Where the Waves Take You

The wind was always a bad sign.

The air around him was never truly still. It either moved with aggression, purpose, or it slinked around corners reminding him it was still there, still lurking, cunning, powerful. 

On this particular night, it started with an argument and the opening of a door. Papers fell off the small table next to the entrance as he whipped the door shut behind him. It came as a whisper at the back of his neck, barely enough to notice, as he walked outside rolling a cigarette between his fingers. 

It followed with a gust down the sidewalk as he took a drink from his flask, warming him from the inside out. It walked with him and listened as he made his usual way across the park, these walks becoming a routine these days. The breeze was still there later when he woke up in the grass, still dark out, cheeks streaked with dry tears.  A little lick of air lifted the hair lightly off his forehead, like the breath from a child blowing out its birthday candles. It rose now, encircling him with its perfume and politely invited him towards the shore. 

So yeah. The wind was bad news.

It pushed at his back as he stepped off the walkway, stirring the dunes, rattling the wooden fence posts lining the beach. The sand was damp under his boots, shifting, and he walked like something was dragging behind him, but there was nothing there. Just footprints. Just the past.

The tide is coming in, waves reaching higher each time, and the world smells of salt, wet sand, and regret. He wonders how much the sea has already taken. Whole cities buried under water. Cars rusting on the ocean floor. Somewhere, a shipwreck is breaking apart, piece by piece. Wood. Steel. Bone.

He knows the wind has come to collect.

“You really gonna do it, then?”

Salma. 

The voice comes from behind him, from the edge of the dunes where the tall grasses bend low. She looks the same. Dark hair, sharp jaw, the kind of eyes that already know the answers to her questions. She’s the last person he wants to see.

He exhales, long and slow. “You following me now?” he says.

She looks at his path in the sand. “You make it easy.”

She steps down onto the beach, hands stuffed in her coat pockets. He waits for her to say it again, the part where she tells him to stop being an idiot. That he’s better than this. That she can help. But she doesn’t, and he cuts the silence. “Didn’t know you still came out here.”

“Didn’t know you still did either,” she says, stepping down onto the beach. Her boots crunch against the sand, and she stops beside him, just out of reach. “Thought you were gone.”

“Not yet.”

She studies him, arms crossed against the cold. The wind tugs at her hair, wild and dark against the pale glow of the moon. He remembers that hair, remembers it fanned across a pillow, tangled between his fingers, remembers how it smelled a mix of color treatments and perfume.

But that feels so long ago.

“Come back with me,” she says.

He laughs. Not the funny kind. More like air escaping from something punctured. “What for?” he asked, the words catching in his throat.

Salma shrugged. “God, come on let’s go. Better than freezing your ass off out here.”

He shakes his head, eyes on the water. The tide is stretching, always forward. He watches it reach for the shore, endless and insistent. He feels the pull inside himself, his feet turning without instruction. He manages a quiet “you don’t understand.”

Salma is still for a time. Then, “Maybe. So talk to me.”

He turns back, just enough to see her in the dim light. There’s no anger in her face, no judgment. Just that steady, level look she’s always had, like she can see every broken piece of him and hasn’t decided whether to gather them up or let the wind carry them away. 

She tilts her head. “Well?”

His breath catches as she shifts her weight, rubbing her hands together against the cold. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t have a choice,” he says. And it’s true. The wind is in his bones now, around his ribs, filling the hollow places. It has been patient, but it will not wait forever.

Salma lets out a slow breath, looking past him, past the waves. “Yeah, you do.”

The wind surges, curling around them both, lifting the hem of her coat, pressing against his chest. It whispers in a voice only he can hear.

She doesn’t understand.

He swallows and whispers back. “No one does.”

No one ever does.

He notices Salma doesn’t flinch. Maybe she hears it, too. 

She steps closer. Not much, but enough. “Just, come back with me.”

The wind howls. The tide tugs.

He hesitates. Just for a moment.

And then—

He shakes his head.

Salma studies him, then nods in defeat. Hands back in her pockets, she turns toward the dunes, walking slow, her footprints vanishing as the wind sweeps over them.

She doesn’t look back. He watches her until she’s gone. The wind exhales and hums against his cheek, neither cruel nor kind. The tide tugs, patient as ever.

The sky looks on, wide and indifferent. The town behind him still sleeps. A dog barks once, then settles again. The world keeps turning as it always does.

He kneels and the water rushes up to meet him, soaking his legs, wrapping around him like an embrace. He feels the sand beneath his fingers but he cannot grab hold of it. The tide pulls.

And then—silence.

The beach is empty. The wind moves on. If anyone notices, they do not say a word. But the wind knows.

And somewhere, far away, someone makes a choice. A woman watches her front door. A bartender pours a drink. The cycle begins again.

The tide rises. The wind waits.

A deal is made.