Page 27 of Written in the Oceans

Once we sit back in the car, she meekly gives my driver her address and we drive her home. She sits quietly as she looks out the window with an air of melancholy. Her hair, now an unruly mess from the hillside breeze, makes her look demure. She looked glamorous before in her perfectly done curls but adorable now as her pouty lips twitch with every thought and unspoken word between us.

We pull to a stop in front of her house, a modest home in the Huntington Park area. A beat-up Honda Civic and a dark-colored Lexus sedansit parked in the driveway leading up to a poorly lit stoop and a rustic Welcome sign hanging on the front door.

A small sigh leaves her lips, followed by a twitch of a smile curving at the corners of her mouth. “Thank you for this. I don’t know how to explain, but I really… just, thank you,” she says with a sigh.

“I know. Thank you too,” I respond in understanding. I can’t put it into words either. I just know that what just happened between us was healing. And then, I act on impulse again. I move my hand to hers, covering it with mine, and bring it towards me. She doesn’t resist, instead allows it to happen naturally. I turn her hand in mine as I bring the back of it to my lips. My action is so paltry, so discreet that it feels like it happens in an instant. But I can’t ignore the emptiness I feel when her hand leaves mine.

We don’t say anything else. She turns away from me, smiling softly as she closes the door behind her. Her hips sway side to side as she strains against the height of her heels walking up her driveway. She looks back at me one more time, and I give a small wave. Her eyes are soft with gratitude for the escape I provided us both, even if it was just for the evening. She waves back in return, and I watch as she enters her home.

I tell my driver to head home.

Once inside my big, empty house, I realize how tonight was therapeutic. Instead of walking towards the bar for my usual nightcap to fog my mind, my feet gravitate to my home office. I look at the pile of scripts sitting on my desk that I’ve been avoiding for weeks and flip through the one on top with the titleAurielle. It’s the last script sent to me. A love story about a woman named Aurielle dying of cancer. I would be playing the role of the doting husband in this heartbreaking romance. I sit down and read the whole script, start to finish, enlightened by the passionate marriage shared by this couple that would eventually be ripped apart by the death of the wife. Tragic yet beautiful, with a bittersweet ending. It calls to me, catching my attention and drawing me in as I imagine myself a part of a relationship so meaningful. It pulls emotions out of me that I thought didn’t exist, causing me to mourn over the death of this fictional woman.

Once I finish, the light outside slowly brightening, I slump into my room and strip down before climbing into bed. For the first time in a long time, I feel that maybe I’m no longer sinking. And instead of gasping for air, maybe I’m floating, looking up at the sky with certainty that I might be okay. I drift off into a deep sleep and, for a change, look forward to what the following day will bring me.

FOURTEEN

ELLIE

The following day at work, my mind is a complete fog. Lack of sleep and the disbelief of the night before makes it incredibly hard to focus. It’s almost as if last night was a weird dream where nothing and everything makes sense. The kind of dream that makes you disoriented when you wake up, but as the day progresses, you realize how ridiculous it is of you to actually believe it all happened.

But itwasreal. Every moment of it. It awoke emotions I thought were long gone. Emotions I never knew I could feel again. A smile spreads across my face that comes from my core, where I thought any remnants of elation had been buried long ago. It leaves me delirious and noticeably distracted. At the very least, it keeps me awake.

I continue my workday, stocking shelves with books and ringing customers until I clock out at four p.m. My phone rings right on time with a call from Claire, who knows exactly what time I get off.

“Ellie! What happened last night?!” she screams into my ear.

“Hi, Claire.”

“Don’t you ‘hi, Claire’ me! What were you doing with Rhylan Matthews?”

“We just took a drive,” I try to explain.

“Why do you say that so nonchalantly? You took a drive with Rhylan Matthews, and you say it like you’re telling me you just ordered a blueberry muffin with your caramel macchiato!” she yells into the phone. “What time did you even get home?”

“Um, I think close to three?” I answer sheepishly.

“Three?!” she screeches. “Did you guys, like, make out in the back of his car?” I can practically hear the smile that’s spreading across her face as she asks her ridiculous question.

“No!” I yelp. “Claire, it wasn’t anything like that.” As I say it, I don’t even know if it was true. I spent the better part of the morning thinking about what last night had meant to both myself and Rhylan. The only conclusion I have is that we shared a reparative connection. Something that we didn’t realize we needed but grasped as soon as it was within reach, no matter how ridiculous it felt to have that connection between two people that barely knew each other.

“Okay. So, are you seeing him again?” she urges.

I furrow my brows, considering her question. There’s no indication of a future visit from Rhylan Matthews after last night. I haven’t realized how odd that is until Claire poses the question. “No, I didn’t even get his number. I think… I think we just needed to get away for a moment, that’s all.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You spent the whole night with him, and you didn’t even get his number? What was the point?!” she shrieks into the phone.

I pull the phone away from my ear to drown out the shrill sounds of Claire’s voice, wincing from the sudden change in the tone and volume. My car door clicks, unlocking, before I open the door and slide into the driver’s seat. A high-pitched chugging indicates the engine coming to life before I sit there, letting the car run idle while I finish my conversation with Claire.

“I don’t know. Seriously, I’m not going to see him again. It really wasn’t anything special. He just dropped me off at home at the end of the night,” I explain to her. The cynic, the realist in me, keeps rolling its eyes, telling me to stop living in la-la land, to wake up from my ridiculous daydream. But I can’t ignore the small, itty-bitty whisper of a voice inside my head that keeps saying,What if this is something more?

“Wow, I am just speechless, Ellie.”

“I know,” I whisper, more to myself than to Claire. “I know he’s Rhylan Matthews, and I’m sure he does things like this all the time, but I can’t believe I met him andtalkedto him!”

Claire squeals through the phone like a schoolgirl gushing about her crush before we say our goodbyes.

I drive home, all smiles after my conversation with Claire. I think about Rhylan’s eyes, the darkness that covers them when he’s thinking, reasoning with himself as he fights some internal battle that he’s too considerate to share and too scared to say out loud. I think about how his smile always starts from the corners of his mouth, lifting into a little curve and traveling up to the edges of his eyes. My hand still tingles from when he brought it so gently to his lips only to kiss the soft spot where my thumb and index finger intersect. And I can’t help butsmile.

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