Beside the sea, Carry sat alone upon an old park bench. Although her eyes were weary from old age, her focus to the horizon remained sharp. The bench that hosted her was thoroughly worn and showed flashes of at least three different colored coats of paint. Her right hand was fastened firmly upon the coiled brass arm. At times, her hopes would cast false silhouette of a boat returning to port. Her eyes would then widen right before she squinted, forcing herself to blink. When her eyes would refocus, the silhouette of the boat would disappear. When would he return?
Carry had met Nicholas Irerun what seemed lifetimes ago. It took almost a decade for him of knowing her distantly before he got the courage to approach and formally court her. She knew herself to smile every time she remembered the look of the nervous man as he sputtered out his first words to her. Still to this day, on that park bench, that memory kept her warm as she pulled her shawl in tighter against the wind.
Nicholas's passion was always the ocean. As a child he had sturdy sea legs before most boys had their first chance to see the ocean for themselves. His summers were endless weeks of hard labor aboard the boats his father would commission. Nicholas never minded it, as he knew he was helping sprovide for their family. This childhood hardened the mans skin but his heart remained a sensitive one. He was always quick to trust yet apprehensive to commit. He was loved by most yet feared by a boisterous minority. Many would say he would never marry and that the sea would be the only woman adequate to serve as a spouse to him.
To her, Nicholas was the impossible catch. The idea of them being together was so unlikely that it was not even worth the cost of a pleasant day dream. All the girls would gather at the shops on the water when his father's boat would come to port. On summer afternoons, they would oft catch Nicholas unloading cargo and speak to each other in only giggles and awkward stares. What would a man of his stature ever see in a woman like Carry? Carry held him in such high regard that she did not see the point in cowering with the other girls at his feet. Because of that, he was never even on her radar and perhaps that enticed him. The chemistry is one we may not ever understand but when these two came together it was one that has not been reproduced.
Meeting Carry didn't change much of who he was but it redefined his priorities. As time went by, the love he developed for her was unlike anything he had felt before and he welcomed it. She embraced and returned that love and, to date, they shared over five decades of good and bad times. The peaks of the good times would always overshadow the valleys of the bad times.
Three weeks ago, Nicholas set off with old friends on a fishing trip. The years were good to them financially so these excursions were exclusively for leisure. Carry expressed her concerns to him openly and always feared that he was getting to old for these trips. She would worry that his confidence on the ocean would cause him to underestimate situations that he would face. As always, he would calmly reassure her, telling her that there were not enough leagues of ocean to keep him from returning to her. Somehow, he always set her fears aside. This time however, as sure as the rising tide in the morning, her fears arose. It had been three days since his boat was due back to port and Nicholas was never late.
A storm brewed off of the coast in their general direction after they shipped off. All signs indicated good news would be hard to come by and that any closure-yielding bad news would never come. Still, she sat. Her friends and family would attempt to distract her with activities and other times blatantly beg for her to come home but she would not entertain either.
All she had and all of the happiness she would hope to find, lie with the return of that man. In the moment, now all she had was the scent of the ocean air to remind her of him. For now that was enough. This man provided such a bright spot in her life, it would seemingly all be in vain if she left that bench and abandoned his potential return. The smallest chance of him returning outweighed any upside of what would come if he did not so she instilled patience. She would remain on that bench and wait for him and the moment the idea of leaving would enter her head, it was immediately cast out. No, it never stood a chance.
