Devil's Harbor by Alex Gilly

while he had shown genuine interest in her work and her ideas, he hadn’t seen her work as worthier than his own; as far as he was concerned, she was doing her job and he was doing his. He was interested in her mind, but it was her body that he wanted first. Mona had been attracted to his directness, his blue eyes, and, if she was honest with herself—and this she found hard to reconcile, given her vocation—even his job. That Interceptor you spend all night driving over the sea … how much horsepower did you say it had? In bed, the corporate lawyers hadn’t cared about her, while the social activists had done nothing but. Finn seemed both to care and not to care. There was nothing calculating about Finn.
    They were married and they were happy, especially in bed, but then a year into it Finn had disappeared on a binge. When he’d slunk back through the front door, there’d been tears and apologies and promises, and then a couple of good months. Then he did it again. That time, Mona moved back to her parents’ house, and for a while she’d even refused to take his calls and Finn had had to plead his case through Diego. Eventually, she’d caved—she dreaded that out-of-reach itch—but she’d been self-aware enough to realize she was caving, so she’d negotiated a contract with him, which amounted to: once more and I’m gone. So Finn had made her another promise and so far he’d stuck to it, even though he refused to go to those meetings she wanted him to attend. After a year and a half without a drink, she’d stopped mentioning the meetings.
    Now, however, with the shooting, she wanted him to see a counselor. Post-traumatic stress, she’d said. Grief processing. Talk it out.
    But talking wasn’t Finn’s way. His way was to keep going. Stay busy. When the darkness creeps in, crowd it out with relentless activity.
    His plan now, down on the beach with the cold hard sand beneath his bare feet, was to sweat it out, no matter how much it hurt.
    He ran steady for minute-long stretches, then sprinted as fast as he could for short bursts, using landmarks on the beach like lifeguard towers and storm-water outlets as finish lines.
    His body warmed, his heart thumped, his legs burned. Sweat trickled down his forehead and streamed down his back. He dodged the surf swooshing up the shore. He ran past wet-suited surfers carrying their boards underarm down to the sea, other runners with earphone cords dangling from their ears, housewives walking their dogs even though dogs were forbidden, and svelte young women in leggings doing yoga with their backs to the water, facing the rising sun. He ran past a group of young people in fancy clothes sitting on the sand who had obviously been partying all night. He noticed the bottle in a brown paper bag they were passing around.
    He ran interval sprints the length of Hermosa to the pier that divided it from Manhattan Beach, a distance of two miles. At the pier, he stopped and realized that his legs were trembling. He walked up to the dry stuff, lay down, and did crunches till his abdomen burned. Then he did some more.
    When he was physically spent, he let his body flop onto the sand and lay there for a moment listening to the waves breaking around the pylons. The sun was up now, and a couple of big brown pelicans were sitting on the rail atop the pier above him. Finn gazed at the huge, placid birds. As a teenager, he’d spent hours surfing the pier, and he’d always liked watching the wildlife between sets. Not just the pelicans but the ospreys that circled above and the seals and dolphins that sometimes showed up.
    He hauled himself up and looked out at the ocean. Out in the takeoff zone, five or six guys were sitting on their boards, waiting for the set, their seal-black wet suits glistening in the early light. Finn had run hard; his body hurt. Yet the pall still hung there.
    He figured he’d just have to run