Sundays II

Let’s grow old together…
Here with a short story from the Canadian writer Val B Russel.
                                     Waves

They rose extra early to get a head start on the weekend traffic. They had made this easter trek, just the two of them, every year since 1976 to celebrate the first day they met. He'd been out with some buddies tearing up and down the coast in a souped up jalopy, looking for trouble and  excitement. She'd been staying with a friend, helping her nurse a broken heart. Soon their lives would be altered forever.

The surf was particularly rough that day, the swift waves kissing the
dock in front of her friend's beach house. She had always been bewitched by the rhythmic violence of the sea and after feeling electrified by the sound she ignored the warnings to keep off the beach. When she got outside the thunder clouds were rolling their brutal gray mass across the sky. Everything was vibrant and alive, tempting her to explore the dangerous  beauty of the water. At first she was able to run away when the waves teased her legs with a heavy watery claw, but when she decided to make her way back to the house after one last dance with her salt water partner,  she was slammed down onto the rocks. She struggled to get to her feet but
her ankle was twisted and clearly broken.

He'd seen her from the road, the menacing waves pulling her toward a  salt water grave. If no one ran to grab her back she would be taken for sure. He yelled for his friends and pointed before taking off down the rocks, reaching her at the same moment a bolt of lightning struck the dock nearby. The rain felt pounded on them as he carried her up to the house. They were both shivering from the cold of the water and fear. Her ankle was indeed broken and although though he didn't even know her name he followed the ambulance to the hospital to make sure she was okay. When
they released her three hours later with a cast and some crutches he
treated her to coffee and they fell in love.

This Easter they didn't come alone, they brought along an unwelcome
companion who had entered their lives recently; the brain tumor that would kill him in a year. The doctors had said words like "inoperable" and  "malignant," suggesting he should get his affairs in order and perhaps try  some new experimental drugs that were showing promise. Instead, they had  sold their house and bought an old bungalow not far from the spot where he
had saved her life thirty five years before. It was the same spot where he'd kissed her for the first time and also where he'd proposed. It would be the same spot where she would throw his ashes exactly one year later, unable to save him from the wave of cancer that would sweep him away to his own salt water grave.

THE END
by valbrussel