The music slows, a muffled din through the thickened skin of the marquee. A tinkle of metal tags alerts me to Buddy, my best friend’s dog, followed by her new husband.
Tim smiles, his eyes aglow in the silver moonlight. ‘Thought I’d find you out here,’ he says, his words rippling across the dunes on the gentle breeze.
‘Needed to escape the heels.’ I motion to my bare feet, the tips of my toes sunken into the warm sand. My gaze returns to his. ‘I’m surprised you’re allowed out on your own.’
‘Ha. She’s got me on a tight leash,’ he laughs and runs a hand through his dark bushy hair. ‘You okay, Zara?’
The words don’t come. Instead, my thoughts drift to earlier, my heart pounding as I searched the pews for Ollie. I found him at the back of the church with an old friend. While they spoke, I committed every line and every curve of his face to memory. But I took too long and his eyes found mine. Every emotion I’d ever felt splintered through me like shards of glass.
I looked away. Made fists, dug nails into flesh. Composed myself. I couldn’t break, couldn’t crumple. Not yet.
Buddy’s warm tongue brushing across my fingers drags me back to the present. Tim is watching me, eyebrows furrowed and a pained expression on his face. ‘He had to leave, Zara. His father’s been taken to hospital.’
I feel it like a short, sharp blow to the ribs. I had equally dreaded and longed for today. To see Ollie again, even if to close that chapter of my life. We’d been metres from each other. And now he’s gone.
Had the brush of his hand in the chapel been his way of saying goodbye?
I swallow against the lump in my throat. ‘It’s okay.’ But it’s not. And I don’t think it ever will be.
I wait for Tim to leave, but he doesn’t. Instead, he slides a hand into his pocket, and chews on his lip as if ruminating on something he needs to say. It sets of a tingling in my chest. I wish I didn’t still care so much. Wish I had been able to move on.
‘Ollie asked about you before he left.’ He watches me closely. ‘He said to tell you that you looked beautiful. And that he’s sorry for everything.’
The words are bitter sweet. I clasp my trembling fingers into a fist, but it doesn’t stop two years of heartache bursting from within me in a shuddering sob.
‘I can’t do this,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘I’m sorry.’ Then I’m sprinting over the wind-sculpted dunes, towards the shore, tears creating rivulets down my cheeks.
At the water’s edge, I stop. Sea foam laps around my feet, cold against the sun-baked sand, grounding me to the shore. I stare across the ocean; its vastness and tranquillity dampening my turbulent thoughts like a cradling arm wrapped around me.
A burst of laughter in the distance triggers a memory, of Ollie twirling us around in the shallows under these same stars. The memory fades into starlight as Buddy brushes himself against my legs and licks my hand again. I glance behind us at the silhouette on the dunes. Buddy barks as if to say he’ll stand guard for as long as he’s needed.
I return my gaze to the horizon to watch the moonlight skitter across the rippling waves, and wonder what could have been.
This is an extract of a novel I started writing a few years ago that is still in draft format. This scene fitted a picture prompt for the Exeter Writer’s homework
Copyright © 2021 Lottie McKnight. All rights reserved.