Vossey stood under the fluorescent orange streetlight on the pier feeling like a stupid, cold idiot, scolding herself for both ever believing he would show up and also for wearing such thin clothing in an attempt to appear sexy and alluring. 

She looked at her watch one more time, brushing past her rock-hard nipples. They were too pert to avoid at this stage of coldness. She saw it was 7:30pm before the first raindrop pointedly hit the watch face. He was half an hour late already; no point being wet as well as stupid, cold and idiotic. She turned and rushed back to the car park, narrowly avoiding the dump of rain that was casting in her specific direction.

She started her old bomb of a car and stared out the front window as the first thuds of heavy rain drummed their arrival in mercury-esque splashes on her windscreen. It’s a pity that I’m not in the rain, she thought to herself, because then no one could see my tears. 

The car radio ominously started playing light gospel music that she simultaneously took as a sign but also immediately denounced because if God existed he wouldn’t allow one of his children to live in such pain.

The swing in the attached playground swung back and forth in the wind and reminded her that her uterus was drying up and soon nobody would ever want her because she would hold no societal value or benefit as a mate.

Her chubby fingers gripped the steering wheel so tight her fat knuckles turned blue as she cried in great, heaving motions.

Her blue, ring less fingers. Anther big cry.

The ocean sea shelled over the reassuring hum of her engine and a group of miscreant youths appeared from a nearby pedestrian tunnel as she frantically cleaned her eyes, knowing that the only sight worse than a fat woman crying was a fat woman eating.

More people followed – did a football game just end? – as she assumed the role of a perfectly normal human being who sits in their car and stares not at a beach but the promise of a beach because don’t we all do that from time to time?

The crowd dispersed and her loneliness resumed which shamed her because the frantic rush for the appearance of normality was a welcome distraction in her lonely, cold and stupid life.