ReadMyShortStory.com

His gaze swept gently around the sunny room. His eyes were half closed, not from fatigue, but from a general laziness and the cumulative effects of a warm summer afternoon. Hours of swimming, and the not so few beers that he had enjoyed, added to the feeling of relaxation that now engulfed his body. From the lounge chair where he sat, legs extended, feet propped up on a smooth leather ottoman, he could see the whole of the main room of the little beach cottage.

A small bookshelf sat against the wall to his left. Dog-eared paperbacks, each at least a decade or two old, crowded the narrow ledges, some of the larger books squeezing the smaller in a silent battle for prominent positioning. Thin scraps of paper, pieces of colored ribbon and even a genuine bookmark or two protruded upward from a number of the books, forming a thin forest of objects that sometimes waved a friendly hello to him when the breeze from the nearby opened window caught them just right. If he squinted a bit he could read their titles from where he was sitting. His eyes were still sharp, he thought proudly, and then allowed himself to face a bit of reality. Well, he thought, closing his right eye in an impromptu test, at least his left one was still sharp. Whatever had happened to the right one to make it so nearsighted he did not want to dwell upon. But he knew what it was. He was growing older. His dad had told him once, with all the wisdom of an octogenarian, that there were two choices in life. Get old and accept what happens, or die. Bad eye, trick knee and sore back or not, he admitted to himself that he preferred the former. He smiled as he scanned the titles, remembering the hours upon hours of beach reading, and re-reading, each of those books had offered to him. Suntan lotion, hot sand, warm wind, cold ocean and the cries of seagulls had been the backdrop for the summers of his life.

Directly in front of him, across the room against the far wall, was the small fireplace that he had never once lit. The weather had always been too warm when he was at this quaint little vacation home. Even on the dampest, rainiest days there was no need to have a fire. He laughed gently. Oh, if that shaggy hearth rug could talk, the stories it could tell. No need for a fire at all, oh no, not with what she always had in mind on those long days when they were stuck inside.

To his right was a dining table, too large in his opinion, for the size of the room. It was topped with a variety of daily use items, and some items that should have been put away properly long ago. One item in particular caught his attention. It was an opened box of moth balls. Light blue in color, white printing shining beneath the partially removed cellophane wrapping, the top flaps sticking up like the attentive ears of an excited animal. If he closed his eyes and sniffed hard enough, he could imagine he could detect their scent, even from as far away from them as he was.

He would always associate the scent of moth balls with this place. With the feelings of desire and love that overtook him whenever he was here, after a long day in the brilliant sun. Even in the deepest, darkest, coldest months of winter, if he were to accidentally acquire the scent of naphthalene, or even smell something that reminded him of it, he would be transported to this lounge chair. Transported to summer. Transported to her.

He hadn’t even realized that he had nodded off when he heard the sound of bare feet slapping gently on the cool tile floor as she entered the room. Her mouth turned up into a sly, devilish type of smile and her voice betrayed a bit of guilty pleasure as she nudged him and softly said “Better get some clothes on Romeo, my husband will be home in a half hour”.