Free Tear Stained Beaches by Courtney Giardina Page A

blue Gucci dress hugged her figure perfectly. Her personality did not fit the image she tried to portray. She was sweet, bubbly, and level headed. Just the kind of person I needed to be on my side at a time like this.
    It took a lot longer than 15 minutes to reach the front of the line, but I found myself so engrossed in people-watching that the time went quickly. I watched a father hold an ice cream cone up to his little girl. She couldn’t have been more than two. She fought real hard to try and hold it herself, but he stood his ground. Good thing he did, or he may have ended up like the poor mom who watched her son lick his chocolate yogurt right off his cone. He started crying before it hit the ground. She grabbed him and walked away before they became that afternoon’s entertainment.
    What really caught my eye was the young couple at a table just off the boardwalk. They couldn’t take their eyes off one another. They held each other’s hands from across the table. I smiled—thinking about how happy they seemed and remembering those days with Chase. How in love we were, how we wanted to spend every waking minute together. How we couldn’t even get through a meal without wanting to put our hands on each other.
    I wondered if it happened in every relationship. If the honeymoon phase really is just a phase. I wondered at this point how couples lasted fifty years. Maybe it was because my heart was broken and the pain was still raw, but it seemed to me that forever was really just a word in a song. All my friends back home existed in their marriages to keep their socialite status. Chase’s parents divorced when he was young, and hell, every time I turn on E! another celebrity couple is heading for divorce.
    My smile for that young couple faded. I wanted the happiness I saw in them. I wanted to be in love with someone who was truly in love with me. I wanted someone to want to come home to me after work, and miss me when I wasn’t around. Could Chase and I get past this? Did I even want to try and work it out? Would he ever be able to tell me why? I just shook my head. By the time I looked up, it was my turn to order.
    It was the biggest grilled chicken on flatbread I’d ever seen and the taste didn’t disappoint. It was just after four o’clock by the time I finished, and there was plenty of daylight left to explore. I knew a few hours of retail therapy wasn’t going to fix all that had been broken, but it seemed a good place to start. I needed some time to step away from my thoughts and regroup, hoping I would be able to come back to them later and delve every angle of the situation. I had cried enough the last few months—shopping followed by a scenic stroll on the boardwalk, might do me some good.
    It was late evening by the time I returned to my cottage, but like many nights before, I wasn’t ready to go to sleep. I grabbed a wine glass from the cupboard and poured myself some of the Moscato I had picked up on my way home. Since the sun had gone down long ago, I sat on one of the Adirondack chairs on the back deck and watched the waves ascend upon the shore, creating a ripple effect each time they disappeared back into the ocean. The moonlight glistened off the water, and distant shadows sauntered the far end of the beach.
    I sat there for a long time, just thinking. The gentle hissing as the waves drove up to shore was the only sound that echoed. You would have thought I’d get sick of thinking about the same things over and over again, but I couldn’t help it. I played every scenario in my head. Where they met, what she looked like, could I have prevented this? There was just so much to worry about, to wonder about. Did he love her? That would have broken my heart the most. I might have been able to deal with an infatuation, lust, inner struggles to find himself: but not love. I don’t think I could’ve handled it if he really had fallen in love with her.
    Two heavy eyes and an empty bottle of wine later