I caught the answer blowing in the wind. The sea breeze had freedom in it. It let me think, yes, about her. Who else could I think about. She could have let me go softer, but I guess there is no soft way to let anyone go. Maybe if I was a better man I would have seen it coming or perhaps it would have never came at all. It did though and now she was yesterday. Maybe even last week. I don’t know when I stopped feeling time with her but I did. It took months but the beach had helped. Wearing no shoes had helped. The drinking had not helped at all. Time made me agree with her. She had every right to let me go. She might not have known the names or even that there were others but she did know that I was an artist that was not selling. I refused to be anything else. I took no jobs. Not even the fake ones that were offered to me by my parents and their friends. To be a sixty-thousand a year cog in a machine that did nothing but turned by itself.

She wanted me to be a cog but I couldn’t do that for her or to myself. At least I still had Ella, she was my best lover and only friend. I had acquaintances and other people I’d hang about with but they were all broke artist and would only love me till I had success and leave me then. Ella was different she could be my entire world. She had a level head and curved body. Only if she would talk to me.

She’d get over how I reacted to the break up. She had too. She loved me too much. Which I took advantage of, most of the time without knowing. I still did it though and I should feel worse about it even though it already made me miserable. When Mary left me I self destructed even though I was planing to leave her once I could do it softly. Leave her for Ella. That was the truth of it all but somehow it was also a lie.

Mary was my world for the longest time. She made me feel safe and she made me feel like a man. I made her a woman. I wasn’t the first there. Far from it, but I was the first to make her go mad. She could lose herself with me. I hope she finds that again. She deserves to be happy no matter how much I still hate her.

The beach house wasn’t mine. It was my parents. My mother heard about Mary and offered it up to me as a place to go hide away from everything. I got the need to run from things from her. She cleared the house’s calendar of weekend renters: families and teenage boys who pooled their money for a place right on the sand. This place has always felt more like home than anywhere else. I was here all summers, some Christmases, and prom night. In high school I helped redesign it. My girlfriend at the time was hired to do it and since then it’s always reminded me of her. There had been enough time without her to only remember the good times. The times my mother reminded me about. She still loved April, who still did interior design and still talked to mom. I still loved April a bit, but I still loved Mary and all the others too. My heart would never fully give up on any girl it had.

The house itself was beautiful, the rooms looked like they came out of new magazines even though they haven’t been changed in years. That made it comfortable to me. When I lived with my parents things constantly changed and when I lived with Mary we kept getting new things for that house we always dreamed of. I couldn’t stay here forever but I had no place else to go. I didn’t want to move back in with the folks. This was temporary. Maybe Ella would have me. Maybe I should take one of those jobs. That’s what everyone I knew did anyway. Maybe this was my time to give up.

With that thought I took a nap.

#

I woke up to April knocking on the door. I knew my mother had called her.

“Mom sent me, we’re both worried”

She still called my parents mom and dad, still, after six years of being broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Lindsey, just mom and dad to her. Something no one else has done. We knew each other since elementary and went to the same summer camp twice. It wasn’t till high school when we were separated by social constructs of cliques and cliché that we finally got together. I remember us walking around my block. She was wearing a jacket that said money and I was wearing a denim jacket that said poor but cost twice as much. She grabbed me by it and she kissed me first and that’s not how its supposed to work. So I kissed her back hard. That was our first kiss. She’d remind me that I kissed her first on the last day of fifth grade. She was sweet and remembered things like that. I’d argue that it was only on the cheek. She’d have none of that argument and just say it took her almost a decade to kiss me back. She was a good girl, the all American girl type. We were together throughout high school but college tore us apart. Sometimes I still think of winning her back and making her Mrs. Lindsey. This wasn’t one of those times. Maybe I should have answered at least one phone call from mom.

I wanted her to leave. I wanted to drown in more sorrow but for some reason I was happy to see her. She was a head shorter than me with true dirty blonde hair and what my own mother called a fuck-me body. She was my first and she was still the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. Pale blue eyes and secrets I still didn’t know.

“Come to lunch with me.”

I looked at my naked feet and she rolled her eyes before she turned them to the floor looking for my shoes.

“We’ll go to that old ancient place you used to love.”

“It’s closed down.”

“Liar.”

“Why would I lie?”

“It’s your nature, I still eat there.”

She pushed my shoes into my chest with a smirk that made me wish she pushed me onto a bed.

We would be doing shots at a little Mexican place that wouldn’t care about my shoes.

#

After food and a lot of drink, and a walk back to the beach house we slept together. It wasn’t making love and it wasn’t fucking. It was like we picked up somewhere before we left off. We fell asleep together, woke up around seven and had sex again. This time it was sweeter, it was slower, and it made me think of Ella.

We stayed in, had more to drink and each other again. The morning came softly. I woke up first but went back to sleep holding her tight. I woke up again and she was gone. She left a note that called me, sleepy head and not much else other than she had to get to work picking out wall textures and wished she could have taken me and my eye for color.

This wasn’t the first time this had happened and it’ll be joked about and treated like it never happened. That’s what Ella would know. She would know it never happened.

#

My phone rang and it was her. It was Ella. Her voice was soft and sad. I knew she was still hurt and I knew I couldn’t hurt her anymore. I told her I didn’t sleep with April because I couldn’t get my mind off of her. I told her how I loved her more than ever and more than anyone. That I didn’t love anyone else but her. I lied. I lied a lot, but every lie made her happier so I kept telling them. The part of her that wanted to be happy believed them. I would do anything to make her happy, I loved her in that way; that unsustainable way.

“So this is real now, it’ll be us and only us?”

“Yes, I don’t want anyone else, can’t think of anyone else, I’ve tried.”

“Why did you try?”

“Because I thought I lost you, I thought my life was over. I thought I lost my future.”

“I’m your future?”

“You my everything, my only thing, the only thing that matters. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

I washed the smell of April off of me with a long shower and waited for Ella. I wouldn’t know she was here till she knocked on the door. Everything about her was quiet. She even drove a hybrid car That didn’t make a sound when it pulled into your driveway. Some would call her bookish and have every right to make that mistake. She loves to travel, going places, finding new things and fucking. Dear god did she love fucking.