Currents

James stood at the water's edge, where the Caribbean lapped gently against his ankles, and remembered how Elena had looked in that orange sundress the day she'd walked into his life at a corporate conference in Miami. Five years, three months, and seventeen days ago. He'd been running late, rushing to a panel he wasn't prepared to lead, and she'd been the only person in the room who'd laughed at his exhausted joke about middle management being its own form of purgatory.

Now, three weeks after the funeral, he'd finally done what she'd been begging him to do for years: use those accumulated vacation days and come to the beach she'd always talked about. The resort was exactly as she'd described it—impossibly white sand, palm trees that cast impossible shadows at sunset, water so clear it felt dishonest to call it water.

He'd tried running each morning, trying to outrun the dreams where he could still feel her hand in his. But three miles in, his legs would burn and his chest would tighten, and he'd remember that he wasn't running toward anything anymore. Just away from the endless quiet of their apartment.

The bartender at the tiki bar had taken pity on him last night, setting an orange slice in his drink without being asked. "You look like you need something sweet," she'd said, and he'd nearly broken down right there at the counter.

Now he stood in the water, salt stinging his ankles, and thought about how Elena had loved bad puns and how she'd bought ridiculous quantities of oranges from the farmers market even though neither of them particularly liked them. She'd said they looked like little suns, too cheerful to ignore.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small box he'd been carrying since he'd found it in her jewelry drawer—a diamond ring he'd never given her, too practical, too cautious, always waiting for the perfect moment that never seemed to arrive. The waves pushed against him, and he let himself imagine, for just a second, that Elena was somewhere in all that blue, not gone but just dissolved into something larger and more forgiving than the world that had taken her.

He threw the ring as far as he could into the water, and for the first time since the phone call three weeks ago, he didn't feel like running.