Bitten

This took her breath away. The sun was hot on her back, the pale grains of sand rough under the soles of her feet as the cool water lapped at her toes. She could barely believe that just a few days ago, this wave had been over the other side of the world and the droplets of water had found its way here without the sun or the moon or the stars to guide its way, as it carried a thousand whispered promises, pretty lies and broken dreams.

The wind was warm on his stubbled cheeks, a stark contrast to his cold tears of self-pity, as he wondered impatiently when those little white pills would start to work their magic. Somebody handed him a drink and he gulped it way too fast, the tequila searing its way down his throat and finally settling in his stomach as a fiery, almost pleasant warmth. He liked being drunk. When he drank, the heartache was dulled to a throb. When he drank, he could forget about what he'd loved so hard and lost so suddenly. He drank because it was his way of trying not to fall asleep - because he knew they'd be there in his dreams.

Something about the man drew her to him. Maybe it was the fact that he was sitting on the sand, crying so openly that you could almost hear his soul shattering into a million tiny fragments. She knelt next to him, expecting the creature inside her to stir lazily, for her animal instincts to kick in, but all she felt was a deep, unending compassion. She resisted the urge to sweep his dark blond hair out of those bright blue eyes. "Are you alright?" she asked softly. She could see he was shaking and there was a film of sweat on his forehead. "Talk to me. What's going through your head right now?"

He couldn't get up the courage to answer her, this beautiful woman who had simply sat next to him and asked him to bare his soul to her. He saw the sunlight catch her hair and make it shine, the understanding in those big blue eyes reflecting the beauty in her soul. But he simply gritted his teeth and said, "It's a long, painful story." She smiled back at him. "That's okay. I can wait until the end of forever if you want me to."

The two of them were inseparable for a week and the days would blend because they'd stay up all night. She learned that he was a chain-smoking alcoholic with a voice so angelic that she got goosebumps whenever he opened his mouth. He learned that she wasn't sure whether all those promises in all those love songs were really true at all. He could see it in her eyes, a hint of something more than sadness: a whisper of a secret she was hiding, deep, deep down, in a place even she wasn't sure she could - or even wanted to - reach.