West Coast Ending

The young man walked rigidly along the sand coated sidewalk, headphones in his ears and hood pulled down around his neck. Beneath his shoes the sound of light crunching of the beach’s scattering shore was inaudible to him. But he knew it was there, the sound he had heard ever since he was a child running along the beach’s crowded shores with his friends, or alone like he was now. Walking the beach was usually a day time affair, and a merrier one at that. But Oliver wasn’t in the merriest of moods on this windy evening in late august. The gloom of summer’s end was in the very scent of the wind’s saltiness that ran across his face, blowing his short brown hair towards his right and swaying the palm trees in their island of patches near and around the beach. Even if he wasn’t in school these days, the unfavorable ambience of Sunday evenings and the end of holidays still had its effect on him, as if he would still have to grudgingly get up the next day and worry about essay’s and algebra homework. Not anymore.

He didn’t exactly know where he was going in life after he graduated high school; and right now, in this moment, he didn’t care. He cared yesterday, and he would care tomorrow. But tonight he wouldn’t make room for it. Because he was filled with an emotion he hadn’t come to name yet in this point in his life. He mostly felt in when he was alone, and out somewhere with not many people around to make his way through. But it was somewhere between the thought of being alone and feeling like anything might happen at the next turn of the sidewalk. And whatever it was, good or bad, at least it was something. Something would be happening to him.

The shores were always lonely at night. The polar opposite of what they were like during the day. And out near it during this time of night always made whoever was visiting it feel cast astray. You’d pass the obligatory homeless man every couple of blocks. But that was California. One was up ahead. An old one with a beard probably five inches long and reaching the bottom of his old sagging neck. Oliver hated homeless people, though it was nothing personal. He hated what they represented and what they reminded him of. He hated the thought of being alone in this world without family or friends. He hated the thought of finding an empty bench to take for the night, and hoping people threw out half a sandwich somewhere that the scavenging seagulls hadn’t already gotten to. Homeless people, to him, represented the bottom of the barrel. The point where everybody would end up if they didn’t follow the path that had been set up for them since childhood.

So he averted the path that would probably cost him a few scents, since he did feel bad for them, and went to his left onto the welcoming never ending vertical strips of dark wood that made up the long pier. There wasn’t much sand on the pier as there was on the pavement, and it absorbed the shock of each step easier as well. The beach always got colder at night than it’s half naked counterpart. Oliver shoved his fists into his front coat pocket and moved his fingers around a little, trying to loosen the tightness the cold always stiffs the joints with. All of the stores were closed by this time, though it was hardly late. They closed when the business was gone, and didn’t care much for any stragglers of the evening. The only place open was the large restaurant to his right, and he wasn’t hungry, so he kept moving forward past the bate store and the psychic woman’s small shop on the left he always wondered about. Not that he ever would pay for a reading, he just wondered about things like that every once in a while. His mind was never far from things he could never know, teasingly for him. He wondered what a psychic might tell him. Would she tell him he had a plan? That he was meant to go back to school and get a degree in something boring, though lucrative? Or maybe she would tell him that he would find love by moving out of state, that there was nothing here for him in California except for a part time job and eight dollars and seventy five scents an hour dealing with assholes without common sense. He didn’t know. And he never would. Because he didn’t want to know what a psychic could tell him, not enough to spend that hard earned money at least.

He had caught the beach at his favorite possible time. The night of a full moon where the water looked like a dim white sheet that was made so long he could walk on it until he reached another continent. The rustling of the tiny waves on it looked like glitter from the pure moonlight they reflected back to his admiring eyes. He took out his headphones and leaned on the wooden railing, farthest from the shore and nearest to the endlessness of the Pacific Ocean. He took in the salty air with a large inhale, eyes closed and chest rising.

“It’s like a rebirth isn’t it?” Oliver turned around when he heard a feminine voice to his right, making him jump just a little from the surprise of it. “Don’t be scared, I won’t push you over.” The small blonde haired girl in a white pea coat smiled, looking over into the water and the moss covered pillars leading down into it until they couldn’t be seen.

“Maybe you should.” He said back, resting his arms back on the wood.

“Why would you say that?”

“You don’t know who I am. I could be anyone, a serial killer, a rapist, a kidnapper. You ought to be more careful than to startle strangers.” The young man said calmly and turned to see the girl’s face even clearer. She was pretty, really pretty. Her hair was only shoulder length, but came down in small waves. She had the most feline of eyes that sat above her high cheek bones. Only one of her eyes were visible though, the other concealed by her bangs.

“Everyone’s a stranger at some point, I always thought. Don’t you ever introduce yourself to people?”

“Sure I do, but introductions need two things and you don’t have them.”

“What don’t I have?” She leaned back against the same wood he was on, both of her elbows raised backwards and facing away from her as they fell on the railing, holding her firm upper body in place.

“Well for starters a comfortable setting.”

“If you’re so uncomfortable then why are you here? Alone?”

“I don’t know. It’s just somewhere to be, I guess.”

“I’d rather be nowhere and comfortable than somewhere and weary. What else don’t I have?” Her dark eye was shining back the light from the moon, and to Oliver’s eyes where he could see just how brilliant it was even while he looked away.

“A name.” He answered.

“Well once I give you a name we’ll no longer be strangers. And seeing how we, a couple of strangers are talking and nobody’s getting kidnapped, maybe you won’t be so cautious of them anymore. Then you might have somewhere to be.”

“Maybe I like being here.”

“Maybe you do. But I’m going to put my hand out and you’re going to shake it and tell me your name. And if I like it, I might tell you mine.” She put forward her gloved hand after getting up from the rail. The young man stared at it for a moment, then put his out and accepted it in a warm grip.

“Oliver Lange.”

“Lauren King.” She smiled back curtly and held his hand for a moment.

“Thank you.” Oliver smiled back.

“For what?”

“Liking my name.”

“It’s a good name, and it’s your mother who should be thanking me.” Lauren reached into her purse and pulled out a cigarette, putting it into her mouth.

“Aren’t you going to ask if I want one?” Oliver said, crossing his arms and leaning back.

“If you’re a true smoker you’d have asked when you saw the cigarettes.” She held the lighter to the end of it, holding a hand as a windbreaker and clicking on the flame until she was able to inhale smoke. “Besides, I wouldn’t recommend the habit for anyone. It’ll spoil your good looks.” She smirked at him.

“If that’s the case than you have less business than anyone to be buying those cancer sticks.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“It is.”

“Tell me Oliver…”

“Ollie, please.” He put a hand out to pause her.

“Tell me Ollie. Are you hungry?” She took the cigarette out of her mouth and cocked her head sideways.

“I can make room.”