“Burnham, here we go.” She speaks on a long exhale, not bothering to bite back the relief spilling over the dashboard. It had been a long drive up to the coast. Small talk tried to slice at the silence that filled the car. You sit there for a while, scarf wound tightly against your neck, hat pulled down over your brow. A warm glow settles across the harbor, bleeding through the pale clouds above. The marshes stretch well into the horizon. You still don’t reach for the door, all you think of is the room, the blu-tack-stained magnolia and the rough navy carpet between your toes. 

“It’s really pretty.”

She shifts in the driver’s seat to look at you. You wonder if the hat can stretch any further over your face. She pauses for a moment; you feel her searching for something. Then she turns and swings the door open. Her boots grind against the gravel of the car park. 

“Better get a move on if you actually want to see it then,” she says, pulling on her gloves. The sharpness of the cold air hits you as you slowly open your door. You smell the salt, hear the sand crunching amongst the gravel beneath your feet. 

Salt grazes your tongue in the open air. Every few steps you buckle into some shallow rabbit hole burrowed in the beach. You listen to the sea lapping against the shore, occasionally underscored by the desperate whistle of a concerned dog walker.

It feels like you’ve both been walking along the twisting trench in the sand for hours. You can no longer see the harbor car park. Tall dunes freckled with dry grass rise from the shoreline. There’s something familiar about it that draws you closer, up the fickle sand, grasping at the grass to pull you up. When you reach the summit of the dune, you finally see the silver stretch of sea that you could hear from the path below. You don’t remember the last time you were so close that you could smell it. You’d always tried to replicate it in the Ocean Breeze candles that sat upon every surface of your living room. He hated it when you lit candles in the room. A fire hazard he said, just open a fucking win— 

“I guess here’s as good a spot as any.”

You hadn’t noticed her follow you up the dune. “You actually want me to do it?”

“Yes, I really do.” She says as she rubs her gloved hands together; her eyes stinging from the cold. The gleam of the mid-afternoon sun lights up her face.

You face out to the sea. The breeze licks at your cheeks, raw and crimson against the late winter’s edge. Begin now, close your eyes. You take your trembling hands out of the warm comfort of your coat pockets. She grows still behind you; you no longer hear the shuffling of her boots in the sand. Count to ten.

One 

When you think of him, you think of the room. His room. Like he can’t exist outside of it. There isn’t much to it apart from a bed in one corner and a sink crammed into the other; the staple of city student accommodation. The concept of a sink in a bedroom didn’t sit well with you at first, but it means you don’t have to leave as often. Whenever the time comes to venture out, you sit and listen for the sound of the fire doors creaking in the corridor outside, for any signs of life that need to be avoided. 

You’re a ghost in those halls, nothing more than a light left on in the kitchen or a strand of long dark hair clinging to the shower drain. You wonder if the other students living there think of you much. Maybe they hang around behind their doors when they hear you in the hall, scrambling to catch a glimpse through the peephole. 

Two

“How did you guys meet?”

Tinder, really. Hours upon hours spent illuminating the lock screen on your phone hoping to see that tiny red notification pop up. You tell him you hate texting, that you prefer just really talking to someone. It’s bullshit, much like the story you both tell people about how you met.  

“Well, he served me in the restaurant a couple of times and—”

“I knew I had to talk to her.”

Three 

You’ll have to clear your thoughts, she says. That’s the problem with trying not to think 

about things, they inevitably take over regardless. It’s not like you have much faith in this, anyway. But she’s persuasive.

“Just once, please,” The buzz of the cafe settled over you like a haze. “Let it out, I think it could be really liberating for you.” 

“I don’t need to be liberated.”

She sucked in her bottom lip as she set the mug down on the table. “I thought you were breaking up with him.”

Four

You’re in the library, the one with the glass walls and the quiet room at the very top. It’s up three flights of stairs. Behind the glass, all you can hear is the tapping of fingers across keyboards and the occasional strained exhale. 

As the doors open, the commotion of deadlines and talk of the weekend’s antics briefly bleed into the room before they swing shut again. She bursts in. In her arms she cradles a pile of large hardback books. As her feet pad along the carpet, a few students look up from their screens, soaking up the brief relief which accompanies any distraction. She lets the books collapse onto the table in front of you.

“Shhhh—don’t do that.” Your voice is little more than a hiss; heat rushes to your cheeks as she mouths a few words of apology to a couple of shaking heads. You’re glaring at her, but she’s beaming. She pulls out the rough plastic seat opposite you and plops herself down before eagerly spacing out each heavy hardback in front of her on the table. 

“I know what I’m going to do for the performance art module.” She leans in on her elbows, her eyes wide and expecting. “I’m going to do something inspired by Marina Abramović.” 

“The Russian artist?”

“She’s Serbian, actually,” she rolls her eyes at the handful of students that are still looking over, a few tapping their pens impatiently on the tabletops. “I’ve definitely cracked it this time,” she says, flicking through glossy photographs of a couple screaming in each other’s faces. 

You pull the book from under her hands and slide it over to your side of the table. The woman’s eyes are dark and lined, bursting in release. 

Five 

He’s light-footed. You lie there on his bed listening to that fickle rhythm of doors swinging open and shut in the hallway outside, waiting. You always know when it’s him and not one of the other students. The sound of the door clicking into its frame feels lighter, more delicate. 

His footsteps brush along the rough carpet outside and your breath stills. Light spills into the room and all the hours spent listening, waiting motionless on his stale bed sheets wash away. You haven’t been back to your own flat in days.

Six 

You stand in front of the mirror and watch purple bleed through your skin like a stain. 

This isn’t me. 

This isn’t—

“Why did you do it?” Your voice sounds like a crumpled paper cut-out of yourself.

You hear him click his tongue through the speaker. Your forehead rests on the edge of a door frame as you whisper into the phone. 

“Why?” You push once more. 

“Because I wanted to.” 

You want to hang up and shatter like glass all over the carpet. 

You don’t.

Seven

The bustle of the library has long died out. Sitting alone in one of the glass-paneled booths at the far end of the room, you listen to the soft hum of the cleaner hoovering the floor below. Your laptop lays open on the table. The booth smells faintly of the cheese and onion crisps that are sprawled across the floor beneath you, the ones you never bothered to pick up. 

The hum of the vacuum grows louder.  Everything else shifts out of focus. You never hear her coming.

“Hey.” The sound of the vacuum dies. She’s cautious but makes you jump nonetheless.

“What are you doing here?”

She looks around, eyeing the carpet speckled with crisps and the phone that lay on the other end of the table. You begin to tug at the seams of your cardigan sleeve. 

“Your phone was off. I got worried.”

“I’m sorry.” The nauseating stirrings of guilt kick in like a reflex. 

“Is he calling you again?” She already knows the answer, it’s why she’s come. You’ve poked a hole through the knit of your sleeve. She pulls out the chair next to you. 

“I’m taking you home.” Her foot crunches a few crisps beneath it as she sits down. “Then tomorrow we’re going for a drive and you’re going to do it.”

Eight

“It’s controlling.” You can’t say it whilst looking at him. There’s a chill in the restaurant; it knits your bones together as you make yourself smaller, small enough that you could just slip off the chair, disappear into the cool linoleum of the floor. He’s shaking, but the cold hasn’t touched him yet. 

“No one’s ever called me that before.” It’s mumbled quietly to the table, not to you. 

“I didn’t call you anything. I’m just—”

You break off as you spot the waiter approaching. It’s a sharp intake, a forced tug at the corners of your mouth as you try to be convincing. He sits next to you in silence. 

“What can I get for you?” The waiter barely manages to get the tune out before the chair next to you drags against the floor. He walks out, you don’t call after him. 

“Just a flat white will be fine.” The waiter fades into the blur the restaurant has become, you appreciate that he didn’t try to ask. You sit there until your coffee grows cold, waiting to hear the buzz of your phone against the tabletop. 

Nine

The air is thick, coating everything under the sticky layer of heat. Lights flashing a whole kaleidoscope across his skin. He reaches for you as the music pounds in the space between. The sea of moving bodies pressing against you both. His hands on your face, you feel it then. 

Safe. 

Ten

The scream comes from somewhere you don’t recognize. It’s deep, coarse, and violently scratches at your throat, clawing its way out. The whistles of the dog walker’s silence. The sea stills. You see her, the woman in the photo of the heavy hardback, as the scream tears through her too. The sound of it ripples and beats against the rocks of the shore.

It spills down the hall and seeps in beneath the weight of the fire door. A deep purple stain on the carpet. You hear the strain of doors swinging open and shut under the harsh wind, the soft crunch of boots sinking into the sand. The scream cracks into a sharp guttural sound; it grates at your skin as it leaves. Someone is reaching for you, through the kaleidoscope of flickering lights and air sodden with sweat. Her hand rests firmly on your shoulder. 

You open your eyes.

“Jesus, that was a big one,” she says. A blush pricks at your cheeks as the shore recovers its peace. You try to breathe, but it sits stubbornly in your chest. 

“I don’t know how to leave.”

You think of your hair lingering in the drain, the lights you leave on in the kitchen. This is what you have. The prints you leave in the sand. 

Her grip on your shoulder softens. “But you will.”