Ocean's Fire

by Stacey Tucker

“Thanks for the advice,” Skylar said. She was skeptical of Ocean. She seemed so flighty. But she trusted Ronnie’s judgment and Ocean was one of her friends, so she was trying not to judge the frizzy-haired woman.

  Skylar was almost out the door, closing it behind her, when she heard Ocean’s voice for the last time that evening.

  “I will have to brush up on techniques for resisting extreme urges of the flesh,” she said with a chortle. She seemed to be the only one laughing.

  Skylar hesitated at Argan’s door. She was so happy he was home, but in no uncertain terms, she cheated on him. Or did I? Are we exclusive? We haven’t talked about it. Christ, it’s only been a few weeks. We’re hardly an item. She shook her head. Who am I kidding? Of course we are. Way to try to get out of owning this, Skylar. She inhaled deeply and knocked on the door.

  Argan swung it open in seconds, as if he’d been waiting just behind it. He looked fresh in a white linen shirt, unbuttoned just enough, and shorts. He flashed an exaggerated smolder at her, then broke it with a lighthearted smile. All thoughts of Joshua and the book seemed so absurd now. Even her heinous acts at Garage felt like a distant bad dream. Being with Argan didn’t increase her guilt; it made it disappear.

  Argan took her by the arm and pulled her through the doorway. She dropped her bag and kicked the door closed with her foot. They said nothing. His mouth was on hers immediately. How convenient, she thought. No awkward conversation. No conversation at all.

  She had forgotten how good he tasted, like the nectar from the sweetest peach. She could feel his chiseled arms through his thin shirt. While he was away, her memory had failed to recall the perfection of his body. He was devastatingly handsome. She couldn’t understand how Joshua could have ever tempted her away from this man.

  She reached up to run her fingers through the waves of his hair, pulling him more tightly to her. She was immensely happy again.

  Argan still hadn’t said a word since she arrived. He led her to the bed without breaking his kiss, soft and tender. They sank into each other immediately. He slowly moved his hand up her arm, moved the collar of her shirt to the side, and lightly touched the skin underneath. His eyes were focused on hers. He cradled her head in his hands and smiled. She smiled back and he kissed her again. He slowly unbuttoned her shirt.

  God is he a pro at this, she thought to herself. Young guys are supposed to be bumbling idiots, not seasoned lovers.

  Argan stopped. “Are you okay? You look like something’s changed.”

  How does he read my mind like that? Skylar frowned. “I’m just wondering how you got so good at this. Lots of practice in Greece?”

  “Skylar,” Argan said, sitting up, “I have dreamed night and day and written songs and sung them about this moment for as long as I can remember. Yes, I have practiced this a thousand times, but only with you.” He touched her skin over her henna tattoo. “You are more beautiful than all of my dreams.” He kissed her on the forehead, the tip of her nose, and her lips, ever so softly and slowly.

  Skylar smiled and lowered her eyes. Argan let her shirt fall open. He kissed her neck, caressing her collarbone with his fingers. His hands moved over her breasts softly, and he kissed each one like he had kissed her mouth, slowly, exploring her body, showing her that he was enjoying every inch of her. He rose off the bed and started unbuttoning his shirt.

  Skylar held her breath. He was perfect. “God, that never gets old,” she said.

  He chuckled and climbed back on the bed, leaving his shorts on.

  Feeling Argan’s bare skin left Skylar speechless. Just running her hands over his chest and back gave her pleasure. “God, if only the world knew what you’re hiding under your clothes,” she said. She lay down next to him and pressed her body into his. It was as if their bodies were catching up to something their souls had known all along. The connection between them was timeless.

  “There is nothing I would rather do than make love to you right now,” Argan finally said. “But if it’s all right with you, I’d like to wait a bit longer.”

  Skylar was relieved. She didn’t want their first time to be clouded by the recent mess she’d made with Joshua. “Yes,” she said.

  They continued to explore each other throughout the evening. When they came up for air, they ordered takeout and put on a movie. All of the bizarre happenings of the past week were temporarily forgotten. Skylar felt almost normal.

  Skylar’s peaceful mood carried over to the next day. Ocean’s yoga studio was only a mile from campus, so Skylar decided to walk.

  Nestled among purveyors of basic necessities, tucked between the entrances of the liquor store and the pharmacy on Main Street, was the mysterious red door of Let’s Yoga. For the first time, Skylar pushed it open and walked inside.

  The studio was clean and bright. The goddess Kamakshi greeted everyone from a stone pedestal beside the front desk. A large marble fountain stood as the focal point outside the practice area, filling the space with the soothing sound of running water.

  Skylar sat on the bench in the entryway and removed her shoes before walking into the practice area. Ocean was in the middle of the floor, standing perfectly still on her head. She opened her eyes. “Welcome, dear!” she hollered in her clamorous voice, out of place in the quiet studio. In one not-so-fluid move, she came out of her headstand.

  Skylar smiled to herself. I thought yoga teachers were supposed to be graceful.

  “When you don’t know what to do, stand on your head,” Ocean said. “Remember that. You gain perspective and clarity. The world looks almost acceptable from that angle.” She gestured toward a door behind her. “Grab a mat and blanket and meet me back in here. I need to pee.”

  Skylar followed directions. She wasn’t a stranger to yoga. Rachel had dragged her to classes years earlier in an awkward, step-motherly attempt to bond with her. While the practice hadn’t stuck with Rachel, Skylar had kept it up through high school. She found it relaxing.

  Ocean returned to her well-worn, faded orange yoga mat. She crossed her legs as she bent to sit and crashed down into a perfect pretzel position. With the daylight streaming through the west-facing windows, Skylar had the chance to really look at her for the first time. The other two times they’d met it had been dark and she had been distracted. Now, Skylar was focused—and still, Ocean wasn’t the least bit impressive. She wouldn’t get a second glance from anyone on the street, and Skylar didn’t feel an instant pull to her as she had to Ronnie. She just seemed so ordinary. And Skylar hated ordinary, though she was ashamed to admit that she was judging on appearance. She waited for Ocean to dazzle her with her intellect or whatever magic she possessed.

  “What would you like to get out of our time today?” Ocean asked.

  “I’m not sure this is really necessary, now that I’ve thought about it. I don’t want to waste your time,” Skylar said, picking at the fine hairs on the Book of Akasha’s cover. “I’m so happy with Argan. And I’ve recently realigned my priorities. So I’m back on track now.”

  “You slept with him,” Ocean said.

  “Not yet, but soon, I think,” Skylar said, blushing instantly. “We’ve just connected so deeply. Being with him is my purpose.”

  Ocean wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Another person is no one’s purpose.”

  “I just mean he’s the one for me. I don’t know what I ever saw in Joshua.”

  “So you miraculously have the faculties to thwart Joshua’s advances now?” Ocean asked.

  “Yes,” Skylar said with conviction.

  “Okay,” Ocean said. “What happens the next time you see him?”

  “I’ll say no,” Skylar said.

  “That worked so well the last time,” Ocean said with a roll of her eyes. “Look, just because you have this newfound attachment to Argan doesn’t mean you’ll have what it takes to push Joshua away. Let’s backtrack a sec to the night at Garage.”

  “Ronnie told you,” Skylar said, fidgeting on her mat.

  “She did,”
Ocean said. “Don’t be upset with her. She is concerned about you. And I can’t help you if I don’t know all the facts.”

  Skylar understood. “The few times I’ve been around Joshua, he’s had a power over me that instantly puts me in his control, and I don’t understand it. My instincts tell me to run, but his pull draws me closer.”

  “So, you’re attracted to the bad guy,” Ocean said.

  “Yes,” Skylar whispered.

  “Who isn’t?” Ocean sighed. “It’s all about the thrill, my dear. In centuries past it was common to live with danger. People would often get eaten by things, fall out of things, contract incurable illnesses. There were duels to defend our honor or win hands in marriage. Usually someone ended up dead. Although not the most ideal of settings, you knew you were alive!” Ocean’s eyes brightened with excitement, and for a split second, Skylar thought she saw flames rise up in her irises. She blinked once, hard, and the flames were gone.

  “No one fights for anything anymore,” Ocean said. “We live in a pasteurized world that has successfully stripped personal power away from both men and women. We eat too much and drink too much and have too much unfulfilling sex, all to fill a hole that remains empty. This isn’t being alive. It’s the opposite.” Ocean paused. “But I’m getting way ahead of myself.”

  “No, I understand what you’re saying,” Skylar said. She surprised herself by agreeing with Ocean. “It’s like when I read a book or see a movie and I get chills when the heroine kicks ass. I want to kick ass too.”

  “Right! Our inner warriors have been squashed for centuries. And the best a twentysomething can do nowadays, for the most part, is go for the bad guy. There’s a rush when he shows interest in you.” Ocean held a hand out. “Let’s see this book.”

  Skylar handed the book over. “Where do we begin?” she asked.

  “Well, it goes without saying that you have been with Joshua before this lifetime.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “What’s going on here is major shit. Major shit doesn’t happen with newly acquainted souls. We travel in circles of the same souls, you know. One lifetime you hurt me; another, I hurt you. That’s how it works until we figure out how to stop hurting each other. Then we move on to hurting someone else.”

  Skylar could tell Ocean was completely serious. “You mean like karma.”

  “Right, karma is a beautiful thing,” Ocean said. “It’s thought to be an Eastern philosophy, but it’s rampant in the Bible too. Eye for an eye, do unto others as you would have done unto you, etc. It’s great when you evolve enough to be aware of it when it happens. People are so shocked when bad things or even annoying things happen to them, but if they would only pay attention to what they did last week or last year or even this morning, they would see they aren’t as innocent as they think.”

  Ocean got up from her mat and headed to a large table in the corner of the room. It wasn’t a piece you would expect to find in a yoga studio. Even the legs were made of the clear material the top was made of. There was a good chance you would run into it if you weren’t paying attention. Skylar followed her.

  Ocean placed the book on the table. “Pure quartz crystal,” she said, patting the surface. “You can get a good buzz with this thing in the room.” She returned her focus to the book. “So, the question becomes, how many times have you and Joshua crossed paths?” Ocean said. “And Argan too, for that matter. You said you were friends when you were little and now you’ve reunited and entered into a full-blown love affair. That’s big enough to assume you have been together before.”

  Thanks to Cassie, Skylar was no stranger to the theory of reincarnation, although she’d always had Joel in her other ear explaining away “such nonsense” with his scientific theories. But she had to admit, being able to read such detail about her own “lives” gave her the creeps.

  “We can glean some insight from your previous run-ins, and hopefully figure out why this pattern is repeating. Then we can figure out your next steps,” Ocean said.

  Skylar softened toward Ocean. She was thankful someone with such knowledge was in her corner.

  “If I had to guess, you probably always give in to Joshua’s advances. This has become such a reflex action, you’re doing it without a second thought. We form patterns that carry over into other lifetimes. Habits are a bitch to break.” She gave Skylar a comforting pat on her shoulder. “We are not meant to live in hell, dear. There is a way out.”

  Hell . . . a concept Skylar could fully understand. She broke out in a sweat from the stress.

  Ocean started to scan the pages with Skylar’s phone. “How are you with meditation?”

  Skylar rolled her eyes. “Not good.”

  “How much work have you done with this book?”

  “I found my current lifetime and read a bit beyond the present day, and it shows my relationship with Joshua progressing. There is no mention of Argan.” Skylar’s voice started to rise. “I’m supposed to be loving life with Argan right now! This is all too much. I want to forget this book, forget Plan B.”

  “Plan B?” Ocean asked.

  Skylar sank in her seat. There was no way she could explain Plan B. “Oh, it’s nothing. Something my mother and I worked on before she died.”

  Ocean’s stare burned through Skylar’s brain like a laser beam. She was convinced the frizzy-haired woman had super powers and was extracting the truth from her head. At this point, anything was possible. To Skylar’s relief, Ocean let it go.

  “You could forget it,” Ocean said. “You could toss the book, go back to the barn and Argan. But then what? After all of this, do you think there’s another path where it all goes away?”

  “I can hope,” Skylar said doubtfully. She flipped to the sticky note marking the place in the book where she’d left off reading.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Ocean said. “And you shouldn’t use these on such delicate pages,” she scolded, carefully peeling off the sticky. “We can work backwards from here.” She started scanning the words as she went along with the translator. “How much interest do you have in knowing about your past lives? Or do you just want me to find the relevant ones?”

  “Anything you think is worth mentioning,” Skylar said, fidgeting with nothing to keep her hands busy. Ocean continued to scan the pages of the book while Skylar nervously rotated in a circle. Her surroundings didn’t help; the yoga studio was, true to form, mostly empty space.

  “You had a brief life in the 1970s. Your parents were drug addicts, and you were found dead in your crib,” Ocean said, not taking her eyes off the page.

  “God, that’s harsh. I guess you aren’t easing me into this, are you?”

  “It’s extremely interesting if you can be objective about it. You, as the infant, chose that life plan. Well, you chose it before you incarnated. Once we return to the physical plane, we lose all memory of where we came from. You have a very advanced soul, Skylar. In that lifetime, you sacrificed your life to repay the karmic debt of both of your parents. You freed them. They didn’t see it that way then, all caught up in drugs and then, well, accidental manslaughter, but your death enabled them to finally move forward after centuries of hardship. Their lifetimes going forward will be ones of growth and renewal and helping others.”

  “Wait, you can see their lifetimes? I thought this was just my book.”

  Ocean sighed. “When will we accept that we are all connected? It is your book, but it also records the lives of those you touch. And because we all touch all, it is an exponential web encompassing everyone. At some level, we are all everyone. We are one. That is why the Book of Akasha has been many times called The Book of One.”

  “The whole world in that little book?” Skylar asked, unable to keep the incredulity out of her voice.

  “I know it’s hard to understand,” Ocean said. “Centuries ago, people had faith in ideas like the Akashic Records and mysticism. The spiritual realm was an important part of life. Many indigenous cultures have preserved
their beliefs in supernatural laws through their folklore. They have continued to cultivate their right brain. But the Western world is pure left brain, patriarchal in its thinking. It loves order and uniformity. All ancient wisdom in the West, especially that of the feminine energy, has been repressed or killed by this society’s love of power and proof. But great change is upon us.” Ocean’s eyes danced with the deliciousness of a secret. She closed the book and turned toward Skylar. “I know this is asking a lot, but could you leave your phone with me for a few days? The translating is going much faster than anything I can do without it. I’ll give you mine.”

  Skylar froze. Her phone was her lifeline. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I guess that’s the quickest way to get the answers I’m looking for. Argan will wonder, but I can come up with something.”

  “You haven’t told him about the book?” Ocean asked. They slowly walked to the lobby.

  “No, not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Good question. It just seems like an awkward conversation that’s so easy to put off when I would rather spend the time kissing him,” Skylar said, trying to smile.

  Ocean nodded in agreement. “That’s understandable, but it’s time to do it. This has already ballooned into a big deal, and if he isn’t kept in the loop along the way, it’ll be too hard to explain down the road when you’re a different person. He will need the benefit of following along on the journey if you want him to keep up.”

  “What do you mean, when I’m a different person?”

  “Wouldn’t you say you’re already different than you were when you started at Rosen?” Ocean asked. “And that was only a couple of months ago. You can’t believe Argan hasn’t noticed. Come clean with him about all of this while you’re still in control of the situation.”

  “This doesn’t feel like control.” Skylar pushed an errant piece of hair out of her eyes. “You’re right. I just don’t know where to start. And the time we spend together is so amazing, I would hate to ruin it trying to explain all of this when I don’t understand it myself.”