My Greatest Regret: Act II

Her name was Ellie, as I was informed by a rather reliable source. A beautiful name in all aspects. I whispered the name over and over to myself in my head. She was, without a doubt, to be mine - as long as I allowed myself to go for it.

-------------------

I hated the beach. Despised it. Fervently. It was partially that my skin had a bad reaction to salt water back then – but it was mostly that I felt that I had been so many times that I was over it. The same way that I’m over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. A good thing that pops up too frequently can become intolerable, unless it’s Fruit Leather. That stuff never gets old.

Of course, the decision to not enter the water usually results in sticky sand compiling on the body, normally on the backs of the calves. I had decided to wear shoes to the beach that day, apparently for no good reason at all. Also, though I had applied a generous amount of sunscreen to my body, it made no difference at all. It was all absurd, but my level of caring had momentarily dissipated along with the moisture in my body.

We were walking along the edge of water, where the foam builds up in cloudy masses, which sometimes float off when the wind picks up. By we, I mean the good friends and I. Just Jack and Sweeney. I didn’t really care for some of the places we went, but we were tight enough as a group that it didn’t matter what we were doing – we could have fun. We used to pride ourselves on rejecting girls as a necessity. I suppose that we still might share that philosophy, but at that time, we were breaking our own laws, little by little.

I could feel the sun invade my skin cells, forcefully stabbing and evaporating all of the water out of my upper back. I trudged through the thick muck where the waves had just pulled back from, and experienced a shot of icy spray against my right leg as the ocean began to play tricks on me. That was what I disliked most – the contrast between hot and cold. If nature couldn’t decide if it was one or the other, how could a simple human consistently stay true to their attitude? The ocean and sand are divided, but there is that strip where they combine and forget what is true for those fleeting moments. Just as a wave ventures out of the ocean, a human can do something out of the norm in order to achieve satisfaction. Ellie was immersed somewhere in between, in the gray matter. Reaching her would be no easy task.

------------------------------

We crashed at the Ponte Vedra Beach Cabana to rest in the shade for a minute and observe the passer-byes. They say that life’s not a spectator sport, but we could defy that principle for a couple of moments as we laid back on the reclining chairs, facing the beach.

It became a stage. We were just people in the audience, removed from their world and now scrutinizing them behind the safety of the deck. We were untouchable, glimpsing clips of life from frantic humans.

“She is fine.” Sweeney intently gawked in the direction of a particularly attractive girl, who was scampering across the hot sand in a half-hearted effort to catch up with her friends, who had taken her flip-flops. Her arms awkwardly swung from side to side in her public lack of athleticism, and her legs painfully shot up every time her toes weightlessly brushed over the ground. It was altogether sad. I could see where Sweeney was going – she had an above average body. However, she was vastly out of touch with her surroundings. As I pondered, a miniscule sandstorm whipped up around her legs and she began flailing and screaming. Pathetic.

“What do you think, Braden?” Of course, Sweeney was asking me about that mess of a girl. Might as well humor him.

“She’s aight.” The girl promptly tripped over a convenient log of driftwood. I chuckled inside. Practicality is of essence in friendships. As long as he wasn’t going for Ellie.

Jack was quick to find someone suitable to his liking. “Hey,” he said, “down there. You see that group walking by the pier? The one in the middle, with the blue bathing suit.”

The group consisted of five girls, all who, by most standards, could be considered pretty. Jack’s subject was flashy. Her hair was blonde, though I doubt that was her natural color. It was a feigned attempt at some ideal standard she had observed on a fashion billboard, or perhaps in a glamour magazine. All five girls were walking side by side, in a uniform fashion surely adopted from watching fashion models waltz up and down in front of crowds, and there was never enough attention to go around – they were all in a constant power struggle to attain full control over their peers. That girl was a product of the American consumer nation. I bet that if I tried to talk to her, she would feel offended and comment on something vastly irrelevant, like my failure to match clothing. She was dissociated, one who would alienate others and be alienated from truth. Nothing like Ellie.

“So… Braden,” Jack said, drawing his words out, presumably for something unnecessary and dramatic. “See anyone out there? Or are you just going to shut us down again?”

I was right. “Jack,” I began, “No. I don’t see anyone.” She would never descend to the level of these makeup-donning excuses for women. That’s all they were out there – ideal models. They looked good, but they sure didn’t possess anything beyond that. Ellie already knew who she was. She didn’t need reassurance. She wasn’t missing important human characteristics such as consideration and moderation. She had no burning desire for someone to cover up patches in her life; she was individual enough to spring forth and help herself. I wanted to pry into the mind of perfection.

“I have to pee.” I trotted down the boardwalk and down the steps, the around the bend. I was pretending to look for a dune, but in reality, I just wanted to get away for a bit. My mind was congested with thoughts about life – about her and about how it would – could – never happen.

My steps became shorter with every stride. The ground began to move quicker under my feet. The people around me blended into the ocean, the umbrellas, the sand – it didn’t matter. They didn’t exist anymore. I took in a heavy breath of the salty air.

Dead sprint.

Everything was a blur. Nothing was real. My arms pumped faster and faster. The sand began churning upwards. People were looking. Who cares? My adrenaline peaked. The world had become my track. I just kept going and going and going and go-

(wait just one second)

I stopped abruptly. My heart eased its hurried pace. Ellie was there, in all of her glory. She was walking her small, poodle-ish dog, coming in my direction, about 100 yards away. I had two options – run back the way I came, or forward. Behind me was regret, and the prize was in front of me, glittering in the golden evening sun.

Simple perfection.

I would lightly jog forward, but not directly look at her. Nor would I talk to her, or even try to. I would run in her direction, but not so entirely head on that she would question me. I might glance at her to give her a hint. Maybe.

I started to run. She was not far away now. I had about ten seconds to decide my destiny. I ever so slightly veered to the right so that she would not recognize me. Not here. I wasn’t ready to take on this challenge quite yet.

Now she was walking by me. (I think she saw me!) No, the glare in her sunglasses surely reflected my image away. I was safe. No more worry, at least for now. I th-

I heard a barking noise behind me. Oh no. I looked over my shoulder and my stomach flipped over. Ellie’s dog had loosed itself from her grip, and it was chasing the nearest jogger, who conveniently happened to be me.

I tried to pick up my pace to evade my sure doom, but it was useless. It was already nipping at my heels. There was no escape.

I turned around in the hope that Ellie would just grab the leash and walk off.

“I’m so sorry!” She swiftly scampered up to her miniscule dog, which was now sniffing my toes. I guess I had no chance to run now. Bending down to scoop up the growling cotton ball, she fastened the leash. “Sorry! Thanks for helping!”

She stood up. I stopped trying to get away.

“Braden?”

She knew my name? “Yeah – how – sorry, I just wasn’t really expecting to see you, you know, I was running, and I guess I didn’t realize who you were-” She knew my name!

“That’s okay.” Beaming, she leaned back to fix her hair, the sun reflecting off of her gleaming body. It was a sublime moment – I was paralyzed with nervous tension, but struck with deep awe, deep respect. Immense admiration. “In case you didn’t know,” she hesitated for a second, waiting to recollect my attention, “my name’s Elizabeth, but most people that know me just call me Ellie.”

“Oh, I knew,” I said, grinning with an awkward smile. We both laughed, as a cooler breeze began to blow across the beach. To me, this appeared to be the beginning of something great.

-----

We talked for hours - about school, the classes we had together, about life… in all, she had a phenomenal personality. She impressed me with her attention to detail and ability to turn simple things into philosophical questions. I was falling in love with a practical stranger.

Perhaps it was most surprising that she was not contented with her friends. She told me that they acted fake and slutty just to get all of the guys. She was tired of associating with that life. This did me over twice, as I had yet to meet as real as a person as she was in my entire existence. Our mutual admiration grew by the minute, as I shared my issues with my friends being obsessed with those exact fake girls Ellie brought up.

For so long, I had prided logic over emotion, but now it was all emotion. Emotion took over, and formed a bond between Ellie and I. She stunned me with her potent combination of loveliness and intelligence, and I – well, I don’t know what it was about me, but she sure didn’t seem to mind it at all.

Near the end of our conversation, we laid back on the dune and just looked up. All anxious feelings had disappeared long ago. I remember slowly turning my head to the right to gaze at her. She did exactly the same to me. She smiled just a bit, just enough to be noticeable, and something about that action made utterly content. She reached her hand over to mine, and clasped it. Not too firm, just enough so that you could not pull away. Not that I wanted to.

“Don’t you need to get back to your friends eventually?” Ellie’s eyes gently pulled me closer.

“Nah.” I raised my eyebrows and shrugged my shoulders. “I mean, they’ll get by.” I smiled and she reciprocated.

“Well, it was great getting to know you better. I’ll see you in school Monday!” She sat up suddenly, and walked over to her dog, which was fast asleep on the sand.

“Wait a moment,” I said, “Are you-”

“Oh yeah,” she said, “I forgot.” She softly floated over to me and we embraced. It was all one, drawn out motion. Those were the loveliest fifteen seconds of my life. I would not understand this until much later, but that was an I-thou interaction at its finest. The hug was not simply a hug. Gravity, just for that moment, seemed to disorient itself as we swayed back and forth.

I gradually pulled backwards, becoming lost in her eyes and almost falling backwards. I elatedly grinned and said, “I’ll see you later, Ellie!” She happily returned the goodbye, and I began to walk back in the direction of the boardwalk. She was went in the opposite direction. I needed one more glance. I looked back over my shoulder. She, without a doubt, was the most beautiful girl had ever been friends with. Light glimmered around her bronzed skin. We had so quickly transcended the stranger level of relationship to being close friends. It all seemed so odd, but it felt right.

Suddenly, I thought about next weekend. I dodged a biker as I perused what was to come. It was the big school dance. As in the dance where everyone's uncomfortable because no one has a clue what to do. Even though I despised those events, I would have to go just to show her how much I liked her. She had successfully infiltrated my thought process, and I didn’t care. My freedom of choice had been tossed, and now it was all about what we could be together. We shared a dynamic personality, and the capacity of intelligent pondering and doing.

We would conquer the world.