Before the Sun

I don’t blame her when I come back from jogging on the beach and see her still in bed. This is a place to relax. But I loathe when the sun watches me wake. I feel so exposed. It underestimates. I have to be up before it! On the east coast you see it rise before anyone. I aim to take its soul. I sneer at it while sweating and shirtless with the ocean sneezing on me. We ditch the free hotel coffee for the cafe down the street. It has bay windows and young employees and wide mugs and I’m buzzed and so is she and I smile at the freckle in her chestnut-colored iris. Caffeine hangs bladders in the balance like the secrets we could all end each other with. She treks in the burning sand all the way down to the shack. Me, I go in the ocean. I hear sharks are attracted to urine but I’m used to getting bit. I came here as a kid with my dad and his girlfriend and her two sons. We dug holes and collected crabs and belly-surfed the Atlantic swells and got stung by jellyfish. We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The jelly did not come from the jellyfish as much as we wanted it to. Now it’s June and she and I are laid-off and fed-up and thirsty for something with more salt and less misery. The state park is pleasant, for a small fee you can relax with more nature than people. Or you can choose the public beach and boardwalk, where, like the state park, the amount of green depends on season. Either or, this is a place to relax. Black letters on white signs remind us that no alcohol is permitted, but they never accounted for how humans persevere to meet their worst desires. I pack skinny cans of seltzer in my cooler chilled by sandwich baggies full of hotel ice. She does not drink any, in full control of her moral compass. I drink them all. I’m buzzed again and smiling again. It makes the sun hit harder. Seeking revenge for watching it rise. I ask if she wants to swim. She’s akin to the idea of splashing around maybe. So we splash around where the water breaks. Mother Nature cradles us the way my mother handled me, and when we stand up from getting knocked down, we have sand in our suits, our ears, our molars. I catch her in my open arms, trying to break her fall, but realize it’s she who’s catching me. I suggest the belly surfing idea but this is a place to relax. I ask if she wants to jog with me before sunrise tomorrow. She does not. I don’t blame her. I don’t either. But I have to. I have to be up before it! Or else I stay still. And I stay afraid. And I blame others. And everything happens to everyone else.

Dante DelBene is a drummer and videographer from Youngstown, OH. Previous fiction can be seen in Stoneboat Literary Journal 10.2. He's also a contributing writer to Hypefresh, an online news & entertainment outlet.