Picture Perfect by Brittney Henning

Madison couldn’t find him. He told her that he would be right here. But he wasn’t. 

She was trying not to panic. She didn’t have her cell phone; she had left it in the hotel room because she was afraid of losing it. All she had was the bathing suit and shorts she was wearing, her towel, and some strong sun lotion. She didn’t even have the room key…Kyle had it. 

Why did I tell him I would meet him on a crowed beach? Myrtle Beach, at that. She bit her lip looking around, trying to pick out his face. Just the crowd alone was making her nervous. Although the scenery was nice: hotels lining the beach on one side, and a seemingly endless ocean on the other. The water dark blue, with the rhythmic sound of the waves crashing onto themselves over and over until they reached the shore, turning the sand dark and wet. Almost picture perfect.

 And of course there were people everywhere. Lying on the sand with colorful umbrellas shading them, playing volleyball and catch, children making sand castles and mud pies. But the one person she wanted to see wasn’t there. 

She decided to walk down the beach and look more. The sand burned her feet from the hot sun beating down, so she walked on the shoreline. She thought back to a picture that she has hanging on her wall at home. It’s a painted portrait of a young boy and girl holding hands, walking along the shore with the sunset in the background. 

“Isn’t it romantic?” she had said to Kyle one day after she had hung it in her apartment. This was right before they had their big problem, when things were still fresh and good. 

He cocked his head to the side and shrugged. His gelled hair didn’t move at all as he tilted his head.  

“A bit cliché, I’ll admit,” she added. “But I’ve never done that you know.” She leaned against his body. 

“Never done what?” He asked. 

“You know,” she said looking off into the distance. “Held hands while walking along a beach at sunset.” She gave him a cheesy grin. 

“Well I’ll tell you what,” he said looking at her. “One day you and I will do that. Just so you can say that I did something romantic for once.”

She chuckled. “Seeing how those moments are far and in between, you got yourself a deal.”

About six months later he had presented her with the tickets to Myrtle Beach. His job sends him away to different places in the U.S. a lot, and he always goes by himself because they only give him one ticket. But his time he bought Madison a ticket and asked her to come along. She thinks that he’s trying to make things up to her, and this was a good way to try. 

But now here she walks, alone along the shoreline looking for his late ass. He is always late. That’s the one big thing that irks her most about him.

She decided to stop walking down the beach and just go and sit down in the spot he said he’d meet her. She made sure that she was behind their hotel before she sat down in the hot sand. She sighed and cocked her head around once more, but there was no sight of him. She even went over their conversation in her head from earlier that day. 

“So I am meeting you on the beach, right outside the hotel at three,” she confirmed. 

“Yes. My meeting goes until two thirty and I’ll run back here to change and meet you down there.” He straightened his tie and rubbed his invisible beard. 

“Why don’t I just meet you here then?” She asked, still lying in bed in her pajamas. 

“Because I want this to be a vacation for you. I don’t want you to be stuck in the hotel room all day. Go out on the beach early, or walk around town a little. Enjoy yourself.”

“Ok, I will if I feel like it,” she said stretching and falling back onto the bed. 

“No,” he said walking over, pecking her on the lips. “You will. Because I have the room key.” He waved it in her face. “You better not be here when I get back from my meeting.”

She smiled. “Fine. I’ll go out there early or something.” He really was trying hard to make her happy and for her to enjoy herself. She tried just as hard to act that way. 

Madison looked at her watch and seen it was only quarter after. Maybe his meeting just ran late. She hoped that was all it was. He wouldn’t be dumb enough to hurt her again. She caught him the last time and gave him one more chance. He said he was completely done with his ex, that it was a huge mistake he even started talking to her again. 

Her stomach twisted into knots and her pulse sped up. She tried to distract herself by putting on some sun screen. She could feel her cheeks already beginning to burn anyway.

“Excuse me,” she heard just as she was squeezing the bottle onto her palm. 

She looked up and saw a young man about her age—a young gorgeous man. Tall, tan, toned, and talking…to her. She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything. 

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he continued. “But I happened to notice that you were looking around a lot, like you were looking for someone. Did you lose a kid or something?”

She smiled at herself and stared at the sand. She didn’t know her search had been so obvious. Or at least it had been to this guy. “Oh, no. No kids for me,” she laughed, trying to cover up her nervousness. “I mean, well, one day I would like some but I don’t have any right now.” She stopped herself realizing she sounded like an idiot.

He smiled and laughed a little. “Ok. I was just wondering if I could help in some way. You kind of have tourist written all over you.”

She smiled back. “Really? That pale huh?” She looked down at her stomach. She was about the same color as the sand. 

He sat down next to her. He didn’t even have skin rolls when he sat down. Everything was muscle. She tried to suck in her own stomach a little. 

“Well, I really didn’t mean that,” he said looking at her. “But yes, you do kind of look too pale to live here. I just meant I noticed that you’re sitting right up against the fence of the hotel. Like it’s a checkpoint.”

She nodded, looking away from his hazel eyes and perfect face. “Well, you’re right. I am a tourist.”

“I’m getting good,” he praised himself. “Well, then, welcome to Myrtle Beach. My name is Tom.” He held out his hand. 

“Madison,” she said taking it. His hand was strong and warm. She had a brief thought of his hand being elsewhere other than her hand. 

“So who or what were you looking for?” He asked, taking her out of her quick reverie. 

She was embarrassed by her own thought and hoped her face wasn’t noticeably red. “My boyfriend, actually.” She was glad to drop that line so early on in the conversation. 

“Boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” she felt good about herself that he sounded disappointed by her answer. Maybe he really was hitting on her and it wasn’t just her imagination.  

“How old are you?” He asked suddenly. 

That question threw her off, but she answered it anyways. “Twenty six.”

“And you’re not married?”

“No, hence the boyfriend,” she emphasized. “How old are you?”

“Twenty eight.”

“And not married?”

“Nope. Single.” 

For some reason she wasn’t surprised by his answer. But she was kind of pleased. “Why do you want to know how old I am?”

“Just because you’re attractive and seemingly friendly. I just figured you’d be married.”

“Oh,” she said simply, looking out at the water. Now she was really trying to suck in every piece of fat on her body. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. I have a small problem of speaking my mind.” 

She laughed. “Me too. My mom has always called me an open book.”

“That’s not always a bad thing,” said Tom grinning at her. 

Two kids ran in front of them, one chasing the other with a bucket full of water. They screamed and laughed as they went by.

“So,” said Tom casually. “What time was your boyfriend supposed to meet you here?”

“Three,” she sighed. 

“Hmmm,” he said looking at his cell phone. “Almost a half hour late.”

She looked at his cell phone, thinking about asking to borrow it to call Kyle. But she didn’t want this conversation to end. She was really enjoying herself. She felt like she was in middle school again, sitting next to the boy she liked on the bus. He gave her butterflies and made her feel good about herself. She didn’t feel this way when Kyle was around. She blamed it on the almost two years they have been together, and of course, the time she caught Kyle cheating. 

It happened a little less than a few months ago. He was always on the computer checking his emails. He even had made a “Facebook.” He said he was trying to keep in touch with his friends from high school. But every time Madison came up behind him when he was on the computer he would switch to a website about cars, or eBay, or something like that. He thought she didn’t notice his frantic clicking every time she came into the room. It was when he decided to get internet and unlimited texting on his phone that she was getting suspicious. She really never thought he would cheat on her. He was the nice guy who didn’t do that. But she had been wrong. 

“Did you want to call him?” Tom asked holding his phone out. 

Madison bit her lip. “Uh, no. I will give him until four at least. Usually he’s never later than an hour.” She smiled and laughed to cover up her impatience with it. 

“Why is he late?” he asked sincerely. 

“Business meeting must have run late,” she said. But in her mind she was picturing the worst. What if he had an ex-girlfriend that lived in South Carolina too? 

“Oh. Well what does he do?” he asked in a tone that was merely trying to make small talk now. His eyes were looking off onto the ocean. 

“He works for an upcoming cell phone company. So he is always going away on business to get things discussed and situated.” She began drawing her initials in the sand. She really didn’t want to keep talking about Kyle. But Tom kept going anyways. 

“Is he gone a lot then?”

“As of about three months ago he was. But then he…” she stopped herself. She didn’t want to tell this guy about her relationship problems. “We hit a rough patch and we’ve been trying to work through it.”

He nodded his head sympathetically. “And now you came with him on a business trip?”

“This time,” she said erasing her initials in the sand. “I think this was his way to make it up to me.” There she goes again. Revealing to much personal information. 

“Is it working?”

She opened her mouth, but didn’t know how to answer. She pretended to be distracted by two people throwing a Frisbee behind them. 

“I’m sorry,” he quickly said. “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to. It’s really none of my business.”

“No, no,” she said putting her hand on his shoulder. It was warm and hard, and she kept it resting there a moment too long. She pulled it off quickly and continued. “I honestly don’t know. Sometimes I think I was stupid for taking him back. Other times I think I would feel empty without him there. I’m so used to him being around.” She stared at the ground, surprised to find it so easy to voice her thoughts out loud. Also surprised by how honest she was being with herself… how unhappy she really felt about Kyle most of the time. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized again. “I didn’t mean to make you upset or get so personal. I just feel like I can talk to you.”

She smiled. “Actually I am glad I could say that out loud. It kind of re-enforces my feelings.”

He nodded and was quiet for a minute. Seagulls squawked from above them annoyingly. “Well why don’t we lighten the mood? You want to grab a drink from over there?” He pointed to the back of a hotel a little ways down the beach that had a tiki bar set up.

A drink with you sounds delicious, she thought. “No, thank you. I couldn’t,” she said instead. 

“It’s just one drink,” he said nudging her arm with his. 

It was just emails, Kyle had claimed when Madison confronted him. Now what would she say to Kyle? It was just a drink with a delicious looking stranger I met on the beach? But they were emails to Kyle’s ex-girlfriend who he had a very long relationship with prior to Madison. But the emails were very suggestive, and his ex talked about doing things together that they used to. One email she couldn’t even read the whole way through because she had written moment by moment a time Kyle and her had together on the kitchen counter. And they were talking about doing it again. Talking about meeting up someplace in between here in Michigan and where she was in Connecticut. She had written, “Just say you are going on another business trip. She’ll never even know…”

But Madison found out soon enough. More like just in time. Kyle never responded to that last email she had sent him. Even though it had been sitting in his inbox for a few days before Madison even read it. But still, he thought about. And look where Madison is now. Thinking about it. 

A couple waves crashed down onto the shore before Tom insisted again, “Come on.”

She sighed and really thought about it. She focused on a cloud on the horizon. “No,” she finally stated regretting her response. “One drink could lead to two, and then…” a few more, she thought, than off to your place with bad (or good) intentions… 

Tom sighed and looked a little disappointed. “Well, can’t blame a guy for trying, right?” He stood up and stretched. 

Don’t go, she thought frantically. “Are you leaving?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I am still going for that drink.” He stared at the bar. 

Madison looked too. There was a young girl sitting in her bikini by herself. She thought about telling him that she changed her mind. 

“Last chance…” He said moving toward the bar. 

She shook her head. “No, thanks anyways though.”

“Well ok then. It was nice meeting you.” He turned around and started to walk away. Just like that. One minute Madison was spilling her emotions to him, then the next he was walking away. But he turned around again and her heart leapt a little. “Oh, by the way,” he said. “If you and your boyfriend don’t work out you know where to find me,” he winked and then continued towards the attractive young girl sitting at the tiki bar. 

She was suddenly sad. She was so giddy and happy five minutes ago. But now her dream man slipped through her fingers and into someone else’s. 

Damn, she thought. Now the sun felt too hot, the noise of people laughing, having fun was too much for her ears. She was upset that Kyle was late. She was upset that she had been lying to herself for the past few months. And she was upset that she hadn’t voiced her thoughts to Kyle before she met Tom. Who was now gone forever. But it’s not too late. He’s right over there…

But she turned herself on her heels and went back into the cool hotel before she made any decisions she may later regret. The transition from the hot sun to the air conditioned hotel gave her goose bumps. Along with the nervous thought of what she was going to say to Kyle if he was in the room. 

In the elevator she rehearsed lines in her head. Should she tell Kyle what she told Tom on the beach? About not knowing if she was happy with him still? Should she even tell him about Tom? Would he get mad? Is now even the time to say anything at all?

The elevator dinged as it got to her floor and she walked to the room. She knocked. 

Kyle answered it. “Hey babe, sorry I am running late,” he said walking back into the room. He was still in his suit and tie. He sat down in front of his laptop that was sitting on the table. “I’ve been working on these numbers and I didn’t want to stop. I just wanted to get it done. I was just about to change.” 

“Don’t bother,” Madison said dully. She walked into the bedroom part of the room and started fishing around for her clothes. 

He followed her into the bedroom. “Aww come on babe. Don’t be like that. You knew this was a business trip for me and that I’d have to work some.”

“I’m sorry,” she said apologizing for her tone of voice. She tried to lighten it up a little. “I’ve just had enough sun I think.”

“Oh, ok. You wanna grab some dinner then?”

She decided now wasn’t the time to bring it up. “Sure.”

Back at home it was rainy and cold. Perfect. The weather matched Madison’s thoughts. Dark, dreary, and dreadful. Kyle was running late again. She told him to come over tonight at eight. It was now almost nine. 

She sighed, not able to hold her ongoing thoughts in any longer. She thought about it the last two nights at Myrtle Beach, sleeping next to him and not wanting to cuddle. Then for the last week they’ve been back she’s been tossing this around in her head. The waiting and deciding was almost making her sick. Now she just felt like she was lying to him. Not telling him about Tom, or the truth she had finally convinced herself of. She wasn’t happy.  Everything he said now just bothered her. She was getting less and less patient with his attitude and more and more aggravated around him. 

She put the blame on a lot of things. First their rough patch. Then how maybe they spend too much time together. Then how they don’t make love enough anymore. Blame after blame after blame.

But no more blaming. It was really quite simple. She couldn’t see her marrying him anymore. She couldn’t see herself buying a house with him and having kids with him anymore. She just couldn’t see herself with him anymore.  

She glanced at the clock and cursed him for being so late. She was so nervous her stomach hurt. Plus she didn’t want to change her mind again. Or keep putting it off. She couldn’t wait anymore. She moved her eyes from the clock to the picture hanging on her wall of the young couple obviously in love, walking along the shore. Madison remembered the thought she had when she first bought that picture. She thought it was perfect. 

There was a knock at the door. Now that he was finally here she dreaded answering it. 

She took one more look at the picture before she made herself walk to the door. She had once seen her and Kyle in the place of that boy and girl. But not now. Now she saw nothing perfect about it.