“It’s not fair!” I screamed out over the water that had taken Creed from me. “Why didn’t you stay safe? Why did you get in that stupid Jeep and drive drunk?” I called out. “You ruined my life. How do I go on without you? You were my anchor in this world.” Tears streamed down my face as I let the angry words explode from me. “I told you that I just needed one night. That tomorrow we would talk. Tomorrow wasn’t asking a lot. I love you, Creed Sullivan! Why couldn’t you have just waited?”
Wrapping my arms around my waist, I bent forward and wept. I thought I heard footsteps behind me. If Chet had come to get me again, or Griff, I was going to scream. I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to see the sadness in their eyes and the worry when they looked at me.
“About tomorrow…,” a deep achingly familiar voice said.
I lifted my head and looked out at the angry water, before turning around slowly. I was afraid of what I’d see. Was I dreaming again or hallucinating?
Covering my mouth, I let out a wail as Creed stood there in the same clothes he’d had on the night he drove into the water. His hair was a tangled mess and he looked exhausted.
“I’m here, Sailor,” he said, moving toward me slowly. “It’s a long story, but I can explain. I’m just sorry I couldn’t get a message to you sooner. I’ll never forgive myself for the pain you’ve been through.”
I choked on a sob. “Is…is this a dream?” I asked. “Please don’t be a dream. I can’t take it if it is,” I pleaded, reaching for him and finding a solid flesh and bone man. “You’re real,” I said with disbelief, looking up at him through my swollen eyes.
He pulled me into his arms and held me tightly. “God, Sailor, I am so sorry. I swear if I had known what the hell I was doing…I promise, I’ll never drink again,” he said, kissing the top of my head then keeping his mouth pressed there.
“How are you alive?” I asked, needing this to make sense. Needing this to be real and not a dream. I clung to his shirt and then looked down to see the part of it that had been torn. I reached for it and squeezed it in my hand.
“I did drive my Jeep into the water because I was too fucking drunk to see the road. I was coming to you. I couldn’t go another minute, much less until the next day, to apologize and make sure you didn’t hate me. But I didn’t drown. It wasn’t even sinking when I got out. When I used the car door to boost myself out of the water and onto land, it pushed the Jeep down and it began to sink. I stood there and watched it in my drunken stupor then started walking out to the dock because I saw a commercial fishing boat and thought I’d see if someone could let me use their phone since mine sank with the Jeep.”
He sighed then and kissed my head again. I leaned back to look up at him, realizing this had to be real. I wasn’t this creative and no dream could make this up. I’d thought of a lot of scenarios, but nothing he was telling me was one of those scenarios. Reaching up, I touched his face and inhaled deeply. He stunk like fish, but I didn’t care.
“No one was awake on the boat and I went searching for someone to help me. I made it to the bottom of the boat where they kept their gear and coolers with their catch. Then the whiskey got to me and I guess I laid down and passed out. When I came to, the boat was moving. I made my way up to the deck and found Burt. He was the Captain and we had been on the water for ten hours, but before that, I’d been on the boat passed out for four hours. My guess is the rocking of the boat kept me asleep. Burt didn’t have a working means of communication and there was no cell phone signal. We tried several times to get through and once we managed to contact the Coast Guard, but the signal was so bad they didn’t understand what Burt was telling them.
“I had to wait until they did their drag and headed back. They were sympathetic, but I was also a drunk man who had stowed away on their boat. They weren’t going to lose out on a paycheck to get me back to land. I even tried paying them off, but they said it was a good lesson for me to learn.”