A right turn and five hours of driving found her harbored in the bleak, wintry beauty of Tofino, a town situated on the west coast of Vancouver Island and home to some of the country’s best surfing. Anna didn’t come because she was a fan of the sport. She ended up in Tofino because she needed to feel waves pounding against sandy beaches and water-smoothed boulders. The inner pummeling her emotions sustained craved a counterpart in the natural world.
They found it.
A late-autumn storm teased the wide-open coast the entire day. Anna checked into a bed and breakfast, donned the rain gear she kept in her truck, and drove to the beach to watch the incoming storm front deliberate whether to come ashore and how much wind and rain to unleash. She arrived at dusk, and the darkness outside—of the sky and the water—mirrored her mood perfectly.
She opened a packet of instant cocoa, poured still-hot water from her thermos into her travel mug, and stirred. Gusts of wind thrashed at the truck, rocking it side to side. The windows steamed up, adding to the sensation of being safely held even in the middle of her ongoing internal storm.
Anna pulled out a blanket stashed behind the driver’s seat and covered her legs and lap. Empty cup of cocoa resting on the dashboard, its contents warming her belly, she leaned her head against the door and closed her eyes, relaxing into the syncopated beats of the wind and rain. The thud of waves hitting the ground travelled through the wheels and cab of the truck and into her body. Unleashed nature had a calming effect on her stress level.
Hunger finally drove her back to the warmth of the B and B.
“Hey, where are you?”
Standing in the bed-and-breakfast’s compact bathroom, she read Liam’s text. For a moment, she was tempted to write, “Fucking your uncle.”
Snide Anna rarely showed up, but today she clamored to lash out.
Suki also texted, this one an image from her first ultrasound. “Hi, Grandma!”
Snide Anna stepped aside so one of her more empathetic cohorts could coo over the faint outline of a future human being. The same cohort tugged on Anna’s sleeve and urged her to reconsider a move to Toronto. Snide Anna took back the phone and texted her response, a series of hearts emojis.
Why was she reacting so intensely to Liam’s news that he and someone he’d been in a relationship with were getting together again after months of being broken up?
Because it was she, Anna, who’d been instrumental in his sexual recovery, and she wanted to be the one reaping the benefits of Liam’s re-established virility. Her furniture budget couldn’t take too many repeats of the morning’s activity, but her body could. She liked it when he was tender, and she liked it when he took possession of her body, coaxed her past her comfort levels, and introduced her to ever more pleasurable levels of arousal and desire.
She had grown to trust him. She had grown to trust him enough to be physically, soulfully, naked in his presence.
Hope for a future had linked arms with trust and braided a daisy-chain crown, and that was the source of her anguish. She wanted more time with Liam, in her cottage, in his cottage, at his place in New York, and who knew where else they could go to test mattresses, sex toys, and a sailboat’s seaworthiness.
She held a warm washcloth to her eyes, her hands shaky. Cold water would be better for the puffiness, but she couldn’t manage to throw any more of a dampener at herself. Bed was a relief, morning would give her a fresh perspective, and Liam could continue to wonder where she’d gone.
Putting her feet in the roiling sea the next morning would have been ill advised. Anna did the next best thing. She took to the hot tub on the deck of the charmingly converted turn-of-the-century house. The bite of cold ocean air contrasted in a skin-fully delicious way with the heated water pummeling her legs and back. Another hour or two and a good chunk of the angst she carried in with her would be coaxed out and sent swirling skyward along with the rising steam.
She would do the mature thing and text Liam she was off island—no more, no less. Toweling off, she picked up her phone.
His response was almost immediate. “When will you be back?”
“Not sure.”
“May I join you?”
She hesitated before typing. “No.”
Taking a page from Gaia’s book, Anna spent the day in contemplation. She drove her truck again to the beachhead and braved a short walk that ended in a waist-high tangle of fishing nets, crab pots, and a dead gull. Other shore birds patrolled the area closer to the road, while a few of their brethren attempted flight. The wind was too much even for them.
She rested in her cozy bed, found solace in the hot tub and the quiet of her room, and spoke only when one of the staff asked her meal preferences. On the second morning, she awoke more settled in her body and heart, not missing the fluttery thrum that had accompanied her ever since the day Liam had walked up to her favorite rock and insinuated himself into her life.
A half-smile quirked the side of her mouth. The calendar said it was autumn, winter was up next, but the stirrings of spring were a more accurate reflection of her internal state. She rolled to her side and gazed out the rain-pebbled window.
Her house was a mess. The living room was Pile City. The spare bedroom looked like it had lost a bet to a whirling dervish, and her vision of what it all could look like was hard to find under
