Forever Beach by Shelley Noble

glass of cabernet wondering why she hadn’t asked him to stay.
    Stupid question. He’d picked up the signs, the glances toward Leila’s room, the fidgeting. He was getting so good at picking up cues from her that he’d be heading for the door before she even realized she was doing it. And he’d be gone before she could say, “Don’t go.”
    She missed him already. They’d made plans to see each other the next day, but it wasn’t the same as waking up with someone you were glad to wake up to. They’d had those times, before Sam got sick, before Leila had come to stay. But Sarah never seemed to be able to multilove. She and Wyatt were good until Sam needed her more.
    After Sam died, she gave her love to Wyatt, until Leila came, and even after that until they had started shuttling Leila back and forth from Carmen to Sarah. Each time she returned, Leila would shrink from Wyatt, and Sarah would know Carmen had a man at home who wasn’t treating Leila right.
    She looked for signs of abuse and fortunately found none. But it didn’t keep Sarah from worrying. She knew firsthand how things went. So instead of helping Leila to accept Wyatt, to trust that he would never hurt her, Sarah removed him from the picture.
    Now, with Leila’s adoption imminent, she wanted to keep them both, but she felt like she was trying to corral soap bubbles most of the time.
    So she sat on the steps alone with her cabernet. Cabernet. What a hoot; Sarah Hargreave lived long enough to move from strawberry wine and marijuana to cabernet and a medium-rare steak.
    She had Sam to thank for that, too.
    At fifteen, she’d been hell on wheels until one night she watched a fellow user choke to death. Stood there and couldn’t help. And she saw her mother, and herself. And she stepped away. Sobered up.
    And became totally obnoxious.
    She’d been so afraid of becoming a drug addict and alcoholic, dependent like her mother, that she’d been rigid, and so afraid of losing Sam, that she attacked him for enjoying a glass of wine at night and the occasional cigar.
    Sarah blushed hot with remorse at the invectives she’d hurled at him. He took it all, sometimes laughing, sometimes reassuring her, sometimes telling her to bug off. He just let it roll off and kept doing what he was doing.
    But sometimes looking back she wondered if she had really hurt him, and she would send him a prayer—on the outside chance there really was a heaven—and tell him she was sorry and that she loved him and . . . and all sorts of things.
    Like she’d once written to Nonie, when she had gone.
    Sarah wanted to tell Wyatt how she felt about him, before he left, too. For people always left. It was what they did. Moved, died, just drifted apart. She wanted to tell him, but she wasn’t completely sure what she felt.
    There were moments when she wished they could stay together, be their own forever family. But those moments were quickly followed by her rational mind saying, Nothing lasts forever, nothing. Depend on yourself. Be happy with yourself. Get used to being alone .
    When she’d finally started looking at life without always waiting for the next rip in her heart, Sam got sick. It took a couple of years for him to leave, all the time preparing her, giving strength to her when he should have been trying to save himself. And when the time came, she couldn’t let him go as gracefully as he left.
    She was weak. And she had clung to him, even after it was too late to keep him.
    Now Sarah started each day with the promise that she would get it together, be happy, not be afraid, and most days she succeeded.
    She knew no one could fill the gaping hole she sometimes felt in her heart. Nothing could replace that but her own acceptance of herself.
    She finished her wine. Looked at the empty glass. Drugs and alcohol were a walk in the park compared to her real addiction. She was drowning in an addiction to