Oh goodness, that made her heart and her thoughts stutter.
“I don’t expect you to say it back or anything like that. I just want you to know the depth of this for me.”
She wanted to say it back, but the words weren’t there. Not because they didn’t exist. They did. Shedidlove Ben. But she could count on two hands the number of times they’d even told one another that back when they were a couple. It wasn’t something they did, confess their love verbally.
But Ben was so free with his words and feelings now. So certain. It made her appreciate him all the more. Appreciate the man he’d grown into in her absence. Maybebecauseof her absence.
“I’m in the same place you are, Ben.” It was as close as she would come for the time being. Ben didn’t seem to mind. He moved in front of her again, tilted her chin, and kissed her once more.
“I know you are,” he said before tapping his finger on her nose. “You don’t have to use the words, Tabs. I know.”
There was a comfort in that. In being able to convey her feelings in more than one way. Ben could read her. Had he always been able to? Honestly, probably. He knew to leave her alone when she would come home from work. She had needed to decompress, and Ben always let her. It also looked a lot like Tabitha shutting him out, and in the end, he let her do that, too.
She supposed they did it to each other.
But now, they were letting one another back in. Slowly, but surely.
The remainder of the walk was comfortably quiet. Together, they paced up the coast, hand in hand, heart in heart. A youngfamily with a golden retriever lobbed a long stick into the ocean and the happy animal dove in after it, time and time again. A toddler knocked over his older sister’s sandcastle and the tears that ensued made both Tabitha and Ben chuckle under their breath. There was a couple sharing a bottle of wine on a patchwork quilt, deep in conversation.
Tabitha loved the beach. It was a gathering place where people could create memories. Where they could fall in love or out of it. Where they could laugh and where they could cry. The ocean was a backdrop for so many of life’s events.
It had always been that for Tabitha.
Her greatest sorrow was losing her parents to its roaring power and magnificent depths.
But she’d also found so much of herself on these runs along the beach.
To Tabitha, the ocean gave just as much as it took.
An hour later,they were back at the beach house shaking out the sand from their shoes. Tabitha left hers on the back door by the deck to dry out. Even when she tried to avoid getting them wet, a rogue wave would lap at the tread of her shoes, dampening the soles. Ben stepped out of his running shoes too and followed her into the house barefoot through the back French doors.
“Are you hungry?” she asked over her shoulder.
Tabitha didn’t have much in the refrigerator. It had been on her list to go to the market earlier in the week, but with the storm, she hadn’t really ventured out other than to hospital for work.
“I could eat.” Ben cuffed the back of his neck and waggled his shoulders. “What were you thinking?”
“Maybe going down to the fish market and seeing what they have? I feel like seafood if that sounds good to you.”
“We could have just kept walking, you know.” He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling in the corners.
He was right. The market was only another half mile up the coast, in a little inlet with a few other Mom and Pop shops.
“We could still.” She shrugged. “I’m up for it if you are.”
Ben just gave a little nod and then they both laced up their sneakers once more to continue up the coast.
They were chasing daylight at this point. By the time they arrived at the fish market, the sun had been swallowed up by the horizon, its final rays echoing in a deep orange wash of light that spread low across the sky. They made quick work of selecting their seafood. Ben insisted on lobster tails while Tabitha silently protested their price. She was fine with something simple like cod or even shrimp, but Ben said he was having a good year in real estate and that they should celebrate. It wasn’t that she doubted he could afford them. She just didn’t love spending hard-earned cash on something consumable. On her car, well, that was a different story.
But the lobster tails proved their worth. Every last, delicious penny.
Their taste and texture melted in her mouth. Maybe it was the way Ben had prepared them. Coated them with a lemon herb butter before placing them in the air fryer. He said he’d learned on some cooking show, but in all the years she’d known him, she’d never witnessed him watch one.
This man was full of delightful surprises.
They sat on the back deck for three more hours, until the stars were over an hour into their nightly show. The moon was big tonight, full and clear. Its reflection on the water’s surface was almost as bright as its actual presence, and the constellations that twinkled above gave off nearly as much light.
Tabitha found herself staring at Ben from across the bistro table on the deck. She admired the way the metallic moonlight washed over his features, highlighting the best parts of him. His square jaw. His nose that had been straight when they’d first met but had earned a little bend right in the middle from a softball league mishap in his early twenties. The way his stubble covered his chin, like he could benefit from a shave but could also get away with letting it grow a little longer.
