Anastasia

Sunscreen

"She would always drag me out to the beach. No matter what day we were both free. In all my life I had live din LA, I never would go to the beach, I would sometime even forget that it existed. She would prepare lunch, bring drinks in the cooler, have everything ready and we would just spend the whole day at the beach away from everyone and everything. She would make me read her favourite books, and thanks to her, even up till this day I'm an avid reader and book collector. You wouldn't think right?" he laughed. 

She smelled like sunscreen and faded perfume when he rested his forehead against her shoulder. Her skin was beginning to tan, new freckles appeared on her nose and forehead every day, as though an artist had painted her face over night and dared him to point out every single new one. Her laughter was pure and genuine and it infected him like a disease, leaving his head spinning and his body numb, his fingertips aching to tuck her hair behind her ear. It was beautiful, he thought, not without noticing the tightness of his windpipe though, the unwavering knowledge that it would all change, what summer did to people. What summer did to her. That it made her reckless. That she became less careful and more daring. That she radiated happiness.
Until she didn't. Until it all faded and the facade crumbled, and the rain came, and with it the storm. Her recklessness became too much, turned into a love for danger, an ache for adrenaline, and she wanted everything - until she wanted too much and wanted it too soon. And he wasn't what she wanted anymore. He wasn't enough anymore. And as much as he wished for his body to stop spinning when his nose picked up scents that reminded him of her, as much as he wished his fingertips would stop aching with the need to touch her hair, brush the strands off her forehead one last time - he knew summer would always be her. And no summer would ever be the same now that she was gone.

94'

He looked at her with his bottom lip drawn in, studying her face whilst taking a sip of the wine they had opened a while ago.
'What is it?' she asked once the silence filled the space between them, soaking their bodies and making her shiver.
He lowered his gaze and sighed.
'Do you want me to be honest? Brutally honest, just once?'
The tone in his voice made her jump,
'If it ever comes down to it,' he started, "we'll just leave." 

"Leave?" she scrunched her eyebrows, confused, as she played with the sand beneath her fingers. 

"Yeah, I mean why not? We can move to London or something." he shrugged and sipped more of the wine.

"London? Why there?" she chuckled.

"I dunno," he smirked, "its different there, I feel like you'd like it." 

"Okay, well, if it all comes down to it we'll move to London." she chuckled, hinting a little bit of sarcasm in her laugh.

"I'm being serious." he put his glass of wine down. 

"Oh shit," she stopped playing with the sand, "Really? You would leave here?"

"Yeah, for you. For us. Just get up an leave. You just gotta say the word." 

"And whats the word?"

"Yellow." 

"Yellow? As in like, the yellow submarine?" 

"Precisely." he smirked.

"Okay, but I'm gonna be really disappointed if you don't whisk me away to London in a yellow submarine while yellow submarine is playing in the background the whole trip there."  she chuckled and took his glass of wine and chugged it. 

--

Those conversations, the way she would touch his arm every time she joked, her skin on his, her eyes looking up at him. It all seemed to be a dream now. There would be even times where he forgot the blue of her eyes. He had to always remind himself that they weren't just blue. One had a faint of green in it, he couldn't remember if it was the right to left, but he did remember how pale they were at times. 

Just like that, he even found himself starting to forget that too. Forget the color of her eyes, then the exact shade of her hair, the way it framed her face

The shape of her lips, the way they pressed against his own, a silent promise beneath the admiration of an evening sunset.

The ghost of his name under her breath, as she took his breath away yet again, as if her entire existence was a miracle.

He couldn't just let himself forget it. Forget her. Forget how smooth her hair felt in-between her fingers as they slept next to each other. The last time he saw her, kissed her, held her in his arms. The last time they laughed together...he remembered it was on the beach 5 days before her death. She had been wearing a white dress, a large cardigan covering the rest of her body as she walked alongside him holding his hand in hers. The bunch of rings she would wear would make sounds as it hit the rings on his fingers and they would joke about the fact that they both needed to ease on the jewellery. She hadn't worn shoes that day, he remembered that much, he remembered her saying how she wanted to feel the sand one last time before the winter winds of LA hit and she would be 'too busy' to come back to the beach again. 

Thinking of her, he made symphonies out of his sadness. He kept thinking to himself, if he had known that was the last time they would've been like that together, that day, what would he have done differently? Would he have held her longer? Kissed her harder? Made her laugh louder?

He just wished he had more time with her;

He wished he could remember exactly how she hugged him;

He wished he could remember how it felt to have his arms around her waist, her head pressed to his  heart;

He wished he could remember the sound of her voice and how she said his name; 

He wished he had taken time to savor her sweet aroma;

He wished time would've frozen still so he could've gazed into her eyes and counted every color, memorized every detail of her face; 

He wished he could replay it all over again so he could go back and remember every bit of her,
because it all went by so fast.

It was all just a blur.

He didn't have time to savor the moment and before he knew it, she was gone. Thats when he realized he would've wanted to say goodbye. And all these years it hurt so much because he never got a chance to. Goodbyes hurt most when you don't get to say them. Because you never knew that you even needed to...

"I think we're done here." 

The voice of the interviewer made him jump and pulled himself out of his thoughts as he lowered down his sunglasses to look at the woman.

"Yeah," he sighed, "I guess we are."