Flynn was quiet for almost forty-five minutes. We had just merged onto the I-64 outside of Lexington when he finally spoke.

  “We’ll stop at the next rest area. Murphy needs to go to the bathroom,” he said, as though we hadn’t just spent the last hour in complete silence.

  “Flynn…I really think we should” I started but once again I was cut off.

  “I’m hungry too. I brought some chips and fruit. We can eat some when we get there.”

  Okay.

  Obviously talking about our future wasn’t going to happen. I was frustrated. Aside from the possible physical distance between us, how would we ever be able to survive if we couldn’t communicate? If every time I brought something up that Flynn found to be unpleasant, he’d shut me down?

  I was definitely not a talker. I tended to bottle shit up as much as the next messed up person. But I also knew that you had to talk about stuff. As hard as it was. And even though I had spent most of my life doing the exact opposite, I was now ready to try to do things the right way.

  Murphy started to whimper in the backseat. I knew he was most likely picking up on the tension in the car. Hell, I’d start whimpering if I didn’t get out of there.

  Flynn turned up the volume on the radio and I wanted to bang my head against the dashboard. Whiny singing was not the way to sooth my jangled nerves.

  Finally we pulled into the rest stop and I practically jumped out of the car. I needed some space before I said something I’d regret. I didn’t handle rejection and hurt feelings well. The urge to hurt him as he had just unknowingly hurt me was overwhelming.

  “Don’t you want to eat?” Flynn called out as I walked toward the restrooms.

  “No! I just need a minute!” I said, not looking at him.

  I went into the bathroom, barely noticing the disgusting smell, and splashed some water on my face and looked at my reflection in the mirror.

  What was wrong with me?

  I knew better than to put unrealistic expectations on Flynn. He would never be able to live up to them. But I had hope
d when we started this thing between us that there would be an us at the end of it all.

  I had been counting on it.

  And now I was beginning to realize that was something I may not be able to rely on.

  It was like waking up on Christmas morning to find out that Santa hadn’t been there and was actually just your parents who had been too drunk to remember to buy you any presents (my childhood didn’t lend itself to any positive metaphors). It was soul shattering.

  I took several deep breaths and tried to calm myself down.

  This wasn’t Flynn’s fault. He couldn’t help who he was. He was settled and comfortable. I couldn’t expect him to uproot and follow me wherever I ended up. He needed consistency and normalcy.

  He needed roots.

  And I was the last person in the world to give them to him.

  How did you reconcile yourself with the knowledge that your life and the life of the man you loved were never going to follow the same path?

  I patted my face dry with a paper towel. I needed to focus on this weekend and being with Flynn. I had to trust that everything would sort itself out and we would make it work.

  Failure wasn’t an option when it came to Flynn and me.

  I left the restroom and joined Flynn over by the tree line while Murphy sniffed the ground.

  “Did you go to the bathroom? Do you feel better now?” Flynn asked and I grimaced.

  “Flynn, you don’t ask people that stuff, come on,” I corrected.

  “Come on where?” he asked and I shook my head.

  “Never mind,” I muttered, watching Murphy as he bounded after a squirrel.

  A few minutes later, Flynn consulted his watch and deemed it was time for us to get back on the road. He had calculated it should take us another three and a half hours and he planned for us to get to Sandbridge by dinnertime. He was inflexible about his schedule.

  Before I could get in the car, still feeling despondent and low, Flynn reached out and took my hand. I startled at the contact. He tucked his fingers between mine and gave me a shy smile.

  “I’m glad I’m going to the beach with you,” he said softly.