This is an excerpt from an unfinished story:

It was on a beach that they first met.

He preferred it to have been on a busy street or some squalid corner of the city, instead, to preclude picturesqueness from its recall. The crowd’s din or the stench of garbage would have made it seem less of a memory.

Instead, what he had with him, now, was the rhythmic sound of crashing waves as accompaniment. The undulating sea, the blanket of heaven, the sun-kissed trees, the warm sand: these formed the backdrop of his reminiscence of that first encounter. And in his mind, she would be there, etched against a blue sea and an even bluer sky, toes curling on the sand, looking at him.

His misery made the whole picture seem even more ephemeral.