Sink or Swim

Chapter 4

It had been a few weeks since the surgery on Skye's thigh after she'd been involved in the car accident - or as she preferred to put it, three weeks since a drunk person had thrown her off the road and then sped off into the distance. Now she was sitting on a beach waiting for the pain to ease so that she could walk herself back home after a trip to town.

Skye's house was about a fifteen-minute walk back from the beach so not far for somebody with two working legs, but a hell of a long distance for her.

She'd been told to rest up and stay away from exercise but Skye without sport was like a duck without water. Sport and competing in swimming competitions were all she had ever known and now some drunk idiot had ripped it all away from her.

It was difficult to act like her usual, smiley self when she felt like everything she had always lived for had been taken away from her. Even so, her walk today had made her feel like herself for the first time since the accident. Though, it was starting to seem that after Sierra's clumsy advice, she'd pushed herself too far and had taken a walk far longer than she should have done.

Skye was sitting at the top of the beach, staring out at the waves when she heard her name being shouted from behind.

"Skye! You alright, there?" It was her friend, Craig. You couldn't go far in Riverwell Bay without running into a familiar face. That was a good thing on this occasion.

Skye looked behind herself and clambered awkwardly to her feet when she saw it was him. "Hey," she greeted with a smile and wrapped her arm a little awkwardly around him in an attempted hug.

"You okay? You look a little..." The man's words trailed off.

"I'm fine I'm just enjoying the very reason I moved here."

Craig's girlfriend, Alana had died six months ago. Skye hadn't seen him out and about much ever since.

Skye would often hear people gossiping about it. Some people would be sympathetic, but others couldn't understand how he was so lost after losing his girlfriend of only six months. Those people were few, but still the worst.

The swimmer had noticed how much he had always seemed to hate attention but now he was the centre of it in a bucolic beach town where everybody knew everybody. His face had been plastered all over the local (and not-so-local) newspapers and websites, journalists had skewed his words to make interesting stories. He was practically a Z-list celebrity for all of the wrong reasons.

Skye had tried to be there for Craig during the weeks after Alana's death.

"I'm just a little bit...stuck." Craig laughed and then looked down at the crutches. "I guess nobody told you what happened to me?" she asked. Word got around quickly but she knew Craig was often one of the lucky few that missed every passing rumour or discussion. "Highly unusual for Riverwell Bay."

"No. No, they didn't. You're going to need to explain the crutches," he responded, looking back up to meet her gaze.

She realised it had been a month or more since they had last seen one another. Skye's best friends didn't particularly like him so they would never have let him know, Cassandra especially. She was the elder sister of Alana and blamed him for Alana's death even though he hadn't seen Alana the evening she'd passed away.

Skye frowned and shrugged, her smile falling from her face. "I was driving home one night, and somebody ran me off the road. I think they were drunk. Right now, I feel like my whole life is over just because I can't seem to make it home." She scooped her messy blonde locks behind her ear and took a deep breath. "They told me not to go on long walks, so what did I do?"

"You're the most down-to-earth rebel I know," Craig teased but his smile quickly faded, and his expression became serious. "I'm sorry somebody did that. Especially to you of all people, you don't deserve that. People are the worst. Why d'you think I stay indoors for as much of the day as possible? I was wondering why you hadn't thrown me a quid in a while."