John

John

           Lying back on the cool blanket John quickly placed down on the sand seconds before Emma, laughing, and tipsy from champagne, plops down hard on her back. “Wow! Look at those stars! They are really shining bright. I could gaze at these stars all night.” “Although,” Emma grins sheepishly, looking at John, “there is no comparison.” John’s guttural laugh is almost washed away by the roar of the tide inching closer and closer to the entwining couple. “Today was perfect,” continued Emma, absently pushing John’s invading hands from navigating home. “This is the best ending to what will be the beginning of many endings to come.” John pulls Emma closer, snuggling his face into the back of the neck, under her mass of wavy sun-kissed brown hair. 

           Holding out her slender left arm toward the sky, Emma rotates her hand back and forth giggling. “John! Stop, honey, look.” she pouts, nudging him with her elbow. Which do you think is biggest and brightest sparkle in the sky tonight? When John doesn’t respond, Emma lowers her hand dipping it in and out of the sand watching it fall through her manicured nails. She continues the silence and can tell by his breathing that he has slipped into a light sleep.  Feeling wide awake, Emma sits up with her arms stretched behind her, feeling the breeze off the waves flowing through her hair. Caught in the reverie of the evening, mingling with friends, family, sun, and champagne, Emma hasn’t really had time to fully catch up with the events of the day. Today has been one of the happiest days of my life, Emma tells herself. However, she feels a melancholy settling in her heart looking down on John’s kind face. She reaches to touch the ripple of hair that forever falls in front of his big brown eyes, noting the feminine curl to his eyelashes, which alight his eyes with pleasure and darken when passionate. 

           Very rarely has she ever seen John angry. Naturally affable, John doesn’t take too much to heart, which attracts most people to him. He has a great group of friends and an adoring family. Having graduated from an Ivy League school, John easily settled in as a lawyer in his family firm. If Emma is really honest with herself, marrying into this family will have her secure for life. Emma didn’t come from security. She has worked hard for everything she has achieved in life. Her mother worked awfully hard to be present and also provide Emma with the necessary tools to care for herself. She didn’t grow up with a huge, gorgeous beach house allowing carefree summers. Not that any of his family wealth made a difference to either one of them.  Family and friends had come to celebrate Emma earning her Master’s Degree, and out of nowhere, John got down on his knees, in the hot sand, and just opened a box. 

           Typical John style, feeling that everything just falls into place, the natural progression of life. Emma had just graduated high school when she met John. It was her 18^th birthday, and she and her friends came to this very spot on the beach. At the time, John was entering Law school that fall and was spending the whole summer at the beach. They met late August, summer was almost over, but for them the day seemed to encompass the entirety of their world. They talked on the beach, talked swimming in the ocean, and talked while others were talking to them, only seeing each other that day. She told of her dreams to become a writer, and he told of his love of the Law. He told her how he felt like a cliché sometimes, entering the family business, doing his “duty.” Except, he insisted that was his true calling, his dream, and he held onto that wave and never let go. He also wants to give back to a world in which he has achieved his dreams so easily. That day ended with them watching the sunset and gazing up to the stars, swapping dreams and falling in-love.      

           Emma didn’t see John after that summer day, they had exchanged numbers and while they thought of each other, exciting new things were happening in their lives. However, it must have been fate, as it were, the same group of friends came together to enjoy a break from their hectic schedules and Emma and John reunited once again at the same spot on the beach. Moreover, they managed to keep the flame lit, conscious of watching how long the proverbial candle burned between meetings. The intermittent summers grew their relationship from lovers to best-friends, and best-friends to lovers. Nobody was surprised when John proposed on that summer day, no one but Emma.  Getting down on his knees in the hot sand, John surmised they were as bright as two stars in the sky and their shine would burn for eternity. Emma thought, as she looked at all the happy faces, how this was her graduation party. John has already interned his first year at the Law Firm, she hadn’t even decided on where to begin her career path, hoping to have the summer to relax before interning as a grown-up. Now marriage. While Emma walked around the party celebrating her graduation, she duly thanked everyone attending congratulating her on her engagement. She went through the party in a daze, thinking, can life really just be this simple? It feels like one of the novels she’s explicated in Grad school, where the girl with nothing tempts fate but fate has a way of collecting her dues. 

           Emma looks down at the young face lying next to her, stroking his cheek, she smiles and kisses his hands. Tickling his stomach, Emma says, “Chance, how many times am I going to retell the story of how your Dad, and I met?” Chance inches closer to Emma on the blanket she, minutes before, had quickly laid down on the sand before her rambunctious son landed hard on his back. They both lie gazing up at the sky, searching the grid for the star they named for John for his Birthday. “Happy Birthday Dad.” Chance, the 7-year old son of John and Emma, with tears pooling around his eyes, says with the sentiments of a boy trying to be as brave as his Dad. Emma and Chance gaze at the star in a silent salute to husband and father who has passed on one-year ago. “Did you really question marrying Dad?” Chance asks with boyish naiveté waiting for its well-worn answer. “I fell in love with your father the first time I met him on the beach after high school. The night he proposed was the second happiest day of my life. Squeezing his hand, she smiles and says playfully, “you were the first and marrying Daddy was the first.” Emma paused and said thoughtfully, “I never had one regret in my life, you have only one life, and your Dad taught me to grasp hold and ride the wave to the shore, just as he did.  Our favorite place was here, lying on the beach and watching the stars together, and now he’ll be watching us back.”