Robbie and Suzi were only a few weeks into their love affair and a few days into something that felt like eloping. Suzi sat nestled between Robbie’s legs, wrapped warmly in one of his Guernsey jumpers, worn like a skirt. Her body leaned back into his as he peeled an orange and shared it segment by segment. They were somewhere off the coast of Lyme Regis, on a creaking 38-foot ketch. It was August 1980, with the kind of summer light that made the sea burn white and everything on deck smell of salt, diesel, and sun-warmed rope.
Occasionally, her fingers joined his—ten fingers pulling at the peel, two people acting as one. One segment for him. One for her. Then she took Robbie’s hands and held them before her, as if they were hers now.
“I love your wrists,” she said.
She studied the back of his hands. Then she drew them to her chest, his hands across her heart, his arms like a protective girdle.
He felt tethered. Claimed.
Looking over her shoulder at their arms in his lap, Robbie saw what she saw. For a moment, they breathed together, turned their heads together. She looked up with a knowing, Mona Lisa smile.
Fifty years on, Robbie looks back and adores those two. He wants to hug them. Make sure they’re okay.
They were. They are.
But not with each other. Not for a very long time.
The ties that bound them feathered, frayed, and broke.
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