First lines given – #7

Welcome to First Lines Given! If that sentence confuses you, here’s a link to where I explain what this is.

Today’s first line is by ivyzenna! They said:

This one took me a second to think about more than others, but I think the result works well. Here’s the result:

Open trailer windows caught the night breeze off the ocean and reflected the guttering candle that sat on a makeshift altar.

I wasn’t sure who made the altar. I found it when I got here a few hours ago. Tall, slender candles filled it up.

But there was no other place to park, so I ended up parking near it, not too far away. I didn’t want to disrupt anything, so I tried to park as far as I could. But other people already took the other parking spots; I got the last, tiny one that took a couple of tries to get into. Well, more like a handful of tries.

Since the sun had decided to set in slow motion, people left the beach one after one. I stayed near the water, watching the waves crash. Even though the waves repeated the same motion, it felt like it never crashed the same way twice.

I came to the ocean for about the same reason as the altar. My life had shifted again for about the fifteenth time but never the last. One moment, I thought I finally had it all together, but the waves crashed down, destroying everything.

My job wasn’t as secure as I thought it was. I’d have to find another one far away with a new, dangerous boss and new, mysterious coworkers. But if I moved, I’d be leaving my hometown behind. I was so used to the mediocre city ways. Something was going to change whether I liked it or not. What if I had to move and my new place didn’t have a garage?

I lost track of time.

My feet stretched out in the cold, soft sand. The sun had disappeared from the sky. I stood up and brushed the sand off of me the most I could.

It was bright enough that I was able to find my trailer. I didn’t know if I could stay here, so I searched for a rest stop not too far up the highway on my phone. Since the shock of the change, I had been traveling around my home state, seeing everything I had never seen before. Well, all the parts that I never went out of my way to stop by before.

If I saw enough of it, maybe I wouldn’t leave after all. Perhaps I’d stay until I found another job.

Or maybe—just maybe—this was my way to say goodbye.