The Last Night Of Summer

Manhattan Beach on the night before autumn, and I held her hand a little tighter as the sun climbed down out of the sky and touched the shore behind Ambrose Light. Just a few weeks earlier it dropped behind the Coney Island skyline and backlit the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone in a blaze of pinks and yellows as we lay on our blanket drying off from the surf. Now we stood in the chilly sand, jeans rolled up to our knees. I wore a turtleneck and she wore the denim jacket with the embroidered dolphin on the back, leaping out of a multicolored ocean under a smiling sun. I stood a step behind her and wrapped my arms around her, rested my chin on her shoulder. She turned and kissed my cheek as the sun dipped out of sight behind Sandy Hook and the first star twinkled way out over the eastern ocean. We walked up the beach so slowly, holding hands, knowing we probably wouldn't be back here again for such a long time.

It was dark by the time we came to the old wooden footbridge across the bay and stopped to put our shoes on. Across the water the lights glittered from the restaurants and the fishing boats tied up at the piers. On Emmons Avenue the nightly parade had begun, cars cruising up and down the length of the bay like it was the main street of some prairie town. But on this side it was dark and quiet under this old maple tree. We stood there for a long time, sometimes kissing and sometimes just looking at the view as the moon rose over the bay. In the morning she would be leaving for school upstate, and our lives would never be the same again. But I swore I would never forget that night under the maple tree by the footbridge, with the lights dancing on the water and the cars cruising by with the radios playing so loud. And her hand in mine....