Evening at the beach.

Rain feel lazily, as if uncertain it wanted to leave the sky. The air was thick and tangible, the wooden stairs warm and worn. Her feet moved with the fluid flawlessness of repetition. In her mind a thousand scenarios played over and again, each one hitting her vividly, forcefully. Three more steps and then it was sand, smooth and sinking and sticking to her wet feet. A hundred feet ahead the waves—gray, white, angry—consumed the shore. The sky was on fire now, blood and flame and smoke.
She’d reached the edge of the water, arctic on her skin. Two steps and she fell to her knees throwing off her jacket and starting out for the halved tangerine sun. Seaweed wrapped around her thighs and throat as she swam farther, against the striking salt tides. Four hundred feet from shore, her heart beat fast and sharp. She heard his voice from the beach behind her; held her breath and disappeared.