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“Nah, it’s all good. I might swing by tomorrow.”
I leave. The disappointment is heavier than I thought possible, and I rub the worn bracelet on my wrist.
“And?” Bear bellows.
“No luck. How about we check out the surf shop and head back.” The urge to change the subject is desperate.
“Cool.”
It’s not the first time I’ve been inside the shop, and I love it as much as I did back then. We kill some time checking out the boards before heading back to the house.
“I’ll catch you up,” I call. There are two stops I need to make.
“Okay. But don’t complain if there’s no hot water left,” Bear taunts, but we’ve spent years travelling together, and no hot water wouldn’t be the end of the world.
First, The Silver Tree. The shop I bought our bracelets from.
I enter and head to the counter. “Excuse me, you probably don’t remember me, but I got this here a few years ago. I was hoping that there’s something I could buy that would be more permanent?” I ask the woman behind the counter.
She takes my offered wrist and examines the bracelet. “Well, it’s certainly had some wear.”
“I don’t take it off. But I’d like to keep the silver bead if I can.”
“Do you intend to wear that all the time, too?”
“I’d never take it off if it were up to me,” I answer honestly.
“Well, we can put it on a silver rope necklace. Durable. It won’t weather, and it’s impervious to salt.” Her eyes give me a once over.
“Yeah. That’d be ace. Thanks.”
She has to cut the leather from my wrist, and she shows me the options. I pick a necklace that looks as she described, like a rope, and she threads the wave bead onto it.
“Thank you.” I fasten it and adjust the cool metal around my throat. My wrist feels naked without the leather there. But I guess things change.
I pay and wonder if Zennor still had hers. Then again, she didn’t bother to get in touch. Why would she keep something I gave to her?
The next stop on my mystery tour of Tregethworth is Zennor’s house.
I was here, after all. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see if there was a reason she’d ignored me.
It’s a small town, and it’s easy to find my way back up to her house.
Like many other places, it hasn’t changed. I prop my board against the wall and knock on the door.
My heartbeat picks up as I think I hear somebody, but the door stays closed. Determined, I knock again and wait.
It’s the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, so even if Zennor and her family still live here, they could be at work. Out. A hundred reasons why the door stayed closed.
Finally, I give in and resign myself that Zennor might have to stay in the past.
She holds the measure for all future relationships. The love we had still makes my heart ache after all this time, even though it only lasted a handful of days. Time didn’t make it deeper or more meaningful. I felt my love for her still to this day.
But maybe now I could move on.
A couple of days later, we leave Cornwall and head over to Ireland and then the next stop, Nazaré.
Nazaré is the place that gives me the world. But, as with so many things in nature, there has to be a balance. And my scales have been stacked in my favour for too long. It was only a matter of time when you have a job as high risk as mine.
