End Of Summer by David Paul Nixon

The End of Summer

It was the end of summer. I would need to start packing soon. I had left it dangerously close to the last minute because I was reluctant to accept my fate or my future.

My job wasn’t holding me back. They would be letting me go in a few weeks, once the tourists stopped coming. They didn’t need many people in the autumn and I wouldn’t be one of them. University was my future: my ticket out of the village but my place was confirmed in writing only. There was only one thing I really wanted.

Carolyn’s house was conveniently halfway between the post office and mine. I could’ve taken the road, but I preferred to go across the rocks. Down on the beach so small that no one called it a beach, you could see, when standing far back enough, into her bedroom window.

I don’t remember when I met Carolyn; I just remember when I fell in love with her. I was riding along through my adolescence and suddenly I had an epiphany.

But I was always a bit behind everyone else when it came to growing up. I was too timid you see; I was the last in the class to try alcohol, the last to try a cigaretter, the last to play traunt. And as for Carolyn, well, she already had a boyfriend.

I almost told her when she split up with him. I almost told her two Valentines ago. I almost told her when we were driving through the hills at midnight. I actually did tell her two months ago when we were drunk, but she didn’t believe me and didn’t remember.

So I decided to try just one more time.

Amongst the seaweed and pebbles, there was a small blunt-ended stick. I reached into the rock pool, fished it out and then, in the sand, I wrote.

Dear Carolyn, I Love you. I’ve loved you since March 11th 2000. I don’t know why I never told you. There was a never a right time. I always thought that there was something between us, that I didn’t need to say anything, that one day it would just happen. And now I’m going away. Tell me you love me Carolyn and I’ll never leave you.

I wanted to go on. But there was only so much space on the sand. I didn’t know if she would even be able to read it from up there in her room.

I didn’t re-read or alter my confession. I just sat on a rock and waited for the sun to go down.

Every few moments I would look back at the window, crushed each time it remained empty.

The hours went by. I sat still.

The window was still empty.

Eventually the tide came in and washed my words away.

I stood up and threw the stick back into the ocean.

It was time to move on.

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