Steven J. McDermott
She’ll have a window seat, eyes tracking the arc of rails along the shore. Sad and angry and full of self-doubt because I stood her up at the station, left her to journey north to south alone. A move we’d planned together, a move I couldn’t make, but didn’t have the guts to tell her to her face.
The rail bed is laid atop the breakwater and when the train careens by, skidding and squealing on its brakes around the inside of the bay, the engines and passenger cars will only be a few feet away from where I sit on the sandy strip at the top of the beach. Around me are puddles of tide pools, rocks, pebbles, shells, and seaweed still moist and glistening and not yet parchment. I breathe in the briny air and the truth is I wouldn’t leave this behind for the Utah desert—not even for her. How do you tell someone that?
Her train announces its approach with a hooting whistle, the clatter of its wheels on the tracks, and then it’s blasting by—if it derailed now I would be scattered to bits. Each railcar slams past with a gush of wind, rattling the boulders I’m leaning against, quivering the sand under my rear. As the train speeds into the corner the brakes begin to screech.
Scribed into the sand with a stick are words I hope she sees as she looks out the window. Just three words. I know they are not enough.
The brakes release with a hiss and just as suddenly the train I should have been on is gone, the receding wheel clatter drowned out as the small incoming waves crest and run in. Soon they’ll wash away the words I’ve written.
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Steven J McDermott is the author of the story collection Winter of Different Directions. His short fiction has appeared in journals such as Carve, Passages North,Word Riot, Mud Luscious, SmokeLong Quarterly, Keyhole, Night Train, DOGZPLOT, Necessary Fiction, PANK, and many others. He’s the editor of Storyglossia.