Free Figment by Elizabeth Woods

it.”
    “Ah. Right.” He took up his portfolio. “I’ll just have to throw pebbles at your window when I need to reach you.” He hopped off the wall and headed down the sidewalk, reciting, “‘From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life.’”
    A bell tinkled faintly, and Davis pushed open the door of the grocery. He crossed the street and displayed the contents of a brimming brown bag. “Look, French bread and cheese and strawberries and champagne. So much better than chips and chocolate bars.” He looked after Oliver’s retreating back. “Who was that?”
    “Our savior.” I climbed off the wall and took Davis’s hand. “Come on, Romeo.”
    “After you, Juliet.” He raised my hand to his lips, and we went into the park.
    * * *
    I grinned at Davis the next morning as we sat across from each other on the rocking train. “I’m so excited about the beach.” I grabbed for my overstuffed tote bag, which was about to topple off the seat, and crammed my towel back inside. “I can’t believe I’m even wearing a bathing suit in England.” I didn’t say that I was still feeling a little self-conscious about the scars on my abdomen. I’d stuffed one of my father’s button-down shirts into the bag that morning to use as a cover-up.
    The train car was flooded with sunlight and filled with other weekenders, all going out to Brighton, I assumed, like us. Outside, the endless London suburbs were giving way to picturesque English countryside—gently rolling pastures, big woolly cows standing in knee-high grass. We’d gotten bold since Oliver started covering for me. This was the first time I’d been out of London since we arrived.
    Davis thumbed through his phone, then held it up for me to see. “It’s not like Florida or anything.”
    I squinted at the photo of some people in jeans and T-shirts lying on a brownish beach. “Is it rocks? Where’s the sand?”
    Davis read the text below the photo. “Yeah, it’s little pebbles, not sand. Like Maine. They’re calling it ‘shingle.’”
    “That’s okay.” I smiled at my beautiful boyfriend. He looked like a blond Adonis this morning, with the sun shining silver on his bright hair. “Nothing matters except that I’m with you.”
    I leaned across the little table between us to kiss him, then noticed a nun across the aisle sending me an odd look. I smiled at her sweetly and let my lips linger on Davis’s before settling back in my seat.
    “You’re bad.” Davis grinned at me. The nun was looking pointedly out the window.
    “That’s why we’re so good together. Oh, we’re here!” brighton , read the blue and white sign on the approaching station.
    We gathered our bags and followed the crowd to the platform and then out to the street. Everyone was piling into black cabs waiting at the curb, so we followed.
    The beach was stone, we found, and brown, like the picture, with choppy waves sending spray up onto the beach. The air was filled with the pungent ocean smell of saltwater and rotting seaweed and, faintly, of French fries, from the beach cafés just beyond the shoreline. People lay spread out on blankets, wearing bathing suits and sweatshirts, eating from plastic takeout containers, talking. Wet children ran up and down in the shallow surf, wielding buckets and shovels like small wild-eyed Vikings.
    I shivered, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “It’s cold!” The brisk air raised gooseflesh on my arms.
    “Here.” Davis spread out our blanket on an empty patch of shingle, stripped down to his T-shirt and swim trunks, and pulled his sweatshirt from his backpack. He worked it over my head as if I were a child.
    “Better?”
    “Much.” I hugged the sweatshirt around me and smiled at him. “Let’s check out the water.”
    We threaded our way through the assorted blankets and towels to the waterline. The shingle became rough sand here, washing up big floating clumps of dark seaweed. The