Goodbye.

Two endings, happy and sad. Yep.

 She drifts slowly across the beach, her toes digging into the wet sand. Her skirt floats gently around her ankles in the sea breeze, mimicking the movement of her long black hair. The sun shines off the ocean, making the water sparkle and dance.

 

She stands still a lone figure surrounded by sand and wind and water.

 

She can’t live without him. It’s too much. She loved him, and had done so for two of her sixteen years now. The first year of being in love with him had been heaven, for he’d returned her feelings. But then, something had changed within him, and he ended it between them. Hurt and confused, wanting to be close with him, she remained friends with him for the second year, falling more and more in love with him each day she saw him. Now, the love was too much for her to bear.

 

Slowly moving again, she stepped towards the water, watching it swirl around her sandy feet. Walking forwards, her eyes shut tightly, she whispers, “I love you, Michael.”

 

Ending 1

 

The waves crash against her legs, then her waist, then finally her head. She is grimly amused to discover she is holding her breath. As her mother walks into their house, Abigail Taylor runs out of air. As her mother enters the kitchen, Abigail is breathing water. As her mother reads the final note from her daughter, Abigail’s brain shuts down, leaving the currents to throw her lonely body around like a rag doll.

 

Ending 2

 

The water quickly rises to the level of her chest. She takes a deep breath and is preparing to go under when she hears a distant cry of her name. She looks around and sees a figure running towards her. It’s Michael. She knows she should keep walking, finish what she came here to do, but the tiniest sliver of hope always remains, even in the most depressed of hearts. So she waits, watching as her reason for drowning herself finally arrives in front of her, seeming not to notice the he’s getting soaked.

She says nothing, just gazes at him for what she still thinks is the last time, taking in his dark hair, his tanned sking, green eyes. He is so perfect, it’s no wonder he doesn’t love her.

He says nothing either, but instead he places a finger under her chin and lifts her face up, before leaning in and kissing her.

It could have lasted for a minute, an hour, or a day for all the could tell. They finally pull apart, and she says, “How did you know?”

Smiling slightly, he puts an arm around her and leads her away from what could have been her place of death. “You said ‘goodbye’ this morning instead of ‘see you’ when you left.”

Abigail smiled back at him, glad that he’d noticed such a small difference, as they walked along the beach in each other’s arms.

 

Reviews

[Sasavet]

"She is grimly amused to discover she is holding her breath"

Grimly amused...I LOVE that. Great description. The last sentence of your first ending is great too, very good imagery.