Fine Apple | ✓

t r o p i c

❝I'm getting tired of waking up and not being at the beach❞ -Unknown

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"TAKE CARE, okay, Aria?" he murmured into the line, straining to keep his voice consistent with the level of positivity he always tried to maintain, even when everything around him seemed to be conspiring against it.

Both the phone call and his own mood dropped with the same magnitude--like a bulky sack of coconuts flung wearily down onto a hard surface. He glanced down at the receiver defeatedly, turning it over in his hands before slamming it back into its cradle.

The resulting thud reverberated loudly through the still air, and he suddenly reached out on impulse, tenderly lifting the phone to confirm it was still intact. He realized that he had grown somewhat protective over the device lately, as though Aria were somehow encased inside and he might damage her.

As absurd as that sounded, he realized there was an element of practicality to it. If the vulnerable, antique device were to lose the life it had been clinging to very desperately for the better part of eighteen years, he doubted he would easily find himself another way of ever reaching her. The thought of that ray of rather loud sunshine disappearing from his lonely beach suddenly emerged with striking horror. Another strong gust of raw wind carried over the deserted boardwalk, seemingly in response.

"Don't worry, 'bout a thing," crooned the nearby portable radio, the Bob Marley song surfacing as he glanced over at it despondently. "Every little thing's, gonna be all right."

"Ugh, shut up," he replied to it with a low air of disgust.

"Rise up this morning, smile with the rising sun," the music continued to churn through the misty, sunless air. He hauled himself off the tattered beach chair and smacked the off button on the radio. It stuck with a stubborn click.

He opened his mouth to express his frustration but drew back after a moment, feeling somewhat apologetic. "I'm sorry, Bob," he managed, gently and almost reverently placing the small radio back onto its pedestal, an overturned orange crate. The years of corrosion evidenced in the crate's brittle, rotten wooden planks rendered it useless for its original purpose; it now served as a sideboard for his many odds and ends. Just beyond sat the fruit bins themselves, facing outward where beachgoers exiting the boardwalk could not miss them.

Settling back into his seat, he tipped the set of sunglasses off his windblown blond hair and over his eyes, despite the ugly clouds overhead which had decided to obliterate the sun from his view today. One could always pretend. And lying there for that brief moment, toes buried in the sand and eyes closed beneath the plastic shades as the radio faithfully continued to crank out its reggae music into the open air, Nicholas Vern found that he could in fact pretend.

He thought of Aria somehow in that moment, his mind trying to wrap itself around the mystery girl, the annoyingly talkative voice chirping on the other end of the line. How could someone sometimes manage to drive his nerves nearly to the breaking point, and at other times almost succeed in charming his usually apathetic self without even apparently meaning to?

He had hated talking to her at first, bewildered at why she continued to call. And then as the conversations progressed--bizarre as it seemed--Nicholas was finding that he was experiencing a ridiculous thrill at the phone's ringing, and his attachment to their discourse was growing, just like a wave breaking out at sea before smoothing out comfortably onto a beach.