Eucalyptus & Honey |H.S.|

Chapter 44 - You Bring Blue Lights to Dreams

My feet were burning.

Hot sand shoved its way between my toes with each step, and the sensation was oddly comforting in its familiarity.

Water lapped up, brushing against the sand just below my feet, and as the tide pulled back, my eyes followed it up into the horizon.

A smile immediately formed on my face when I saw Harry swimming leisurely in the ocean about 100 yards away from me.

We were at the beach. The beach he first brought me to all those months ago. Our beach.

Harry's wet curls flopped into his eyes, but he didn't seem to notice as his face lit up in with a smile. He brought his palm up to his mouth, pressing his lips against it, and swung his arm out towards me as he blew me a kiss. He looked beautiful. Fucking breathtaking. As bright as the sun and the moon and the stars combined.

It was perfect. The faint sound of seagulls in the distance. The warm sand beneath my feet. The soft breeze pressing against my skin. Harry, with his big, dimpled smile.

It should've been perfect.

But something was off. Wrong.

I could feel it in every breath that filled my lungs and every heartbeat that pumped blood through my body.

"Stevie!" Harry called, but his voice sounded so distant, it was difficult to make out any other sounds besides my own name.

"What?" I responded, hoping his words would come out clearer this time.

"Stevie!" he repeated, and despite the fact that I could still see his lips moving, it was as though no sound was coming out at all. As though he was allowing the words to get swallowed up by the air like a whisper. But the confusion on his face told me that wasn't the case.

"I can't hear you!" I screamed back, taking an automatic step forward to ensure that he could at least hear me. Only, my feet didn't move at all. I remained in the same exact spot.

"Stevie! Please!" he yelled again, voice growing in strength and desperation.

A rising bubble of panic was beginning to fill my throat, and I rapidly glanced between my feet and Harry. He needed me. I could feel it as viscerally as I could feel the sand between my toes. Harry needed me. But I was stuck.

"Wait!" I said, voice coming out just as desperately as Harry's as I pulled on my leg, hoping it would budge even a fraction. "Wait, I'm coming! I promise, I'm coming!"

When I glanced up at Harry, he had seemed to be attempting to swim towards me, but with every wave, he was only pushed further back. Tears burned the back of my eyes as my chest ached with a painfully familiar sort of anxiety.

With each step I attempted to take towards the water that was nearly lapping at my ankles, my feet seemed to sink deeper. Like the quicksand we had all learned to fear as children that had never proved to be a problem until this very moment.

"Stevie!" he yelled, his voice more and more distant with each passing moment.

Hot tears spilled down my cheeks as I had fallen to my knees and desperately attempted to scoop the sand away from my feet to free myself. But nothing was working as the sand covered my calves, and then up to my knees. My fingers painfully clawed at the sand, praying for an escape that I knew would never come as Harry's pleas became the only thing filling my ears.

"Harry!" My voice cracked on his name, and I was sure he could no longer hear me. My voice swallowed by the wind just as his had been.

"Please!" Somehow, Harry's own voice had become clear as day. Like a megaphone was being held directly up to my ear. The pain in his voice killed me. It didn't hold the same terror that mine did. It was filled with hurt. Betrayal. Betrayal that I stood here and watched as he was pulled further and further away.