She breathed in the smoke and pulled her hair to one side. The flower tucked behind her ear shifted as she checked to make sure it was still there. A lazy smile was left on her lips, but she laughed along with everyone else. Sand buried her feet. Shivering, she noticed how cold her back was, and how hot her face was. Her cheeks must have been flushed pink under the glow of the firelight. She tugged at the hem of her shorts and pulled the sleeves of her hand-me-down sweatshirt over her hands.
With her green eyes fixed on the bonfire, she had tuned out of the conversation going on around her. She looked back toward the ocean, the outline of the fire momentarily blinding her.
Sunset had come and gone, leaving the sky coated with variations of blue. Dark clouds were broken by bits of fainter blue. The clouds moved fast, and a wind passed. His eyes stung with the sand carried by the wind. The flames caught in the breeze for a moment, leaning and flickering. Other bonfires faded farther away, and a group of friends were sending off lanterns.
She always seemed kind of sad at night, he noticed. With the sun high in the sky, she was burning with life. With the moon replacing the sun, she started looking lonely.
He knew what lonely looked like.
He could see the fire reflecting in her eyes. He never normally paid so much attention to someone. He never normally saw how her chest rose and fell when she breathed, how she dug her feet into the sand, how she looked at the ocean like she could drown in it.
Maybe she hated the night, but he lived for it. This was the time he loved – when the ashes of fires on beaches stained his fingers, when the crackling fire met crashing waves. He loved the moment when someone drove their car out and left the windows open while they blared music from the speakers, and suddenly everyone would be dancing. They didn't need a reason. At night, he didn't feel so lonely. It felt like maybe it would never have to end.
For once, he wasn't really listening. He was staring across at the girl who spent her entire day in the ocean. The girl who was up at sunrise, watching it with her feet right where the waves hit the shore. From far away, she was so loud, but up close, she was so quiet.
Suddenly, he really wanted to hear her voice. He really wanted her to break the silence. He didn't need a reason.
She barely spared a glance away from the burning wood when he came to sit next to her. With his eyes fixed on the starless sky, he noticed she smelled like salt and ice. She couldn't help noticing he smelled like a burnt out match, like the one that started the bonfire and then was lost somewhere in the sand. It made sense to her. Every time she looked at him, all she could see was the glow he had, like he was his own fire. She looked away self-consciously every time his violently dark eyes met her glassy ones.
As the conversations around them stuttered, they began to relax into each other, occasionally bumping knees accidentally and allowing their eyes too linger a moment too long.
She knew who he was, of course she did. They had lived on the same street in the same dead end town for seventeen years. They had seen each other everywhere, but he had never really looked at her.
A voice rang out clearer than all the others, announcing they were handing out sparklers. They did that sometimes. The closest fireworks store was some fifty miles south of their small town, but sometimes someone would feel motivated enough to go buy out the entire store and haul it onto the beach.
Sparklers sat in cardboard boxes in the trunk of a car, along with a few lighters and matches. A mad rush of bodies crowded around, trying to grab as many as they could before someone else took them.
She sat still, except for occasional shivers, while the others gravitated toward the car. She was too tuned out, too oblivious to move her body. Besides, she had never been a fan of anything that implied the least bit of danger.
He was one of the first. He snatched a couple sparklers and a lighter and was out of the way in seconds. Music was still playing from a radio in someone’s car, but it was softer than before.
Stumbling over to her, he heard small screams of excitement coming from people who had already set off their sparklers. Her body had tensed up again, likely from the cold, but he could see her chest rising and falling faster than before.
This can’t be a good idea.
He walked to the side of her, the fire casting a shimmer on the right half of his face, and shadows on the other. Clearing his throat awkwardly, he held a sparkler out to her. Her eyes moved, signaling she wasn’t lost in a daydream. Her head moved down to her hands which fidgeted, nails picking at skin. Brown hair lightened by the summer sun fell over her face.
He poked her in the side with the sparkler, laughing lightly. “C’mon,” he said amused.
She took in a breath and looked up at him with her piercing eyes. She might have looked sad at night, but her eyes always lit up like the stars. Tilting his head at her questioningly, he watched as a smile broke through her face. He still had not heard her say a single word.
This was a bad idea.
“Thanks,” she said calmly as she took the sparkler from him, her hand partially obscured by the sleeves of her sweatshirt.
He smiled at the sound of her words. Her voice sounded like the ocean breathing, like an unexpected sunrise, but past the horizon, her voice somehow sounded like a bad idea – not ugly, just dangerous.
She didn’t try to listen to his voice as it spoke to her, as it laughed, but she couldn’t help it.
His voice was the sound of a wildfire raging through a forest at night, destroying while everyone slept. While he couldn’t find a single error of calm, she could. She could hear a spark of cold beneath all the heat. She could hear the empty loneliness hiding behind the fullness of the fire. It might have been the only reason she took the sparkler from him. She knew he was dangerous.
Something about her voice made him hold out his hand to her. He thought it was the threat of danger, but he couldn’t decide if that was a bad reason. He couldn’t decide if he was ruining any ounce of innocence left in her. He tended to ruin people. It’s what he had become known for.
Track of time was hopelessly lost before she took his hand. Shouts and laughter sounded around them, but it all sounded like the indistinct words coming from a car radio turned down low, that you couldn’t bear to shut off completely. Everything was far away. It was kind of like the muffled noises when she went under water, or the blocked voices when the crackling wood flooded his ears. It was nice and it was comfortable.
He led her to the water’s edge, away from all the underage drunken kids that shouldn’t be trusted with fire. He knew she loved it here – she must have if she spent every morning just standing there.
Her hair had fallen back over her shoulder and somewhere along the way she had taken out the flower tucked behind her ear. Now he wanted to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. He wanted to feel his cold fingers against her burning face.
Instead, all he did was stick the metal end of the sparkler in his mouth like a cigarette and lit it while she laughed. Before the flares started flying in all directions, she grabbed it from his mouth and held it close to her face. Then, she held the other sparkler to him, anticipating the flicker of the lighter.
The hum of the sparkler began as she handed it to him so that they each had one. Ninety seconds and it would all be over. Ninety seconds and the flames would disappear. Ninety seconds out of seventeen years.
He kept staring at her. It was all he could do. He kept staring at her as she spun in circles and laughed, carrying a trail of danger with her. Somehow she looked even lonelier than before. Suddenly he stopped her. He didn’t need a reason.
The sparklers had thirty seconds left.
“Here,” he said over the buzzing of the sparklers. Turning to the ocean, he pulled his sparkler back and threw it into the air as high and as far as he could. It got so lost in the sky she thought it would turn into a star right then and there. After a moment, it fell again and disappeared beneath the waves.
She held onto hers a moment too long. She didn’t want to lose the heat pounding against her face. With fifteen seconds left, he reached up his hand and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. She flinched, but relaxed into his touch. The cold fingers were dangerous against her hot skin.
He could see her so clearly under the dying light of the sparkler.
He kissed her. He kissed her like waves crashing on a shore, like wood catching a flame. He kissed her like the one blinding moment of a sunrise and like the one deafening moment of a wildfire. He kissed her like water colliding with fire. He kissed her like the stars meeting the light, and she kissed back. She didn’t need a reason.