(hello first time writing kinda nervous1!!!!)

Dusking: the practice of watching daylight turn to darkness as a form of relaxation.

I went dusking every evening at 6:00pm on the dot. I always arrived at the exact moment when the glorious rays of sun dripped over the harbour in hues of gold as that great ball of fire that tirelessly hung above the town finally exited from view and dipped beneath the horizon. As part of a practiced routine, my eyes would trace the path of the sun as it waved goodbye to the Earth and went to sleep. I'd set myself up on the jetty extending out into the deep blue, swinging my legs out and paying no mind to the tickle of the sea spray I receive in return. Then, my favourite part: the rising of the moon.

I know, you must be thinking, "You can already see the moon before the sun sets! What's the big deal?" You might not understand. It'll take a while to explain, and even then, you may not comprehend it. I can already see the imaginary hours fly by as I sit here and write about all the events leading up to the sudden strike of this love of mine that is indescribable and incomparable.


But, you never know unless you try, right?

The town had a name for people like me.

Not "dusker" that was my word, my invention, whispered first to myself and then eventually to no one in particular. The locals called us harbour dreamers, which I always thought was a little too romantic. As if any of it had been a choice.

It was a Tuesday in late September: I remember because the fishmonger on Carrow Street had just hung his autumn sign, the one with the painted mackerel that always looked slightly alarmed, and I had been walking with absolutely nowhere to be for the first time in what felt like several lives. I had just handed in my resignation letter that morning. Slid it across a desk of cold glass to a man who received it the way you receive a takeaway menu through the letterbox: glanced at, set aside, forgotten.

I walked until the cobblestones ran out.

And there it was. My worn out work shoes found the jetty before my mind did, old wood, salt-grey, extending out over the water like a finger. I sat. I didn't plan to stay. What happened in those first forty minutes I can only describe as a kind of unclenching. Something behind my sternum that had been held tight for years simply... released. Like a fist finally opening. The light did it for me, I'd say, the specific and unrepeatable quality of that particular light, on that particular evening, moving through the water in a way that suggested the harbour knew something the rest of the world had forgotten. Little fishes wriggling through the lake, rippling and refracting rainbows against my legs, dangling off the jetty.

I came back the next evening.

And the next.

By the Friday, I had a spot. The elderly man with the terrier who fished off the far end would nod at me when I arrived. The woman who jogged past at quarter past six would slow, briefly, when she reached the boards, as if the jetty itself demanded a change of pace. We never spoke. We didn't need to. We were all there for the same quiet reason.

That was eight months before I met her.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. You'll need some patience with me: I warned you as much. The story doesn't go in a straight line, because love, I have found, is not a straight-line kind of thing. It doubles back. It lingers in doorways. It arrives, often as not, in the precise moment you have stopped bracing for it.

For now, just know this: Every evening at six, I was on that jetty, with the sun going under and the moon coming up, and somewhere in the space between those two enormous, indifferent celestial bodies I was, for the first time in a very long time, exactly where I was supposed to be.