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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item.php/item_id/1113946-September-Song
Rated: 13+ · Short Story · Teen · #1113946
Saying Goodbye is never easy.
The soothing warm summer evening breezes had given rise to the more cooling winds from the north that were indicative of the approaching season of Fall. A time of season for change for everything they say.

Virginia Beach still broadcast a few remaining die hard sun lovers who still strolled the beaches. Some of them could be seen sitting on the sand immersed in a novel while others were contented soaking in the last warming rays of the season's sunshine in a futile attempt to insure their tan lines would last just a little bit longer this year as compared to previous years. Quiet strolls on the beach in the late afternoon called for a light jacket or hooded sweatshirt to ward off the goose-bumps as the temperatures fell with the setting of the sun. Labor Day had come and gone and the beach was nearly void of its recreational participants now. The summer party crowds, vacationers and longtime residents, their boisterous laughter and shrieks of joy and merriment are now just a haunting memory of another summer past.

Jason Weaver raced the engine of his Pontiac Firebird, double clutching to squeal his tires a bit as he pulled into the nearly barren parking lot of Lavins Point Beach. Katty, his steady girlfriend for the past four years in Bridgham High, had called earlier in the day and invited him to meet her there. Something in her voice worried him. He could not exactly and clearly pinpoint what it was, but she reiterated during their rather brief conversation, it was important that she speak with him.

“Hey there you gorgeous hunk. How'd ya like some female company?” asked Lynda Patterson with a cheerful smile as she walked along the pitted steel guardrail barrier separating the beach.

Jason returned her greeting with a friendly wave and a smile. He shielded the sun with the back of his hand. "Hi Lynda, wouldn't you just know it?" he said placing his hands on his hips. "It's just my darn bad luck, you gotta ask me that just when Katty is on the way to meet me," he added jokingly.

“Darn it!" Lynda shouted, She pouted and stomped her foot on the asphalt pavement. "I never seem to get an opportunity to get you alone even for just a few minutes, Jason!" She returned his smile once again flirtatiously. "That girl is always in my way," she added playfully. "Make sure you say hello to Katty for me when you see her," she added. Jason smiled and waved goodbye.

They had known one another since grade school and had become best of friends. However, Lynda & Jason's relationship was strictly a platonic one. Everyone at Bridgham High knew Katty and Jason were a couple since they met one another their Freshman year.

The sharp blaring of Katty’s horn of her Toyota Corolla drew his attention. He watched her park into the vacant space next to him. The yellow parking lane lines were worn and faded from years of past summer traffic. She was arrestingly beautiful with long chestnut brown hair and hazel eyes. She possessed a crackling charm and an alluring personality that detoured Jason's heart to her alone. She exited her vehicle and forced a weak smile avoiding his eyes a moment. She kissed him lightly on the cheek and took his hand.

"Hi Jason, can we take a walk?” she asked softly. However, her voice betrayed her as there was an underlying feeling of a surging tension in her request.

"What was that?" Katty had caught him off guard momentarily. "Oh, yeah sure. What is it you wanted to talk to me about that was so important?” Jason asked taking her hand into his and interlocking their fingers together.

Katty cleared her throat and bit her lower lip. The lump in her throat seemed to have gotten larger. They walked along the shore in silence as a few gulls and terns took to flight as they approached them. Jason was looking out over the water while Katty watched the cresting waves break and kiss the shoreline ahead of her. The small waves broke along the sand as if someone had whipped a rope sending the coils further down the beach into infinity. He bent down and picked up a handful of rocks, selecting the best flat ones and skimmed them across the surface of the water. He was first to break the silence.


"We have what is known as a following sea tonight, Katty. Outgoing tide, with the wind off the land. It will be a good night for navigational speed for mariners traveling east and out to sea,” he grunted as he skipped a stone six times across the surface.

“Too bad those navigators aren’t heading toward Los Angeles. They could take me with them,” Katty commented as she turned away from the ocean and stared at the surrounding beach houses.

“What are you talking about Katty?" he snickered nervously. "You don’t have to be in California till the end of the month.” He tossed another stone across the water and watched it disappear below the surface.

“No Jason, that's when my first class for school is scheduled for. I've been delaying flying out there. But I have to leave Monday, the day after tomorrow.” Her voice quivered but she managed to retain her composure and inhale deeply.

He stopped short and turned to face her. His puzzled eyes shifted to hers. “Monday?" Jason cried out. His heart thundered in his chest. “You can’t! Please don’t Katty, not yet.” He reached to embrace her, but she took a step backward away from his touch and licked her lips.

“Jason, you knew this day was going to happen someday. Sooner or later, the day would come when the both of us would have to say goodbye to each other.” Her eyes searched his face and hoped for a sign of understanding to register upon his facial features.

Jason clenched his hands tightly into fists and glared at her angrily. “So, Katharine, Miss Valedictorian, this is it? You're breaking up with me? The final curtain falls on our little high school play? Our teenager in love roles have played its last performance on stage and draws to a dramatic theatrical conclusion? Now I am suppose to give you some applause for your romantic script?" he replied sarcastically fueled now by the news of her departure. The tears betrayed his conjectured anger and rimmed in his eyes.

"Jason, please. This is hard enough to do as it is without the sarcasm.” Katty clenched the already crushed tear stained tissues in her windbreaker jacket pocket. “You haven’t called me Katharine since the day we were introduced to one another in Miss Ortega’s class in Spanish our Freshman year. I loved you the moment I looked into your incredibly warm eyes, Jason. My feelings for you were never an act."

“I just can’t believe it,” Jason mumbled kicking at the stones embedded into the wet sand in unsettled frustration. “I just can’t believe you can stand there and you can actually state you no longer want me as a part of your life. Four wasted years being together. I thought we planned a future together Katty," Jason's voice trembled laced with an overwhelming sadness. He turned away and shook his head in visible anguish and despair.

“Jason, please won't you realize that we are both at the pinnacle of our lives and careers right now." She reached to hold his arm. "A crossroad where our decisions we make today are going to affect us for the rest of our lives. Look at yourself, Jason. You have been already accepted at one of the top oceanographic college institutes in the country! Look at your early research and what you have done with your studies and detailed results on how pollution affects marine life. Do you want to take that acceptance letter from the college and wrap a greasy double cheeseburger in it and ask the customers if they want fries with it?” Katty smiled at him trying to ease the painful dilemma they both were facing.

"I’d give college up just to be with you Katty!” he sighed glancing at her. His tears rimmed the edges of his eyes. He felt his throat constrict each time he looked into he face of the girl he loved more than anything in his world.

“Stop that foolishness, Jason,” she said firmly.

“So what the hell am I suppose to do, Katty? You want me to take a vow of celibacy and become a Buddhist monk and live in some shack in the mountains of Tibet waiting for you to get your degree from UCLA?” The flow of Jason's tears could no longer be held back and he sobbed. The tears streamed down his freckled face similar to the time he lost his father a few years ago. Katty pulled the knotted tissues from her windbreaker and wiped the tears from his cheeks.

“Jason, do you remember the time we worked at Burger World?” She reached and touched his face tenderly with her palm.

She attempted to look into Jason's eyes and face, but his chin still hung down against his heaving chest and didn't answer.

“And remember when that stinking cigar smoking obese little creep boss of ours came in the restaurant and was ordering us to push more soda and fries on the customers? Come on Jason, look at me! You're acting like a scolded little puppy who made a tinkle on the rug."

She tried in vain to make him give her a tiny smile but to no avail. She tilted his head just a bit with her index finger to look into those loving blue eyes.

“I was so proud of you that day." Katty smiled and sighed deeply. "You gave that creep a soap box opera about how he was exploiting American youth and raping the infinite energy resources of young Americans to produce huge profits for his greedy little fingers. Remember that?" she inquired hopefully. "That was my man who stood on his own two feet and did that." She hugged his arm. "That's the man I will always love."

Jason finally forced a grin and wiped away some of the tears with his shirt sleeve.

“Yeah, I remember that creepy boss and saying that stuff. I was showing off to impress you and what did it get us, except fired and shown the door," he answered in disgust.

"Jason, neither one of us is ready for marriage. You want to do a lot of things in life and so do I. Please don’t make us both prisoners to one another like that creep wanted us to be like at Burger World. I am not ready to be a mother or a wife and I don’t think you are ready to be a father or a husband. Neither one of us has any idea of what the responsibilities of raising a family are. We are only eighteen years old and have a lifetime ahead of us. I want to study medicine and maybe become a doctor someday. I have to follow my dreams Jason, and I pray you will follow yours in ocean marine life. Do you actually think, we are the only teenagers in the whole world that are doing what we are doing right now?”

Jason mumbled a barely audible response and toyed with the grains of sand with the toe of his worn sneakers.

“Understand. Times have changed since Miss Ortega's class. The days of writing our names on phone booth walls and drawing valentine hearts on history books are gone,” Katty said nodding her head trying desperately not to show what she was feeling inside of herself.

He sniffled and licked lips. “Yeah, seems like it was all a waste of time though in a way, but I guess you're right Katty. It's just like the hearts with our initials in them we drew right here in the wet sand for so long over the past four years. I thought it would never end but those hearts only lasted long enough to see the tide wash them away. Just as if our love never existed at all. I imagine there will be countless Jason and Katty's doing what we did here long after we walk away from here."

He looked at her face and waited for her smile. He understood what Katty had said and had for the moment, stemmed the wave of tears.

“Jason, I know it's hard for both of us to accept but when you look closely at our relationship, it’s not fair to either one of us. I am going to be away for six years, perhaps even longer. I don’t expect you to stay home waiting
for my phone call. You're a handsome man and you are going to turn a lot of girls heads and I am going to turn a lot of guys heads. We would both
be fools if we believed neither one of us would ever be physically attracted to or tempted by the charms of someone else."

She paused and let her chin fall to her chest before raising it once again to look into his eyes.

"I can physically walk away from you now Jason, but I can never run away from the memories of the man that I will always love. Whenever I want you all I have to do to remember your voice. I can listen and play it over and over again in my memories of what we did and shared together all these years. If and when we ever see one another is in the hands of time and fate and that will be the next chapter in the book of our lives.”

She looked into Jason’s eyes, red rimmed and puffy now and smiled weakly and whispered, “Goodbye Jason.”

She turned and walked alone on the cool soft sand. She tightly closed her eyes and thrust her hands into her pockets with firmly clenched fists that buried her nails into the palms of her hands. Then the sound of his voice rang loud, carried on the wind like the pealing of a church bell calling out to its congregation;

“I Love You, Katharine McCauley!”

She didn’t turn around, but the sound of his voice only made her hasten her gait to her vehicle more quickly. The lump in her throat seemed to restrict her breathing. She fumbled with her car keys in a futile atttempt to get inside. She bit her lower lip hard enough to bleed. With her chest heaving she accelerated out of the parking lot, across Mulberry Avenue as her vision blurred from the cresting tears. As she crossed the intersection of Pine and Grove Avenue, she pulled to the curb and shut off the engine.

Her tears now flowed in uncontrollable sobs as she gripped the steering wheel tightly that caused her knuckles to become white. She rested her forehead on the cool steering wheel, and as she cried, she called out for Jason once more.

“May the summer breezes always remain gentle and warm you my darling, and may the Great Spirit bless you and all those who enter into your life. This prayer forever will be my gift to you, Jason, our September Song.”
© Copyright 2006 Chuckster (chuckster at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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