Sand beneath my love

"I regret leaving you."

The ocean waves that had bubbled onto our feet softened at the sound of my confession. I dug my toes into the dampened sand and squeezed them towards the bottom of my feet. I watched the waves pull away from us in a regretful way. I curled my toes between the wetness, squeezing in between each digit, and I held them that way for a few seconds before I released the tension and let them come straight again.

I stared at the mound where the sand covered my polished toes and couldn't bear to look anywhere else. The tide was dying, pulling itself farther away from me, us, sitting on its shore.

"Okay."

None of this was okay. The sun was dying in front of us, spreading the bleeding shades of purple and orange across the horizon. My stomach did that thing where it clenched with anxiety or excitement as I stared at the timers in front of me. It was running out, all of it, and part of me hated that I spoke in the first place. We could've moved on with mutual, pained discomfort instead of tearing open a wound that had barely healed. But I had come back and ripped us open with a few simple words.

I sank my palms into the sand that supported all of the weight I felt. The guilt and fear piled on top of me with an unforgiving weight that only pushed me further into the sand. The give beneath me made me nervous, and I had the passing thought that I wished there had been concreate below us.

"Okay?" I took a deep breath and brought my stare from my toes to his face.

"Yeah, okay."

I sighed and couldn't help but stare at his lips and eyes and the cheeks I pinched. He was so familiar and so mine that it seemed impossible to think that he wasn't anymore. I loved him, and I came all of this way for him to say, okay?

"I thought you'd say something else."

My voice trailed off, giving him the chance to speak, but he didn't take it.

Seconds seemed to pass faster than I knew what to do with them. I waited for an inhale or fidget to push him over the edge, but he was unmoving, unwavering.

I continued on against the silence. "I thought that when I left, I was doing it for you." He didn't meet my gaze this time, and I glanced at his toes now shoved beneath the sand. My eyes traced his side profile with a longingness that I only ever felt for the disease I had succumbed to. "I thought that I'd be able to come back, and you'd be there ready to forgive me again."

His head turned with such a sharpness I imagined him rubbing his neck from the whiplash. "How could you expect that?"

There was a pain in his voice that I knew too well. It cracked with a childish pitch and ignited every moment where I had felt the same. The moment I realized my mother forgot my fourteenth birthday. The day I rear-ended my neighbor. The night I shattered a bottle in front of his feet and passed out on the floor. Guilt and fear and anger swirled together and created a special type of sound that could crush the heart of anyone it faced, and I knew then my heart split.

"I don't know, but I know I was wrong."

"That's easy to say now after it's already done."

"I know, but that doesn't mean it isn't true." I paused for a moment, a wave of shame passing through me. "I'm sorry."

The two words came out on a choked breath, and I knew that they meant nothing to him.

I'm sorry wouldn't fix my absence.

I'm sorry wouldn't take back the years I spent denying I needed help.

I'm sorry did nothing to erase the pain and shame I had brought onto him for his entire life.

"You were supposed to be my mom, and you left."

I couldn't hide the tears that had welled in my eyes, and I couldn't stop the mucus in my throat and nose that echoed as I sniffled. This was worse than anything I had ever felt. Not the recovery, not the relapsing, not giving birth. I would do all of that again, the right way, if it meant I would never make him feel this way.

"I know."

I clenched my toes under the sand once more and stared out to the horizon. The sun seemed to be falling, sparing me a few more natural moments of light before this would be over. Melancholy washed over me as I turned to face him once more.

"You know, I brought you to this beach for your first birthday." Tears had drawn squiggled paths down his cheeks as he stared straight ahead. "I set up a blanket just for you and me, and I made us little pb sandwiches."

I cleared my throat and quickly blinked back tears as he sniffled.

"And I remember I took them out of this tiny pink cooler I had, and I realized that you had never had peanut butter before." I stopped for a moment and took a heavy breath. The weight of the moment brought a prickling sensation to my eyes that I couldn't shake. "And I was so scared to give it to you, but I did."

I swallowed and rushed to keep going, worried he would stop me from continuing.

"I did, and I stared at you like a seagull waiting to take the sandwich."

My laughter was strained as his cheeks pulled into a faint, pained smile.

"And after all that waiting and fear, you were fine." I turned back to the setting sun. "Everything was fine."

My love for the beach was the same as my love for him. That type of adoration had always existed, and even when there were floods and tsunamis, I loved it all the same. Sitting in the dying day, it became clear he never loved the beach as much as I did.

I pulled my toes from the sand and faced him entirely. I stared at the one thing I created and the most important thing I had lost. I replayed every second where life was just fine, and I hadn't fucked everything up. There wasn't addiction or alcohol or gambling or sex. It was just me and him.

His face looked just like mine for god sake. Smile lines I hadn't been a part of, small curls around his ears and the nape of his neck. Every minute detail had formed without me. He was supposed to be the one thing I never left behind. I was gifted the face of myself without an ounce of the horrible man who had left me with an unknown future. Leo was supposed to be mine, and I gave him up for nothing but the thrill of basking in selfishness.

"My love."

My frown quivered as I brought my hand to his cheek.

I knew then as the sun set and his toes unfurled from the sand beneath us that he was gone. I felt it in the resolve in his jaw, the way he didn't soften under my touch. His rigidity killed the last piece of me that was alive. The last selfish thing I ever did was linger a moment longer. I dragged my thumb across his cheek and up to his hair. I begged my palm to remember the feeling of his face and the smell of the ocean with only the two of us on its shore.

And with a final blink and tear I brought my hand back to the sand and stared back at the fading sun. I listened to the tenderness of the waves that had pulled away and kept my eyes closed, ignoring the shift of sand beside me and the shuffle of footsteps fading with the light.

I didn't expect him to stay, and I didn't hope for him to forgive me. I knew that I had done everything wrong, and I knew coming back would only stand to hurt us both, but I couldn't help it. He was mine, and I couldn't help taking one more moment with him.

Just us on the shore, watching the dying light and waves, pushing and pulling. My only hope was that one day the tide would come back in.