"Popcorn" - short story

I didn't have a very good day yesterday, and I didn't get work done. I did want to get something done though, so I wrote a quick short story.

Please remember to check me out at my author page on Facebook at facebook.com/authoremilyblue. Or, if you've got Twitter, I'm @Miss_Emily_Blue

Self-promotion completed, here's the story! Enjoy!

Popcorn

“Hey, Popcorn!”

Kathrine stirred from her study of the ocean at her nickname, which she hadn’t heard since she graduated from high school 8 years ago. A man hurried up to her, sand kicked up behind him with each step. He halted and stared up into her eyes.

“Holy shit,” he said. “It really is you.”

Kathrine raised an eyebrow, studying his face for some sign he was a boy she used to know. If his strong features held some familiarity for her in their shape, she couldn’t find it. “Sorry, who are you?”

The man grinned. “Don’t you recognize me? Prom king? Quarterback since sophomore year?”

“Oh. Terry?”

“Yeah! That’s me! Holy shit, how have you been, Popcorn??”

“I hated your guts,” she said blandly, and turned away.

“Popcorn-“

She strode away from Terry, but the scuffing of feet against sand told her he still followed. “Stop calling me that. I hated that name.”

“I’m the one who invented it.”

“All the more reason to hate it.”

Her buttery blonde hair, movie theater job, and bout of jaundice junior year had all combined to earn her that dreaded name.

“C’mon, Kathrine,” Terry said, still following her. She wove her way around umbrellas, picnic blankets, and sand castles, trying to lose him in the crowd of beach-goers. He hadn’t lost all his skill from playing football, because he easily ducked and bobbed around the obstacles. He stayed right behind her, his breath hotter than the noon sun on the back of her neck. “You left Thresherton and no one ever heard from you again. You can’t expect me to not want to talk to you.”

She grunted and turned to face him, standing at the top of a dune with the busy shoreline spread out before her. “Leaving Thresherton was the best thing I ever did.”

“Yeah?” Terry stepped up beside her. He lifted his hand. “So why are you back? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“Can we have this conversation another time? I’m busy.”

“Busy? All I saw you doing was flirting with that guy back there.”

“Are you serious?” She gestured at the whistle around her neck, and the white words at the top of her swimsuit. “It says right here ‘lifeguard.’ Talking to people is my job.”

He flashed a broad, white-toothed smile and sidled close to her. “You ever take your work home with you? How about we talk over dinner?”

Kathrine held up her hands, sliding them over Terry’s pecs. His grin widened.

She shoved him back, hard enough to send him careening down the side of the sand dune. He sputtered and sat up at the bottom. She stared down at him, hands on her hips. “You bullied me all through high school. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that just because we’re adults now.”

“You hold a grudge, girl, damn.” Terry stood up, his face turning red not from the sunlight but from an internal burning.

“Maybe I would have given you a chance. But I can see you haven’t changed.”

“You think you changed? You’re still a bitch.”

Kathrine kept her expression blank, even while waging an internal war against herself. She’d come back to this judgmental little beach town after being away so long, but she didn’t owe an answer to anyone as to why.

For a time, she’d been able to forget the power that so confused her during her formative years by moving to Nevada. It had grown in strength during the last several months, calling her back to the ocean in the same way salmon returned to the streams in which they were born.

Home was by the sea. She had to get used to that truth.

She didn’t need annoying men getting in her way.

Kathrine set off down the far side of the dune, approaching the ocean. Her thoughts rippled and wavered, following the ebb and flow of the tide. A wave crested, and she crested with it.

Terry followed her, jabbering nonsense about why she should give him a chance. She hardly heard him under the constant rushing whisper of the sea.

Kathrine sank her mind into the water, the power of the relentless pounding ocean surging through her veins. She moved out of the way just as a rogue wave, summoned by her call, broke right on top of Terry. Taken by surprise, he collapsed under the wall of water.

Kathrine breathed out, letting the wave recede with the tide. Terry emerged, lying on his back and half-buried in wet sand. Seaweed clung to his arms.

She left him trying to sit up and made her way back to her lifeguard’s tower, where she watched the surfers and the children at play, never knowing who kept them safe from the undertow, and who provided them with the perfect epic waves. 

The End

© 2019 Emily Blue