Beached

: floating :

I don't quite know how I ended up alone on the beach. A minute ago I had been walking with my family down the Bournemouth walkway, and now I was sat alone with the shore licking at my shoes.

I was fully clothed. Heavy coat and thick shoes, squinting as people in sun hats walked by. It was October. There was no sun. But apparently being on a beach gave people the motivation to wear sun hats. Or maybe I was just being negative.

The sand, which was the bad type of sand; damp, clumpy and that horrible dark yellow colour, was sticking to my black converse in the most irritating way. It was probably on the bottom of my coat too. I picked my knees up as the water got closer.

Usually it was me that wondered off from my family, but this time they had all wondered off from me. They had gone into the shop to get ice cream, and by the time I'd gone into check where they were, they had gone.

I suppose I didn't want breakfast anyway. All we did was eat average bacon and speak about shallow things that I marginally cared about. I had decided I'd rather sit down and listen to Kodaline, so I walked to the shore and plugged in my earphones.

I looked at my phone as the song started, wondering if I should text my mom to say I'm alright and I'm waiting for them to walk back down the boardwalk. But it was practically worthless. There was two directions on the boardwalk, I knew they'd walk back this way and they'd see me. It was just a matter of how long they'd be. I guessed an hour at most, so I sucked it up and didn't text.

The water then suddenly came up and engulfed my shoes. It made me jump so that I put my hands on the ground to pull myself away, but managed to plunge my phone into the pit of dirty sand.

I groaned and started to wipe the chunks of sand off my phone, but then I realised there was someone sat on the opposite side to my phone. I looked to my left and jumped even more, seeing a boy sat with his knees up and looking out at the sea.

"Sorry," He turned to me when he realised I'd noticed he was there. I took my earphones out. "You looked lonely so I thought I'd sit here." His American accent were extremely strong and slightly attractive.

"I'm alone." I pointed out. "Not lonely." You didn't have to be alone to be lonely and you didn't have to be lonely to be alone.

The boy laughed. He had dark hair, the kind that you could never be sure if it was dyed or natural. He didn't have any roots, but I was sure that no hair could be naturally that dark. His hair was a messy length, too short to be considered long but too long to be considered short. His fringe flopped onto his forehead but didn't reach his eyes.

His smile was cautious, his lips thin. He had a black lip ring on the bottom right, and I couldn't stop looking at it. His eyes were small but dark, and I wasn't sure if they scared me or lured me in.

"What I actually meant was that I was lonely so I thought I'd sit here." He corrected himself, still smirking in an unbelievably confident way but being so incredibly vulnerable at the same time.

"Ah." I nodded, wiping my phone on my jacket and plopping it into my pocket.

"And you were the only person on this beach that didn't look like they'd shun me. You know, old ladies apparently don't like my presence. Neither do those picture perfect families with small dogs." He looked across the beach to lay his eyes on the benches which were, all the way down as far as we could see, taken by the elderly. And the beach was heavily occupied by overly enthusiastic families with dogs.

"I don't know," I was smirking myself now, turning to the nearest bench that was placed just over to the right and a little back, admiring the woman with curly white hair and a coat that was as thick as mine. "She looks pretty open minded. She might actually go home with you."