They hiked up a steep trail toward the ocean that lay waiting on the other side of the hills. Ethan led the way with Ashley following closely behind him. He was tall and thin and carried a canvas backpack, while she was about a head shorter and had a water flask strapped to her wrist. Though they couldn’t see the ocean yet, they could taste the salt on their lips and hear the muted cry of seagulls in the distance. As they climbed up an uneven stretch of trail, Ashley stubbed her toe on a rock and stumbled forward. “Careful,” Ethan said, catching her by the elbow. “It’s too early to get hurt. We’re not even there yet.” She smiled and took his hand.

It was a cold Tuesday morning and the dirt parking lot had been empty, as had the little grocery store where they stopped for coffee in Point Reyes. There were no visitors to disturb the pristine landscape. Ethan beamed thinking about Ashley seeing the cove for the first time, with its majestic cliffs that were larger than life in his memory. He was glad she would see them deserted and bare, just as they had been during his visits with his mother as a child. He hoped that her sharing in one of his formative experiences would help restore the bond between them, which had started to fray after holding strong for the seven years they had been dating since college. Of late, common ground between them seemed harder and harder to find. 

The fog overhead was starting to clear. The sun shone dimly through the mist, like a marble wrapped in gauze, casting a lunar glow over the hills. Yearning patches of blue sky appeared on the horizon. Ethan kept his eyes on the trail, heeding his own advice to watch for hazardous terrain. He saw the pale moss clinging to the rocks in honeycomb patterns, precisely the color and texture he remembered.

As they neared the top of the hill, they saw the rugged Pacific coastline stretched out before them. Rocks erupted from the shoreline like giant molars, craggy and monolithic. Waves thundered at the base of sheer cliffs, slowly reclaiming the land through insidious erosion. As they descended into the cove, the roar of the waves grew louder and clearer. Black ropes of kelp lay strewn around the beach, taut and shiny like elongated grapes, and crabs skittered about between tide pools. A fish skeleton lay bleaching in the patchy sunlight, picked clean by the ravenous gulls.

When they got down to the sandy beach, Ethan stopped and looked around the cove at the huge rock formations rising from the water and the bluffs that dropped straight into the ocean. They towered above him like pyramids, silent and otherworldly. He caught a glimpse of the wonder he had felt as a child. Looking at Ashley, he searched her face for a flicker of the same emotion. She looked more anxious than amazed, the wind whipping her long strawberry blond hair around her pensive face. Her hazel eyes squinted at the ocean glare, as she looked out past the rocks to where the waves met the blue sky peaking through a curtain of fog. She scanned the horizon as though looking into the future through a crystal ball.

“So what do you think?” he said.

“It’s gorgeous! Just like you described it. I can’t believe there’s no one else here.”

Ethan smiled but felt a twinge of sadness. Even though Ashley was being sincere, he realized that her experience of the beach must be vastly different from his own. This place was just another beach to her, no different from other scenic places they had visited in their time together. She didn’t share his memories of visiting the place with his mother, especially now that she was gone, nor fully understand the significance it had for him. They were looking at the same ocean but saw two different seas. He couldn’t escape seeing this place through the lens of the past, while she seemed preoccupied with the future.

“It’s always quiet like this,” he said. “We’re miles from any town. The water is fifty degrees and full of rip currents. Not exactly a place for sunbathing or swimming.”

Indeed, when he was seven years old, playing too close to the water, Ethan had been swept off his feet by a sneaker wave and nearly carried out to sea. He would have been if his mother had not been so quick to rush in and scoop him up. It was one of the reasons that he remembered the beach so vividly: the taste of saltwater in his mouth as his small body tumbled over and over in the waves, rolling like a log toward oblivion. He should have been horrified by the experience, and yet he wasn’t. To be swallowed by the ocean felt almost natural, like a return to the origins of humanity in the primordial ooze. A little brush with death can open a boy’s eyes. He’d known since then he was not invincible.

They walked down the beach, holding hands and keeping one eye on the mutinous waves. Despite their physical closeness, Ethan couldn’t help feeling that they were miles apart. He had hoped coming here would restore the sense of connection that had been missing. As someone often lost in his own thoughts, he wanted to share his inner world with her. He wanted to find a way to externalize his most persistent memories and dreams, and the beach held the potential to manifest a monumental piece of his psyche into physical reality. Like the time they had watched a sunset together after a rain storm, he craved an aesthetic experience that would bring them closer together and rekindle the bond they once had. He didn’t know exactly when the wall between them had appeared, but it was here now and no less real than the cliffs boxing them into the cove.

It hadn’t always been this way. When they had first gotten to know each other in college, their minds were like radios tuned to the same frequency. They would stay up late talking about their favorite films, books and poetry. When her eyes lit up in the middle of one of those conversations, it felt like he had discovered a new world that was alive and enchanted and unlike the tired and cynical reality around him. It had the same mystery and depth that he found in his early memories of the beach, the ethereal intrigue that he was desperate to reclaim. It was this magical world where he wanted to escape with her from the pain and rejection of ordinary life. Now, looking back, he wondered if this world had been simply a phantom creation of his imagination. Like someone who wakes from the spell of love to discover they are living with a stranger, he felt blinded by wishful thinking into seeing more in her than was actually there.

“Over there,” she said, pointing to a spot about twenty yards down the beach. “What’s that?”

He saw a lump in the sand and at first took it for just another chunk of kelp and seaweed. They walked toward it, and the shape resolved into something rectilinear and man-made. It was a wooden box, half-lodged in the sand and buffed driftwood-smooth by sun and seawater. It had a bronze latch, dented and green from corrosion. Ethan knelt down and shimmied it out of the sand, and water swirled in to fill the small hole it had occupied. He examined the box, turning it upside down, and found a bronze plate stamped with the illegible imprint of its maker. Turning it back over, he popped open the rusty latch with some difficulty and peered inside. 

The box contained two items, an abalone shell and a small silver locket, both covered in sand and seaweed. Ethan took out the shell and held it up to the sunlight. The outside was white with pink striations and seven small holes, while the inside was polished to reveal the iridescent colors of the shell, hazy like the swirls of an oil slick. He put the shell back into the box and picked up the locket, brushing off its salty coating and prying it open with his fingernails. 

The inscription inside read, “Si vis Amari Ama.” [“If you want to be loved, love.”]

“Where do you think it came from?” Ashley wondered.

“No idea,” said Ethan. He scratched his forehead and thought for a moment. “Maybe it’s from an old shipwreck. It belonged to a young woman who was crossing the ocean.”

“Oh yeah?”

  “She was coming home to her lover after traveling to the South Pacific. Just before they made port in San Francisco, a storm blew them off course and they crashed into the rocks offshore here. The shell was a souvenir she was bringing home for him, and the locket was a gift he gave her for the journey. The box sat at the bottom of the ocean for fifty years until it finally washed up on the beach.”

“You have quite the imagination,” she said.

“Where do you think it came from?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it belonged to someone’s dead wife. They were scattering her ashes off the cliffs and threw the box into the ocean with them.”

“I guess we’ll never know,” he shrugged. He reopened the box and pulled out the locket. “Here,” he said, handing it to Ashley. “I want you to have it.”

She looked down at the locket and shook her head. “No, Ethan. I can’t take it.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not ours. It would be weird.”

“It’s not weird. If you can salvage something from the ocean, it’s yours. That’s the law, I think.”

“Maybe someone just left it here, and they’re coming back for it. I really don’t want some creepy locket that we found on the beach.”

Ethan sighed. “I don’t see it that way. It feels like we’re never on the same page anymore.”

“What do you mean?” said Ashley, furrowing her brow.

“It just seems like we see things differently now.”

“I think you’re overreacting. I’m having a great time with you. It’s just a random piece of junk. Leave it here.”

“It’s not junk. I just wanted to give you something to remind you of our being here together.”

“Just forget about it.”

“Fine, I’ll keep it.” He stuffed the jewelry into his pocket and stood up. 

Ethan hated confrontation and didn’t want to spoil their day together. Sullenly, he started walking down the beach again and Ashley followed. She was perplexed by Ethan’s behavior. The wind had picked up and blew in gusts as they walked parallel to the water. Every ten steps or so, the waves lapped under their feet and darkened the sand. Ethan was barely paying attention to the waves as his mind churned and replayed the exchange in his head. He felt suffocated by the tension between them. 

The day had started off in high spirits but had quickly gone south. Their idyllic adventure now felt like a tense standoff. He couldn’t explain the sense of rejection that he felt when Ashley had rebuffed his offer. Gestures that made sense to him no longer seemed to land. Trying to talk about it seemed futile and would only escalate into a bigger argument. He tried to put it out of his mind, as though it were a footprint in the sand quickly erased by the riptide. He turned his attention to the calming effect of the surf. The steady rhythm of the waves felt like an antidote to the elevated beating of his own heart.    

Ashley watched Ethan walking stiffly in front her. Of course, it wasn’t the first time they had ever had a fight. What worried her was that Ethan seemed less and less like himself. She could feel a tension inside him that wasn’t there before, like he was suddenly resisting her when he had once been so open. She went out of her way to give him what she thought he wanted, but instead of bringing them closer together, this only seemed to make him grow more distant by the day. She didn’t know what else to do to stop him from pulling away, beside waiting patiently for his old self to return. 

Such a return to form was inevitable, she thought. It was incomprehensible to her that someone could fundamentally change who they were. Of course, people grow and develop, but how could someone’s essence that forms the basis of enduring love ever really vanish? Surely, Ethan must still be the person that he used to be deep down, cocooned inside the resentments and regrets that had built up over the years. At least that was the hope she clung to. What can you do when person you fell in love with isn’t the same person anymore? You can either learn to love the new person, or decide not to love them at all anymore. The latter idea terrified her.

They came to a rocky bridge in the middle of the beach. It bisected the cove and jutted out fifty yards into the water. The dark gray rocks rose from the sand in crystalline formations and formed a stark contrast to the cerulean sky and cyan sea. The quartz boulders and sandstone cliffs dated back over one hundred twenty million years, well before the last ice age. The oldest rocks, Ethan remembered learning, were one point seven billion years old, a quarter the age of the earth itself. Such unfathomable timescales gave the beach an air of mystery. Countless layers of history lay exposed to the open air here, a cryptic key to epochs of unrecorded time. Looking at the rocks was like gazing into a bottomless well of time. Their lone figures were like tiny specks on a geologic mural.

They began climbing through a crevice in the rocks, which looked like the easiest path to the other side. Even this pathway was accessible only at low tide. Ethan found a foothold and boosted himself up and then held out his hand for Ashley. She hesitated and then took his hand, and he hoisted her up. They stood next to each other for a moment, feeling an immediate sense of relief from the cooperative act. After so much time together, teamwork came naturally and counterbalanced the growing distance they felt. After an pregnant pause looking into each other’s eyes, Ethan turned and continued over the rough path. Small pools of water in the rocks served as a reminder of just how far the water could rise during high seas. Nothing in the cove was safe from the monstrous force of the Pacific. The whole place was fashioned from elements that dwarfed humanity, next to which Ethan and Ashley’s difficulties shrank in comparison. 

On the other side of the immense formations, an even more isolated stretch of land laid before them. The beach was narrower and steeper here, just a thin strip of sand sandwiched between the sandstone cliffs and the white-capped sea. The red cliffs seemed to belong to another planet, as though they had travelled through a wormhole and not just a rocky crevice. It made the events of a few minutes ago seem a million miles away. As they crossed the base of the sandy cliffs, Ethan turned around and looked at Ashley.

“I’m sorry,” he said. The sun shone behind her, silhouetting her form against the indigo sky. Her shadowed face reminded him of the first time they had met in college. He had been invited to a party with some people he barely knew from his economics class. He felt bored and awkward and was ready to leave when she arrived late. The door swung open, and he saw the silhouette of her face against the bright lights in the hallway. Something about her outline, the way her hair draped over her cheeks, immediately caught his attention. It took years between their first encounter and when they started dating, but he never forgot his first glance at her in the hallway. Her profile hadn’t changed after all these years. The spring sunshine brought a touching benevolence to her face, haloing her hair and the curve of her neck, whispering sweet murmurs of desire in his ear. 

“I’m sorry, too,” she said looking down. He stepped closer to her and ran his hand through her hair to the base of her scalp. She turned her face up to him, the irises of her eyes clear and bright in the sun. Then he leaned in and kissed her. Her face grew big and impossibly close, filling his whole field of view. Their lips brushed tentatively at first and then pressed firmly together. He slid his hands over her delicate shoulders and down the back of her slippery nylon jacket to rest on the curve of her hips. He kissed her again, more deeply this time, inhaling the mixture of salt and sweet lip gloss. He could feel her melt into his arms, her body pressed fully against his. He pulled her hair back and kissed her behind the ear and then on the neck and then on the shoulder. They paused and looked at each other again, both surprised by the sudden outburst of passion. She ran her hands over his chest and his stomach. He continued kissing her and slowly unzipped her jacket. He slipped his hand inside her shirt and felt the softness of her bare stomach and then her breast, small and yielding beneath her silky bra. 

Slowly, he backed her against the red sandstone wall. She dug her fingers into his biceps and their kissing became faster and more rhythmic. She put one hand on his crotch and felt him grow firm through his pants, impossibly fast as though he were eighteen. He slipped her nylon jacket off her shoulders, and she eyed him with a flash of embarrassment. They had never had sex in public before and the idea both thrilled and terrified her. Her doubts were swallowed by the intensity of their physical connection. Ethan seemed to focus only on her, as though the landscape around them had blurred and faded away into a void. He was consumed by craving, spurred on by the fantasy of having her exactly the way she was when they first met. Ashley conversely felt excited by the notion that this display of passion meant the were moving past their difficulties and into the future together. The connection between them was electric and intoxicating, though again their motives and perceptions were opposite. The tension of their fight just minutes earlier melted into pure erotic exuberance.

They collapsed together in the sand, Ashley on her back and Ethan straddling her. He pulled her athletic tank top over her head, exposing the pale and sensuous white of her belly. Just as he was pulling the straps over her arms, they heard the muffled voices bouncing off the sandstone walls. Ashley jerked her arms down with a start, covering her exposed bra and stomach. She grabbed her jacket from the sand and hurriedly pulled it back over her shoulders. Ethan rose to his knees and looked behind him to see two hikers coming around the bend, having just clambered over the rock formation. They were still about a hundred yards out and hadn’t seen Ethan and Ashley yet. Ethan reluctantly stood up and pulled his own shirt down and adjusted the waistband of his pants. Then he helped Ashley up off the sand and smoothed her wild and tousled hair. 

As the two hikers approached, they were revealed to be a silver-haired man and woman of retirement age. With their gentle and wizened faces, they could have passed for Ethan’s parents, at least when they were still together and before his mother had passed away. This resemblance contributed to the deep blush on Ashley’s face. They carried walking sticks and wore wide-brimmed hats and hiking boots, almost comically over-prepared for the hike down to the beach, as though they were part of the original Lewis & Clark expedition. Ethan and Ashley awkwardly pretended to be watching some cormorants that had nested in the rocks as the couple passed by with a slight nod. 

When they had disappeared around the bend, Ethan turned to Ashley and kissed her again. He was still throbbing with desire and eager to pick up where they had left off. He felt drunk on the intense arousal and consumed by the urge to bring their physical connection to completion. He tugged at her jacket again, but Ashley pushed him away.

“Are you crazy? They could come back at any minute.”

“I can’t help myself. I want you.”

“I don’t understand. One minute you’re acting cold toward me, the next you’re trying to rip my cloths off on a public beach.”

“Are you saying you weren’t feeling it?”
“I was feeling it, but the moment is ruined now. Let’s just move on.”

Ethan hung his head, feeling the sting of rejection. He knew that Ashley was right and carrying on with two hikers just around the corner and more possibly on the way was reckless and foolish. Yet something in him still craved for her to satisfy his lust and validate his ego. The intimacy they had shared a few moments ago had vanished and been replaced by the frustration of another failed gesture. He felt even worse than he had before the feverish encounter. Not only had his arousal been thwarted, but he began to wonder if Ashley had only been humoring him. His image of her as the mysterious woman he had first known had evaporated and the woman who felt more like a stranger had returned.

Ashley’s face flushed with anger and embarrassment. She was fundamentally modest and hated the thought of being put in a compromising situation, even while the danger excited her. Ethan seemed like more of an enigma to her than ever. His thoughtfulness and predictability were things she had come to appreciate. She couldn’t always tell what he was thinking, but she relied on the stability of his actions. He would always call her at the same time when he was traveling for work and talk to her for an hour. He would always text her in the morning when he was at the office. He would always make soup for her when she was sick. Their routine had never faltered, but she could no longer predict what he would do from one moment to the next. She sensed a restlessness that felt foreign and disturbing. She could only hope that this was a passing phase, a vestibule of uncertainly leading back to the cozy intimacy that she had come to identify with their relationship. A strong blast of wind awoke her from her thoughts, and she realized that she was trembling.

They forged ahead and came to the gaping mouth of a sea cave. The beach branched off with one path leading into the cavern and the other hugging the outer edge of the rock dome that formed the exterior of the cave. The tide had started to rise and hurl waves against the rock wall, making the cave the safer option. As they entered the mouth of the cave, their shadows faded from the sand and their surroundings dimmed until all they could see only the blinding oval of light at the other end of the tunnel. Reality seemed to shift as they crossed the precipice of each new section of the beach. The hollows of the cave amplified the sounds of the ocean, as though they were trapped inside a giant conch shell. Humid air blew over their necks like the slow exhalation of a sleeping giant.

They neared the opposite end of the cave and saw white sea foam brimming over the lip of the cave. The tide had reached its apogee, and tumbling waves swamped the narrow trough that led from the exit of the cave to higher ground on the other side. They stood still and watched the rhythm of the sea filling and emptying the trough at unpredictable intervals. The windows when it was safe to cross were ten seconds at the longest. An error in timing or an offbeat wave could prove fatal.

“What do we do now?” asked Ashley.

“We can try to time it just right, or we can wait for the tide to go down.”

“Or we could just turn around.”

“No, you still haven’t seen the best part.”

“I know you love this place, but I don’t think it worth dying over. I’ve seen enough.”

“Ok, then let’s wait.”

“How long?” she whined.

“This is just like the time in Big Bend. Remember how happy you were once we got to the top?”

Ethan remembered it vividly. They had visited the national park about a year after they started dating, driving out to the remote desert valley after a wedding in El Paso. After hiking a couple hours into the rugged Chisos peaks that towered above the Rio Grande, they had come to a steep stretch of bald rock face that led to the summit. The vertiginous drops on either side and slippery surface had caused Ashley to have a minor panic attack. She pleaded to turn back, but Ethan had reassured her and held her by one hand with his other arm wrapped around her waist. Together, they crossed slowly, taking baby steps and keeping their eyes on the shale surface beneath their feet. When they reached the summit and beheld the breathtaking view across the Chisos Basin into Mexico, Ashley had kissed Ethan and told him that it felt like they could face anything together. They sat on a boulder and gazed contentedly at the late afternoon sun sinking low and casting soothing shadows over the sun-scorched valley. It was the first time that Ethan felt like any boundary between them had dissolved and Ashley had entrusted herself to him completely, wrapped in the blanket of security that only the best relationships provide.

“That was different, but okay.”

They retreated back into the cave, the contours of the walls emerging as their eyes adjusted to the darkness. Salt deposits stained the lower regions, while hardy and defiant moss sprouted a few feet higher. Water dripped from the ceiling and collected in small puddles on the muddy floor. They found a dry flat rock and plunked down, facing in opposite directions. A long silence ensued, while Ashley sipped anxiously from her water bottle and Ethan picked at a shoelace that had become double knotted. The light from either end of the cave barely reached where they sat with their faces shrouded in shadow.

“So how is this different?” said Ethan, breaking the silence.

“I think you’re different,” came Ashley’s disembodied voice.

“I’m still the same person. It’s our relationship that’s changed.”

“But why did it change? I’ve done everything I can to make you happy.”

“You do make me happy.”

“Are you happy now?” she asked.

Ethan stayed silent.

“You know what your problem is?” she said, turning around to face him. Her eyes glinted in the darkness. “You expect people to read your mind. I used to feel like I was able to, but now I don’t have a clue what’s going on inside your head.”

“Yeah, that’s obvious.”

“So why don’t you tell me? When did things change for you?”

“I don’t know. You meet someone. You fall in love. You get comfortable. You fall into a routine. And bit by bit, the routine becomes suffocating. You stop doing things because you want to, and you start doing them because you’re expected to.”

“And what do I expect from you? I let you do whatever you want. I go out of my way to be the perfect girlfriend.”

“You expect everything from me. You expect me to stay the same person I was. You expect us to be together forever. You expect me to say ‘I love you’ three times a day. You expect a commitment and a future.”

“Isn’t that what love is? Wanting to be with someone forever?”

“I think you love the idea of our future  more than you love me. I don’t think you even know who I am anymore. You only care about what I can give you.” 

“I know more than you think. I’ve seen you texting that girl from work. Kate? The young one who’s just out of college?”

“Her? We’re just friends. We make fun of people at work.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re good friends. That’s always how it starts. What does she have that I don’t?”

“You want me to be honest? She’s fun and she gets my jokes. She’s not serious. Everything about this is so goddam serious. I miss the way things used to be.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Ashley got up and stormed off to the far end of the cave. The tide had gone down slightly, but whitewater still raged in the trough between the cave and the rocks on the other side. Ashley hesitated slightly waiting for an opening and then plunged forward, her anger clouding over any sense of fear and driving her forward. She scrambled over the lip of the cave and bounded through the trough with water pooling around her ankles as she felt the suction of the receding wave. Ethan reached the lip of the cave in time to see her clambering up the other side just as a new wave crashed into the beach and filled the trough with colliding whirlpools and hissing spray.

“Ashley!” he shouted after her, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of the waves. “Oh fuck,” he muttered to himself and then jumped down into the trough and scampered across to the other side. He had just made it to the wall when another wave came in faster than expected. It plowed into him with the force of a charging bull, but he clung tightly to the rocks and managed to avoid being sucked out to sea as the memory of childhood trauma flashed before his eyes. The frigid water soaked his clothes and made his teeth chatter and his legs go numb. He collapsed to his knees after climbing out of the trough. No one was there to scoop him up this time. He coughed a few times, salt burning the back of his throat, and rose to his feet.

He could see that Ashley had started up a huge rock formation that stuck out into the water, exactly the one that he had wanted to show her. He remembered sitting at the top with his mother and watching the orange sun descend into the Pacific as they ate strawberries from a roadside stand. They dipped the half-eaten strawberries into a cup of sugar, the juice staining the sugar pink and dissolving it into a slushy mixture. The strawberries frosted with pink sugar were the taste of happiness to Ethan. It was the same dessert that he had brought her after she’d gotten sick and that he’d never eaten again since her funeral last year. The sweetness of that peaceful time and the soft glow of her love couldn’t seem farther away as Ethan stood there with salt stinging his nostrils and the love of his life striding angrily away. 

Ashley didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t know why she had run the gauntlet of the waves instead of turning around and fleeing back to the car. She just knew that she wanted to get away from Ethan. He had taken all her years of caring and tenderness and thrown them back in her face, acting like their relationship was a tedious chore that he could no longer stomach. The thought of his banter with the small and perky girl from work, whom she’d once met at a party, enraged her to the point of nausea. Ashley, not her, had consoled Ethan when his mother died of lung cancer. Ashley, not her, had introduced Ethan to his three favorite bands. Ashley, not her, had celebrated seven birthdays with him. It was affront to her pride to think that even one of their “I love you’s” had been part of a compulsory routine to be cast off for something young and frivolous. She climbed higher on the rock formation, using her hands to steady herself as she navigated the uneven ground.

Ethan lost sight of Ashley as he began scaling the rock formation himself. The terrain was familiar yet strange. Each step seemed to bear him forward into the future and back into the past, vacillating between old memories, bubbling up from his subconscious, and anxious thoughts of what lay ahead for him and Ashley, nagging at him with a growing sense of dread. The jagged quartz, dry and dusty now that he had climbed well above sea level, gleamed white in the noonday sun. From his higher vantage, the wide beach now looked like a thin crescent that tapered off toward the end of the cove. He planted his hands to straddle over a narrow ravine in the rocks. When he looked down, he saw the mesmerizing gradient of the water, green and frothy at the base of the rocks and fading to a deep blue where the bottom dropped off into the bottomless depths of the Pacific. It struck him that even the grandest mountains were mere anthills next to the thirty-five thousand feet deep trenches of the ocean. Finally, he reached a plateau at the top and saw Ashley standing with her back to him, facing out toward the horizon.

From behind, he barely recognized her. Unlike the moment earlier where he saw the familiar form of the woman he had first met, her shape now could have belonged to anyone. He had pictured them sharing a moment of bonding atop the rocks, similar to the ones he had shared with his mother, but he no longer knew what he was doing here. It felt like they had reached the end of the line. What was the goal and purpose of any relationship? He had travelled with her on a road into the unknown. He had seen a glimmer of gold in her eyes and searched for the mother lode that he imagined lay buried within her heart. The reason to stay with someone is the belief that you’ve only scratched the surface, that joint excavation lies ahead, that deeper veins of precious metals and rare gemstones remain hidden beneath strata of sedimentary rock. They had mined together deep and long and unearthed much, but in the end perhaps found only barren limestone in the lowest reaches.

“Ashley,” Ethan shouted over the wind. She didn’t turn around but remained facing the water. He approached her slowly, her body in sharp relief against the ocean which sparkled like diamonds scattered over a blue tarp. He cautiously walked over and stood beside her, looking at her face in profile. Instead of the furrowed brow he expected, a face familiar to him from other fights, her face looked blank and melancholy, like a downcast painting of the madonna in the shimmering light reflected from below, staring at a future suddenly thrown into question. Her hot flash of furor in the cave had been replaced by a cold resignation that sent a chill down the back of Ethan’s neck, her emotions shifting as unpredictably as the currents. “Ashley…” he repeated, gently tapping her on the shoulder.

“You think I’m too serious?” she said, still facing away into the wind.

“No, I think we’re too serious. Everything feels so heavy now.”

She winced. “That’s not fair. All I wanted was to be with you.”

“That’s the problem. I can’t be the only thing you want.”

“And I’ve always been there for you. I was the shoulder you cried on when your mother got sick. And when she died.”

“Right, and now you’re holding it against me.”

“Holding it against you? I can’t say anything good anymore without your twisting my words.”

“So don’t say anything.”

“You know, you’re right. I don’t know who you are anymore. The Ethan I knew was the one who used to write songs for me on my birthday. The one who took me on late night walks so he could kiss me under the stars. Not the one who flirts with a random girl at work or gets mad that I don’t want a locket he found on the beach. Do you even love me anymore?”

He hesitated. She fumed and spun around again the face the ocean, her back turned coldly to him.  Ethan was speechless. He of course knew the right answer, but couldn’t bring himself to utter what had come to seem like a platitude. Words seemed inadequate to bridge the separation between them or convey his conflicted thoughts. He looked down over the edge at the water below, waves crashing against the rocks and creating backwards eddies inside the small lagoon at the base. A green vortex spun round and round as the waves withdrew, sending bolts of spray high into the air as it slapped against edges.

Transfixed by the circular motion, he felt a sense of vertigo and estrangement not only from Ashley but from himself as well. His whole life suddenly seemed like a farce. He had pretended for too long to be the person that Ashley wanted him to be and now felt lost in a sea of disappointed hopes, unable to envision a future with or without her. A tidal swell of loss filled his heart at the thought of the happy child he had once been the last time he had stood here. He had lost his mother, now he was losing Ashley, and somewhere along the way he had lost himself as well. He felt trapped between the rigid land and the formless sea with nowhere to run.

Gazing into the abyss, he began to ruminate on his options, what felt like the only options he had left. He thought about leaping off the cliff and plunging fifty feet straight down into the icy water below, panic gripping his stomach as he dove in free fall and shock consuming his body as seawater filled his lungs and waves battered his bones against the rocks. The thought of suicide was no stranger to him, visiting him frequently in his darker moods, but never had it knocked with such urgency.

Just like when he had been toppled by the wave as a child, the prospect of his own death left him oddly numb and offered no fear or solace in the moment. He longed to do everything over again and reclaim the innocence of the past, a craving that could not be satisfied from the grave. If only there were some way to start over, he thought, he wouldn’t travel so far down a path that had them to this precipice. He wished he could go back in time and undo his regrets, traversing the stages of his own life as though they were the exposed geologic layers of rock spanning all time, naked to see and explore.

Maybe he could start over. Maybe it was the broken promise of his relationship that was the root of all his problems. He looked over at Ashely, her back turned to him as she faced the ocean. He had always thought of her as having pure intentions, but looking now at her slouched posture, he wondered if she hadn’t been manipulating him all these years. In a fit of rage, he felt the urge to push her over the edge and watch her disappear beneath the waves. It would be as though she had never existed, their past and future together undone with a splash that no one would hear. Her death would be quick and untraceable. He could walk away from the beach forever and start life over without having to look her in the eye, to tell her it was over, to deal with the consequences and seething resentment for the rest of his life.

Enthralled by an almost gleeful wickedness, he shifted his weight onto his toes and took a step toward Ashley, delighting in the privacy of his criminal thoughts. Then his eye caught the curve of her bare shoulder, and her vulnerability pried open the grip of anger on his heart. He looked around furtively, as guilt tingled down his spine. Agonizingly, he couldn’t go through with this option either. Contemplating her death was no more comforting than his own.

Oblivious to Ethan’s wild and desperate thoughts, Ashley stood staring out toward the horizon with her arms crossed. She had never felt so alone. She knew she should leave but felt frozen in place, frozen in this moment of crisis. All the signs of their relationship crumbling had been plain to see, but she had somehow ignored them until Ethan threw it all in her face, acting first strangely, and then cruelly toward her. This was how men were — they remained closed off and insisted that everything was fine and they loved you until you pushed them hard enough to force a declaration of hate out of them.

She wanted so badly for it all to work out, for him to be the person she thought he was, that is had blinded her to his obvious metamorphosis. The man she loved and saw through a rosy filter of their college memories together was lost himself and could no longer lead them into the future she had always imagined. Despite the warm midday sun that beat down on them, the ocean breeze felt cold and biting on her exposed arms and she shivered as she contemplated the uncertainty of what lay ahead. The harsh cry of a gull cut through her like a knife. Adulthood was difficult enough to face together, and the prospect of facing it alone made her wince. Even if Ethan wanted her to let go, she wasn’t sure that she could.     

As another wave crashed into the lagoon, a final and fateful idea blossomed in Ethan’s mind. They could make a pact, a final gesture of love and an ultimate answer to her question. They could take each other by the hand, feeling the damp and fragile skin of their palms, and leap together into oblivion with their eyes shut tight against the sun and only the red of their inner eyelids visible as their last earthly sight. They would make a unanimous decision to refuse what the world had offered them and to rebel against the ravages of time on their bodies and souls, to preserve forever in amber the love they had once had.

Their disappearance might make the news and grow into a legend no less part of the beach than the deep-rooted rocks beneath their feet, two quarrelsome lovers taking a leap of faith into eternity together. Something about this gesture of ultimate faith and devotion touched a nerve deep inside Ethan that the thought of ending his own life or Ashley’s could not. Tears stung the corner of his eyes as he pictured them falling in slow motion together into the infinite blue.

Something cracked inside Ethan, like a sheet of rock breaking apart. Beneath the barren limestone bubbled a stream of glowing magma that he had not known existed, another layer yet undiscovered. He felt his heart break for all they had been through and a new feeling emerge of untold tenderness for Ashley. He walked over to her and embraced her from behind and whispered in her ear. She at first grew rigid but then melted into his arms, sensing intrinsically the emotion behind his touch. She didn’t want to soften her body, but it felt like what she desperately need, what they both needed. He rested his chin in the crook of her shoulder.

“Hey,” he said, “I’m back. I don’t know where I’ve been, but I’m back. I want to be here with you. I love you. I mean it.”

She turned her head away. “But that’s not enough. How can I trust you? How can I believe anything after what you said?”

He fished in his pocket and pulled out the locket, its tarnished luster glinting in the sun. Her nostrils flared, “I told you. I don’t want —”  

He put his finger to his lips. Keeping one arm around her he swung his shoulder back and flung the locket off the cliff. He watched it sail, zig zagging slightly in the wind, and hitting the rough water with a minuscule splash. He pictured it sinking below the surface, a last ray of light caressing it before it faded forever back into darkness.

“There,” he said, “that’s everything I said today. And this year. I want to move on. I want to move on with you. Is that enough of an apology?”

“It’ll do,” she said. “For now.”

He laughed out loud. Ashley laughed with him and then choked and sobbed. And then both of them cried, embracing atop the ancient rocks as the wind buffeted their trembling forms.

The End