Life.Guard.(3)
A short story. Part 3.
Part 3
Summer lingered, blurring the last days of August and September.
They didn’t hurry. Beautifully hot days followed one another, the sea was perfect, cool, and calm, its wide face smiling with the thousand tiny wrinkles of the waves. Lauren stayed every day and night, only to leave briefly for her clothes. They bought food and water in the nearest mini market, and the tween cashier gladly let them charge their phones while they shopped, blushing every time he saw Sam touching Lauren’s ass or kissing her between the aisles. They touched and teased, but they never went further. The slow uncovering of each other, tasting the sweetness of every kiss was a delicious treat, feeding their idle hours.
They bought some paint, all their favourite colours to paint the shack. Lauren wrote “Loveshack” on it, Sam wrote “Sam+Lauren=❤️”. She laughed, he grabbed her and carried into the shack. They slept through the hottest hours of the midday sun, Sam’s head resting on her chest, his hand touching her soft breast. Every night was party night. They drank wine and danced to French pop music Lauren loved.
“What are they singing?” Sam tried to out-yell the music.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care!” Lauren sang to the tune, weaving her hands around Sam’s neck while their hips swung to the rhythm.
***
“Hey, look at me! Come here!” Lauren said. Sam stood by the window, staring at the sea and smoking. Dark clouds were moving closer from the horizon. The cig shook in his nervous fingers. Lauren had cleared away the pills. Without them, Sam’s old anxieties kicked in.
She got up, took the cig from his hand, embracing him tightly.
“Hey…” Lauren said sympathetically. She didn’t have to say much. Lauren just knew the sea of grief Sam was drowning in. He squeezed her.
“It’s… when me and Ricky were kids…”
“You don’t have to explain, Sam. I’m not your therapist.” She smiled and kissed him.
Sam hadn’t shared much about Ricky.
Back to the start, Sammy! No cheating! He wanted to tell Lauren everything, but he couldn’t. His emotions were still trapped behind an old door nailed shut with a piece of rotten wood and some rusty nails. He wanted to rip all the rot off his soul, to open up to Lauren, and let her in.
“I just want it to stop. Make it stop! The…his voice in my head,” Sam whispered shaking. “It was my fault. It was my fault he died.”
“Hush, hush! It’s okay!” Lauren held him close.
Back to the start, Sammy! No cheating! Hey, Sammy! You cheated! Hey, whatcha doing?! Sammy, you little dickhead! Ricky yelled just before the rock hit his head. Blood splattered, and Ricky fell to the ground.
“I cheated! I really did… he called me names. I loved him but he was always looking down on me… I was angry… I never wanted… he was not the same after the hospital. He couldn’t do math. I will never forgive myself. He died because of me, because all he could do was swim and save people…” Sam didn’t finish, his mumbling ended up as sobbing.
“Hush, Sammy! Please, don’t cry!” Lauren cried with him.
“I want it to stop.”
“Okay, okay, we’ll make it stop, okay? Tonight will be perfect.”
Sam nodded. His breathing calmed down. A slow song sounded on the radio Lauren had brought along with her.
They had danced many times since camping together these two weeks. The heatwave made the air sweet, Sam felt like he had fallen into a dream; he and Lauren spent the days talking nonsense, swimming, sun-bathing, playing football on the beach, eating junk food, drinking their anxieties away with whiskey and wine, dancing to French pop music, ignoring all the phone calls and emails, and making out slowly. Cops hadn’t busted them. The people on the beach ignored them; they probably believed the old shack was sold to the young couple.
“It’s my favourite song,” Lauren said, as they danced slowly holding each other tight. Their rhythm was perfectly aligned. They were close; Sam had never felt this fragile intimacy before, their souls were making love, before their bodies did. Their lips touched, dancing and caressing they moved toward the couch while dark clouds covered the sky; the first autumn storm was coming. People left the beach as quickly as they could.
As the sky got dark, Sam laid Lauren down on the couch softly, they slipped out their clothes and into each other. Beautiful darkness of the storm rolled over the land and into the sea.
“I… I love you…I love you, Sammy.” Lauren trembled weaving around him, and he believed every word, though he suspected she might have said it to many others before. He wanted to believe. They were a perfect storm, swinging with the high waves, roaring with the thunder, showering the surface of each other with kisses.
“I love you,” Sam whispered after their storm had calmed.
The storm outside went on. The rain dripped through the rotten roof.
“You are so beautiful, Sammy,” Lauren caressed his face. He smiled, eyes closed, breathing calmly. He had never felt more alive.
***
When he woke, the storm had calmed completely. Lauren wasn’t lying by his side. Relieved he saw her drinking wine by the window. He loved the little things she did, like how she drank wine from a glass; good thing they bought wine glasses! How she pressed the glass to her chest, lost deep in her thoughts.
“It’s a perfect night, Sammy,” she said smiling at him, grey tears flowed down her cheeks. The sea, the perfectly grey mirror of the sky, waited for the night to drown the daylight in its embrace.
“Lauren…I know we promised, but maybe…”
“When I was younger, I thought a stormy day would be perfect,” Lauren wasn’t listening, overtaken by her memories, “when I first tried to do something. It was here. Since then, I always returned here to try again. Don’t know why. I didn’t think anybody saw me, but they did. The lifeguard pulled me out, then the paramedics grabbed me, we barely made it to the shore. The storm…and the waves were huge… the lifeguard never made it out. I was drunk and high, I must’ve punched him in the head, I think. He just slipped back into the waves… Sammy?”
He laid with his eyes closed. Fate had a rotten sense of humour.
Sam couldn’t think straight. She killed Ricky. And he killed Ricky. Lauren finished what he started. The rock he threw at the age of nine made Ricky unable to become an engineer or a doctor, that’s why he did the one thing he knew well – swam and saved the lives of the drowning.
“Sammy?”
“I always knew my life wasn’t working. Like I was never meant to live. I think it’s true. My life is broken. It’s not going to change, is it?” He said, staring at the ceiling.
“No, it’s not,” she sighed, “after the lifeguard saved me, I went through with the chemo. I had a recession. But now it’s back. Nothing will fix us, Sammy. Broken lives are not worth living. We’re just lying to ourselves, pretending the summer could last forever.”
They walked into the perfect sea, the night approached, dressed in black for the occasion.
“No matter what I do… or how I fight… keep me under water, okay? And I’ll hold you. It will be real pretty, hugging until it’s over,” she said. Then they swam into the deep.
“I am grateful to that guy, the lifeguard. If it wasn’t for him, I would’ve never met you,” Lauren said swimming next to him, “now is perfect, Sammy!” They kissed and submerged, holding each other close.
It was dark. At first, she was calm. Then she began to struggle and fight for a breath. He held her down. Sam felt his own lungs compressing, he saw images flashing before his eyes. No, not the life he had lived, but the life he’ll never have; he saw Lauren dressed in white smiling at him, he saw the wedding they’ll never have, he saw his hand on her round stomach, he heard the laughter of their unborn children, and the footsteps running through the house they will never build. He saw a memory of Ricky not long before he died.
“This is the life, Sammy!” He said sitting on the couch after a long day working as a lifeguard, “I wouldn’t change anything even if I could.” Ricky smiled. Sam hadn’t believed him back then. But now he wanted to believe.
Back to the start, Sammy! Start again! Ricky’s voice said, Sam snapped out of the vision. Lauren had stopped moving. Sam gathered all his strength swimming upward. He dragged both of them out the water. He carried Lauren to the shore. Her lips were deadly cold when he gave her mouth-to-mouth, her chest stayed unmoved while he pressed on it. He performed CPR just like Ricky taught him.
Ricky had taught him well. Lauren coughed taking a breath.
“I’m so sorry…I’m so sorry, I couldn’t let you go…” he kept repeating as he rocked Lauren in his arms. She held onto him and whispered “thank you” again and again. The lighthouse pulsed in the distance like a calm heartbeat.
Epilogue
The heatwave lingered. The day had been hell, and Sam was glad it was over. He stood by the sea. One last thing left to do. The sea was perfect - calm and inviting.
Images flashed before his eyes; Lauren’s devastated eyes when she found out the test results, her face as pale as the sheets of the hospital bed after the double mastectomy, Lauren crying and vomiting all over him that one time she had a nervous breakdown during her chemo…
Sam opened his eyes. It had to be done. He opened the urn and poured the ashes into the sea. She wanted to become the sea all along.
People around him stood in silence, until a tall man walked up and put his hand on Sam’s shoulder.
“You okay, Dad?” he said.
“Give me a minute, Rick.”
Sam inhaled the fresh breeze, closed his eyes; more memories ran through his mind. Lauren’s short hair trimmed with white orchids, she didn’t want to wear a wig on her wedding day, but she was still so beautiful! His hands on her round belly. Baby Ricky, tiny and red, crying in his arms, tears of joy streaming down Sam’s face. Lauren laughing at the two of them clowning by the mirror, dancing in their renovated living room, their vacation in Italy, dancing on their wedding anniversaries, the look in Lauren’s eyes the last time they made love, her calm face after finding out test results, her last smile, her cold hand he tried to keep warm till the end. Even a broken life had been worth living.
“Dad? You okay?” Rick repeated softly. He had Lauren’s eyes.
“I will be,” Sam replied.
Even a broken life is worth living.
Thank you so much for reading!
I rarely comment my stories but I wanted to share the playlist for the story, as cheesy as it may be. Imagine if this story was a film, I know what music I would like to hear in the end credits. The song above would be the theme of the blinking lighthouse.
The next one is Sam’s tune:
This one is obviously Lauren’s theme:
Another one for Sam. Smoking on the beach…
Lauren’s French pop music:
Lauren’s favourite song they danced to before the storm:
That ending was so beautiful 💔
This was a lovely ending. It took me on such a beautiful journey