“Tell me one more time why we’re here?” he asked, with a deliberately affect-less tone that belied his growing impatience.

We’re here to find pretty rocks, like we do every year.”

The middle aged couple stood side by side on the stony beach facing the Atlantic Ocean, just below Montauk Lighthouse. Looking out across the vast expanse of shimmering blue, beyond the knee-high waves breaking in front of them and out to the sharp edge of the horizon, where blue sky met the indigo sea, the woman tried to visualize the unimaginable distance between them and the next landfall to the east, Portugal. The man was worrying about traffic on the roads highways.

This was the spot they returned to every summer to commemorate their engagement. Nearly two decades ago, he proposed to her on that beach, bruising his knee on the rocks as he knelt. He joked that he had lured her there for a rock-gathering excursion so he could give her a rock while standing on rocks and surrounded by rocks. He thought the connections he drew were funny and clever, and out of love for him, she chose not to disagree.

For the first dozen years or so, these romantic pilgrimages were exactly that; romantic, even celebratory. They’d look for the same large flat rock to sit together on, holding each other, kissing, and proclaiming their love over and over. He would almost always compare his love to the infinite ocean, endless and deep. She would always listen attentively and in silence. Though she knew every word by heart, she never let on, always responding like it was the first time. She didn’t care about the repetitiveness or his lack of imagination; she just loved him. Once, they stayed on their rock past sunset and, overcome by desire and feeling safely hidden by the darkness, they made love on that rock, with only a blanket and their piled cloths between their bodies and the hard stone. They imagined they were Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr performing their beach love scene in “From Here to Eternity,” only without the film crew or Fred Zinnemann’s direction.

This was their seventeenth such trip, though, and they were no longer the romantics they once were. The routines of married life had settled into monotony years ago and he, in particular, felt less and less connected to the ardor the trips to the beach used to inspire.

“I don’t see why we have to do this every year,” he complained. “We don’t have room for more rocks, no matter how pretty you think they are.”

“I don’t care, we have to do this! I look forward to collecting rocks every year even if you don’t.”

“Okay, okay! Calm down. We’ll keep collecting rocks. We’ll collect every damn rock on this beach, if you want.” He kicked some small stones toward her, as if to punctuate his thoughts. “This is our seventeenth trip, right? Hmm, that’s a prime number. Maybe that’ll make it lucky or something.”

“Only you would think of something like that. You’re such a nerd!” She tried sound angry, but revealed the slightest of smiles, in spite of herself.

“I’m no nerd, goddamdit! I’m a geek! How many times have I told you that? It sounds more professional.”

“You’re an idiot,” she said, for at least the millionth time.

“Bitch!”

“Asshole!”

“Feel better now?”

“Yup. You?”

“Yup. Here’s your bucket.”

The game had played out exactly the same way for as long as either of them could remember.

The beach at Montauk Point that faces the Atlantic has no sand, just rocks of every imaginable size, shape, and color. But, rather than being randomly mixed, the ceaseless action of the waves have sorted them all by size, like some perfectly efficient grading machine.

At the eastern end, nearest the lighthouse, there is fine pea-sized gravel and as you walk west the size of the rocks gradually increases until, some two hundred or so yards down the beach, they’re too large to pick up and must be walked around, their gaps filled in with coarse sand and gravel. This is the part of the beach where the couple’s flat bed-size rock is. It was always the last place they stopped before going home to Brooklyn.

“We don’t need any more gravel, hon, no matter what color it is.”

“Quiet! Listen. Hear that? I think this is the first time I’ve noticed that the waves make different sounds on different parts of the beach.”

“What?” he asked, disinterested.

“Listen,” she insisted. “Here, where there are only pea-rocks, the waves ‘hiss’ as the water pulls back.”

He walked down the beach a dozen yards. “Well, down here they still hiss, but the rocks are a little bigger.”

“Yes, but the hiss has a lower tone here,” she said, catching up to him.

He walked farther down the beach, his head leaning forward slightly, focusing on the beach in front of him. “No more hissing”, he called. “These rocks are about the size of my fist. They sort of rattle.” Suddenly, the beach wasn’t quite so boring.

“But there are two sounds now,” she exclaimed after a moment. “The rounder rocks have a ‘clackety-clack’ sound, but the flat ones slide across the top of the rest making a scraping noise.”

“Wow. Who knew rocks had rhythm.”

“We used to have rhythm, too. Remember?

They continued down the beach, stopping every few yards so she could put a rock with an interesting color or shape in her bucket. She had just picked up a grey potato-shaped rock with bright pink flecks and as they began walking again they each, without looking, reached out for the other’s hand.

A couple of pretty rocks later, they stopped. In front of them was the large flat rock that had briefly served as their marital bed so many years before. He put his arm around her shoulder and gently pulled her close. They looked at each other in a way they hadn’t all day and, perhaps not in many years.

“You remember?” he asked in a whisper barely audible above the surf and the singing rocks.

“Yes,” she replied in an even softer whisper. She could barely remember the last time she heard that voice. It was the same strong and gentle voice she had fallen in love with when they first met and the same voice he used when he proposed, here, on the same beach.

“I miss that night. I miss the way we felt and I want that feeling back.” She nestled her head against his shoulder and sighed.

“I’m sorry, hon.”

“Don’t be. I’m just glad we can both remember.”

He grinned. “I think that rock remembers, too!”