James walked down the street away from the boating dock and the excessive commotion that he couldn’t seem to get far enough away from. He walked down the street passing both the fishing store and the car garage when he stopped before he reached the restaurant. The space between the garage and restaurant was nearly large enough for another building, but trees stood instead of bricks. The tree obscured the view of ocean which made it an uninteresting sight, which is why few people have ever thought to look beyond the cluster of trees to the small beach with a breath-taking view which at that moment he suddenly felt like re-exploring and he hoped that no one would notice how long it would take him to buy the workers their lunch from the diner.

He stealthily made his way over tree roots and under low hanging branches until he emerged out of the small scale woodland to see a young girl at the shore, about 6 feet away, with her body facing sideways towards the water so that she looked over her left shoulder to stare out onto the water. He immediately knew that it was Jennifer sitting in front of him, not only because of her slightly tanned skin, lean and smooth legs, or her naturally colored chestnut brown hair that was blowing off of her shoulders and into her face, but because she was so sentimental, making this one of her favorite and most visited spots.

He remembered her passing her memories of her mother onto him. He remembered that her favorite memories were the ones from whenever her dad was away on business her mom would take her to the restaurant for dinner and for dessert they would order it then come to this spot to eat it while they watched the sunset and told funny stories. He also remembered the way that she looked away when she blushed after saying that her mother always missed her dad a lot because they loved each other so much. He remembered the look on her face when she looked back up towards him, and he remembered putting his arm around her when she talked about the last day that she spent in the hospital, when it was all over. But he mostly remembered that she hadn’t answered any of his calls or text since that day over a week ago.

He took a step towards her and she suddenly turned around and looked up at him, which made her hair whip out of her face to flowing in the wind behind her. She looked up towards him with parted lips, wide eyes and raised eyebrows “Hi” she greeted while she pulled her knees in towards her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

“Hi,” he replied and he began to worry about the sudden awkwardness.

“You can sit down if you want to”

“No thanks, I have to get back to work, I just came back here for a quick break from all of the craziness.”

“Oh,” she said looking down towards the ground then she brought her eyes directly up to meet his again. “I don’t usually do that you know,” he had a confused look on his face from this comment, “cry on someone’s shoulder, I mean. I was a little bit off kilter that day.” While she talked he took two steps towards her so that he was virtually standing right over her and lifted her chin as he got closer so that she could still see his face clearly. “I wasn’t acting like myself, you can forget all about it.”

He bent down and laid his lips on hers and his hand on the nape of her neck. Jennifer let go of her legs and put her hands on either side of he and pushed against the ground in an attempt to get closer to him. After they pulled their lips apart he quietly declared “I never want to forget that day.”