Blue Seas in Winter by s.e. smith

Editrix Martha Mihalick challenged her Twitter followers:

Who wants to write me a novel to go with this photo?

This isn’t a novel, but...

They stayed up all night on her second night on the island. A heavy perfume hung in the trees and when she got hungry she wandered out off the back deck to pick fruit right off the branches. It was so ripe that it was already starting to split open, oozing sweet juices that left her fingers sticky. She swirled them in the infinity pool to clean them, hoping no one would notice.

It was a very genteel sort of place. They called it “the farm” when they called it anything at all, only that made her think of her home back in Ohio. Walking through the corn field on her last day before she left for Los Angeles, her father telling her to follow her dreams. He twisted his feed store cap in his hands and looked down at his muckout boots, scuffing them in the stubble of the field. It was overcast that day and the sky hung dark and heavy over them, threatening rain.

It was the last time she saw him.

When she started dating her costar, her father sent her a terse letter telling her she wasn’t welcome anymore, that he wasn’t “comfortable” with that kind of “lifestyle” under his roof. Katie told her it would pass and they would reconcile eventually, but she wasn’t so sure. She thought about her father, the way he used to avert his eyes when they passed the principal and his partner in the grocery store, his discomfort when he was forced to shake the principal’s hand on scholarship night.

She sent him invitations to her launch parties anyway, but he never replied. Sometimes she’d scan the crowd, wondering if this would be the time he’d show up, but he never did.

Something about the time change and traveling made her feel like she was living in a liminal space, where each decision she made carried more weight, yet no weight at all. He was another guest at the retreat and she gravitated towards him because he was the only one who didn’t ask her who she was or why she was there. They sat quietly together at breakfast on the first day, eating their fruit salad and watching the ocean.

It was a relief to just stop.

Everyone assured her this was just temporary; she would return to the set refreshed and renewed, and they would pretend nothing had ever happened. Her character could go on a “trip” and that would buy them a few episodes. Somehow, though, she suspected she’d never be going back to Winter, never flash her ID at the guard by the gate, never pick over canapes at the craft services table while running lines in her head.

Someone would empty out her trailer and send a box of her things to her house in the hills and she’d become one of those actresses who fades into obscurity after a brief, shining career. Someday they’d make retrospectives about her where they talked about “too much, too soon” and the fast, hard lives of young talent. They’d flash that picture on the screen, the one of her at the famous auteur’s house in the lightweight cotton dress that didn’t fit her quite right, flowers in her hair. The one where she looks all innocent and sweet, a childish ideal of an actress.

They used to run that one alongside her profiles in the trades, fresh-faced and sweet. The new girl next door talent, they called her, and she worked so hard for more serious roles. Winter was going to be her breakthrough moment, where people would see her as the woman she had become. She hated that picture. Wished she could sneak into the photo morgue of every news organization on Earth and destroy the negatives.

After dinner that second night, they sat out on the deck in silence, listening to the ocean and the trees. Boats passed now and then, casting flickering shadows on the water. The silence felt oppressive at first; she was so used to being surrounded by people, a flurry of personal assistants and Katie, hair and makeup, other actors. Their house used to be a social hub and rarely a night went by without a party, someone “dropping by for a few minutes” and then everyone deciding to go out to the latest sushi restaurant.

She kept feeling like there was somewhere she needed to be and something she needed to do but that feeling started to pass as he radiated waves of calm and contentment. He sat in perfect stillness, not even shifting his weight, and it was easy to completely forget that he was just a few handspans away on the next deck chair. They watched the moon and stars creep up over the horizon and turn the ocean to quicksilver, occasionally cut through by a swimmer or some mysterious animal trailing through the water. One by one, the boats returned to shore and the lights flicked off behind them as people went to bed, leaving them the only people awake.

An attendant snapped the lights off without realizing they were there, but neither of them said anything. A warm silence settled around them and the insects that had flocked towards the lights and the warmth of their bodies disappeared, leaving the thin sheen of sweat on her body undisturbed.

She was just starting to fall asleep when the first blue flickers appeared in the water. At first they were just faint streaks, and she blinked her eyes to see if she was imagining things in her fatigue, but they slowly solidified and grew, and suddenly the water was alive with flashing light, waves breaking on the shore and casting blue sparkles above the waterline.

“Bioluminescence,” he breathed, and she realized it was the first thing she’d heard him say.

He stood up and reached out his hand and she took it, automatically, letting herself be pulled along to the shoreline. Barefoot, they waded through the waves and she watched the tiny organisms wash up onto her feet and cling there, streaking them with blue light. The air smelled salty and slightly bitter, the offshore wind pushing the scent of flowers away from them.

“What’s the first thing you remember?”

She thought hard, coming up with a memory of a bright, ferociously sunny day in the summer, before her mother died. Her mother was shelling peas on the front porch and listening to the radio. A red dress floated to the top of her mind, with blue trim and little pockets. Maybe she had a doll wearing the same dress, but that might be a false memory.

“Being at home,” she said.

“That’s a good memory to have.”

“What about you?”

He thought for a moment, while wavelets lapped over their feet.

“Being alone in the dark,” he said.