The taste of sand was on my tongue when I woke up. Disgusted, laying on my stomach, I felt like shit. The sound of water was around me and I was naked and freezing cold. Where am I? I wondered sleepily, scattered. My eyes opened slightly, and with tired retinas I saw Katya’s house. I wasn’t there, and then a thought struck me.
Am I still on the beach?
I rolled over and through hazy vision saw Katya there laying, naked and soft. I made an effort to open my eyes further, clearing my sight. It still wasn’t perfect, but at least it was better. Her body, remarkable, was covered with sand and goosebumps. We’d fallen asleep here, I remembered. In each others arms. One of us must have slipped away last night in our slumber without even noticing.
We’d had sex, I remembered. FUCK! Fury ripped through me like a bullet through flesh. FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! Scattered as I was, the intensity of my anger brought me up. Freezing, I scanned around for my clothes. They were a little away from me. Warily I got to my feet and went to them. They too were covered in sand, but I didn’t care. I needed warmth. So I shook them a bit and then put them on. I felt so dirty and this just made me madder. FUCK, OWEN! YOU FUCKING IDIOT! I looked at Katya, dead asleep. Cold. What have I done? I thought. I have to get her inside, I knew. Up above were clouds of grey. I have to get her away from the rain, I told myself. So I went to her and knelt by her side. I set one of her arms around my shoulder and grabbed under her other. Mindfully I started to pick her up, so slowly, so angry, and I was interrupted by a murmur. It came from Katya. I stopped pulling her up and looked to her face. Her eyes were opening.
"Katya." I said softly as she saw me. Her pupils grew frenzied.
"Fuck off!" It was barely even speaking, she was just spitting out her words and as mad as I was, they only made things worse. "Get off me!" she barked, probably not even truly awake. Incensed further, Fuck her, I told myself, and laid her down again on the sand. Enraged yet still with a sense of duty, I took her clothes that lay away from her and coerced them over her as much as they would oblige. Not completely protected, but at least she’d be warmer. From her I looked to the sky again. It was only growing grimmer. Greyer. I could virtually see the life draining from it. A tragedy of nature. And I just left. I had to get away.
The house wasn’t locked, so I entered. I washed the sand off me and though still irritated immensely, the hot water on my skin felt nice and for a moment cleansed me. The steam-filled bathroom was like a vacuum. I was immersed in it, and at that time with my foggy mind it felt as if there was no one else in the world. With the mood I was in, that was fine. I let the shower go on for ages, time didn’t exist. All that was important was that I prolong this cleansing feeling. All I knew was as soon as the water stopped, I would regress to the way I’d felt earlier. I didn’t want to feel that way around Katya. Ever.
Eventually though, the water ran cold. The world was beckoning me to return to reality. To seperate myself from freedom and allow the noise of civilization to drown me out again. Turn on. Tune in. Drop out.
And so I was forced out. Drying myself with a towel through the myst. When I left the bathroom, I heard rain. The sound, normally calming to my ears, plagued me. Drip, drip, drip. Shut up. Drip. Stop. Drip. Shut up. And then, a thought.
Katya.
She was still out there being soaked. Instantly I cursed her for not letting me take her in, and then myself for not trying harder. Everything was hell and my mind was too frail to bother dealing with it. I just wanted to be alone and free of worry. But I had responsibilities. I have to go get her, I thought. I have to get her out of the rain. So I went to the door that opened to a carpet of sand. I can’t be fucked doing this, I knew. But I have to. The word ‘responsibility’ was throwing my head in a spin and making me resent the world, and Katya.
And there she was.
In the rain, walking to me, to the house, soaked and sour. Through the storm that was only getting stronger, I could barely see her face. Her eyes though could not be blurred. With a clarity that our surroundings could only wish for, her retinas drilled into mine, all the joy and ecstacy felt last night was gone. Left me in a sweat. What remained was frustration, anger and the knowledge that Katya was still drilling, nearing, as the rain just fell harder.
Shivering and dripping, she approached. As mad as I felt, I tried to feign a welcoming grin to Katya, to maybe lessen her ire. Wearing her underwear, the rest of her clothes wrapped around her, she walked right through me, pushing aside with a word of resentment, she blazed her way into the bathroom. Shit, I thought. I was overrun with emotions I had no capacity to deal with. At this point, depression. My mind ran in circles as I couldn’t stop myself thinking that I may have just ruined everything. The same question I’d asked myself on the beach when I woke reared it’s head and wouldn’t let go. What have I done? What the fuck have I done?
whathaveidone?whathaveidone?whathaveidone?
Alone with these thoughts I was left for what could have been minutes but felt like hours. Stuck in the endless unknown of silence everywhere but inside my brain. The longer and longer Katya stayed in that bathroom just prolonged the anguish and made me more certain that I’d pissed away everything.
Then the storm started raging inside the house.
Like a cyclone, Katya tore out of the bathroom in only a towel. I was taken away in the wind before I even realised the rain, sitting at the kitchen table on the receiving end of a loud, almost hysterical tirade from the girl I loved, I thought.
"Where the fuck were you?" She’d yell and scream and the next thing I’d understand or allow myself to hear was "You left me in the rain!" and though I sorely wanted to, I couldn’t contest her. I attempted to justifiy myself by repeating in my mind that I’d tried to move her, but honestly, I knew I hadn’t tried hard enough. I deserved this. I sat there at her kitchen table, absorbing all her furious words, allowing them to wash over me, fearing that my stupid scatterbrain decisions may have cost me something I loved so dearly.
Her eyes were so incensed, so powerful they could part seas, erupt volcanos, end worlds. Right now, aimed at me, jewels that had once been so beautiful were cutting into me with their sharp edges, like the broken angel figurine, only my pain was all internal. Out in the ocean, I was sinking.
She wanted me to leave. She didn’t want to see my face. The thundering waves were crushing me, calamity grasping at my heart and squeezing it tighter than it had been squeezed in years. Pain personified. Two years ago today. It wasn’t on my mind, but it was in my heart. And with Katya so mad and me so scattered and hurt, I brought up the car. Words fought their way out of me as I tried to hold my tears back. They were welling.
"How will you get home?" It took a few seconds before I could finish, and Katya watched me, permitting me to speak for the first time in her tirade. "All we’ve got is my car."
Silence.
A blank look of frustration formed on her scowling, pale, intense, beautiful face. Resignation in her eyes. She knew I was right. She knew the only way out of here was together. With the bitterness she felt for me, this must have broke her mind. She just stayed silent and walked away to her room. Shortly after, guitar in hand, she left. Disappeared. Gone. Away.
I was left alone. She’d gone out the door and back to the beach. Through all our arguing the rain had ended. Now, looking as she walked along the sand with her Maton, the day wasn’t so bad. Signs indicating that the sun could have a chance of shining.
None of this helped my heart, sadness flowing through my veins. In and out and always in again. I sat there drained. Tears seeped and rolled down my cheeks, but I just couldn’t let go. I couldn’t cry. I’d cried a little the first night here and many times before I met Katya, but now I just couldn’t.
All I wanted to do was write. A poem, a story, anything. About her, about us, about what I was feeling. I ventured to my bag which had found its way into the lounge room. All of my notebooks were in it. I could have written in any of them. Though, this was my breaking point. Coupling with my sorrow was a raging feeling. My fucking poetry book! It was full of poems and there was no way I was going to lose it. All that work, all those thoughts, gone. No way. So I started searching frantically, beginning in the lounge room, looking through the couches, tossing pillows off and making a mess. By the time I was done the room looked like it had been liberated by America. I moved on.
Next was the kitchen. I looked everywhere. Each drawer, the cupboard, inside the microwave. It wasn’t anywhere.
"FUCK!" I screamed as loud as I could and kicked the kitchen counter. Inspection revealed that I’d made a dent in the wood. The hostility surged stronger. "FUCK!" I screamed again, howling into the air like a wolf in the night, lost and hungry in the dark. All alone. "WHERE THE FUCK IS IT?" I screamed again, the thought of all that lost poetry coupled with the rage I’d awoken with was sending me into a spin. All sense and sanity was departing me with haste. Manically I seached through the rest of the house, leaving a mess behind me everywhere I ventured. Then, back in the lounge room where I’d started, I was nearly out of breath, sweating, furious. I’d looked everywhere.
Except Katya’s room.
Without a thought for her privacy I entered. Fuck it. I’d already been there, and I needed to find that poetry. So I went in. And there it was. Sitting on her bedside chest of drawers, closed. I ran to it and lifted it up. Clutching it as tightly as I’d held Katya the night preceding, I imagined. Already that night was fading, the fragments of memory I had originally were quickly evaporating. And before the relief could even truly set in, I exploded. On the first night here, I’d told Katya I didn’t want her reading my poems. I’d told her and she’d said she understood. So why did she have it at her bedside? Why the fuck did she have it?
I felt like storming out to the beach and unloading on her, freeing my fury like she had hers. Though something stopped me. Maybe despite my rage I still didn’t want to hurt her. Maybe I still held hope that I wouldn’t lose her. I don’t know. Anyhow, I didn’t go. Instead I sat myself on her bed and tried to calm. Calming, calming. It wasn’t working. Looking down, resting my poetry notebook on my leg, I opened it, in some vain hope that it would cheer me up. Usually I would never have opened it to the first page, but today my instincts were gone, scattered, so I did. I opened it to the first poem I’d written since I was a young child. A poem of tears and misery.
I’m here for you now.
Instantly my sadness, my anger, my pain, was alleviated. The gesture was so simple, yet the sweetest thing I’d ever seen. All negative feelings I’d held toward Katya today had vacated me. Staring at her writing, smiling, I was fixated on what a wonderful person she was. Flicking to the next page I saw she’d written another note. On the next was another, and so on and so on and so on. Thew notes differed. Some were reassuring like the first, some were comments on the writing, some were criticisms, always constructive, and as I read through each one of them I was filled with pleasure. When I turned to the most recent poem, the last one I’d written before "losing" the notebook, I read it over. The last two lines echoing inside me.
And I got up. The argument we’d had earlier was an afterthought. In it’s place was boundless love. I needed to be near her. To hold her. I left my poetry book on her bed and ran.
Out the front door, bare footed, I felt the wet sand sticking to me, dropping with each step, each step picking up more. The sun was starting come out, and sitting just where the water washes in was Katya, allowing the tide to flow onto her, it’s freshness soothing. She was sitting cross-legged playing her guitar. The sound of it, along with the harmony of her pulled me, and I ran, eyes fixed, until I stopped behind her. Breathless from the running, I watched as she continued playing. Whether she knew I was there or not, I’m not sure. As close as I was, I finally remembered that we weren’t exactly on the rosiest of terms. I was nervous, somewhat scared, but I needed to be with her. Unable to think of anything suitable to say, I simply put my hand on her shoulder, as gently and kindly as I possibly could. I wanted to reassure her the way she’d done for me with her notes. My hand on her, she slowed her strumming, the music quietened down and ever so slightly she turned to see me. Only half her face was visible to me. It was wet with tears. As always, her tears tore at me. With my hand I gently caressed her shoulder, and I spoke the only words I couldn’t think of.
"I’m so sorry."
Her eyes closed, she gradually rested her head on my hand, still crying. She wasn’t angry at me, just as scattered as I was. Under her, I rolled my hand so that her cheek was on my palm. Back on the beach, where we’d woken up, we were resolving. Her head rested on my hand on her shoulder as I lightly knelt beside her. Her guitar slowly grew louder. She was playing a tune I’d never heard before. One that I guessed she’d just come up with whilst I’d been in the house searching. And in the water we were, freshness at our feet, silently together, with a brand new song as our soundtrack.
Then Katya’s dad arrived.