The sand was wet and heavy from the rain last night. I was still standing in my sneakers, but she was barefoot. She sat amongst the coterie of shells and pebbles left ashore by the receding tide. A log of dead wood had become stuck in a small sand-mound, and with every ambitious wave it threatened to set loose. But drift it did not, and it gave her something to fix her gaze at. She was looking away from me, I could see tufts of her hair resting on her right shoulder, and truant rays of the rising sun beyond trickled through. It was an idyllic dawn.
All that was lost on me. I was buzzing, I babbled away. She must have wanted me to sit down with her, to shut up and to witness the sunrise with her. I was over-zealous in my excitement and wanted to tell her every tiny detail. She must have hated it.
Last night, she turned seventeen, but I had gone to see my first cricket match.
