Between a torrent and beach..

There was a puddle on the painted sill as the dew trickled down the windowpane. Through the obnubilated glass, I watched a receding figure, with shoulders stooped against the torrential rain. Against the cool, wet glass, Jen leant her forehead. She would do anything for Tom.

It was spring, when he had first brought her here. Just a friend and nothing else, he had said. She had a slim figure, a delicate one but could not swim. Catching the waves, he was on for a surf, showing off. She lay on the plaid blanket, wrapped in a brightly colored skirt. But, I stayed indoors.

The rain made it difficult for me to make out his figure on the beach below. A contorted silhouette, the runnels running down the pane made his appearance a fractured one. All I needed was a fraction of unmindfulness to let him slip and fall into one these runnels, his illuminated self ending up in a soppy heap of termite dust. I kept on holding him in place with my gaze.

As the days passed, the outings on beach became a common thing over weekends. The early morning swims were substituted by whispered arcanas in the bedroom. Under the white eiderdown, mountains moved slowly, with lacy unmentionables carelessly lying on the floor. She stood on the beach as he plucked out a sting and brushed the sand dearly from her foot. As she turned her head towards the path back up to the house, he lifted and carried her, just like a baby cradled against a mother's chest. 

A night later, Tom had planned a dinner for two but to his disappointment Jen came home in a car full of strangers. As his smile faltered, my heart leapt. He watched as she stretched his dinner into a supper for five. A beaten up pizza with dotted slivers of prawn, the red wine equally measured in drops. He had let her hijack the bed for her friends Fred & Betty. Austin slept on the sofa-cum-bed. Tom & Jen decided to bed down in the car. I took the bean bag. It was a matter of moments that she came back inside, trembling and wrapped herself in an old quilt next to Austin's sofa bed.

As I woke up, she was stretched along with him, under the withered quilt. Her fickleness was disguised by a fluster of activity as they were woken by Tom's banging on the door. With stiff joints, he had just spent a night locked out of his own house in her car. That afternoon her friends left and his smile returned. Tom & Jen spent the rest of the weekend under the white eiderdown.

But the coming few weekends were a disappointment for him as Jen could not make it down for some reason or the other. Tom started to go back on his morning swims. The sea went from baby pink sea to grey as he woke up each day. With every stroke in the sea, I watched his heart break.

And then through the translucent curtain of rain, a figure appeared, was that she? Standing on top of the path, it was a lonely figure which I failed to recognize at first. The distortion of the slim figure was a result of the torrent pouring down the glass. Slowly I stood up and stretched. The moment I turned round, she had gone. The door was left ajar by him. Not thinking about the rain, I went to the top of the cliff, looked down at her fragile figure moving down the narrow path. 

A second after, I was by her side, meandering between her legs. High heels, everyone said. It was a mishap. A tragic death to which everyone agreed. Winters that year was colder than ever before. He just sat by the fireplace, worked on something.

He said "love story" and I just whirred.