Lights on the Far Horizon Trilogy

by Stone, Sailor

  Everyone around here wanted to be invited to the parties but we aren’t anything special. We work hard to support ourselves and have a blast on the weekends but none of us have any money – and having money, fame, power or looks was the only way on to that party yacht.”

  Kinsey interrupted Justin’s story. She had a bad feeling as to what happened to him and his fiancée, “I bet your fiancée is gorgeous isn’t she?”

  “Was gorgeous,” Justin answered back as quick as the question left Kinsey’s lips.

  Sammy took in a breath, “Oh no! Don’t tell me she died. That is so sad, I’m so sorry.” He put his hand to his chest and looked at Kinsey.

  “I don’t think that’s what he means,” Kinsey answered.

  Justin looked at Sam with an expression of pure surprise. “She’s right. She’s not dead, at least I hope she isn’t. She just isn’t my fiancée anymore.” Justin swallowed after he spoke and looked down to the table. He picked up his beer and finished it off.

  Kinsey knew this was going to be a difficult story for Justin to tell. She noticed the sun beginning to drop in the sky and she knew that soon she and Sammy would need to get back to their hotel if they were to be able to do anything together for the coming night.

  She felt bad for Justin and she took a moment to take him in. He was young, about twenty-five and he had jet black hair that shined like it was lit from within it was so clean and reflective of the sun’s light. His face, if Kinsey had to describe it in just a couple of words, was handsomely stoic. He looked like he should be working outside, not as a waiter in a tavern bar. His hands were strong and his body lean. He’d be easy to paint, everything about him was balanced and symmetrical, is how Kinsey defined his looks in her artist’s mind.

  On a whim she said to him, “Sammy and I have to leave here soon and get ready to go out…”

  Sammy’s eyes lit up, “We’re going out? I can’t wait. Where are we going? I need to get back and look for something to wear.”

  Kinsey smiled, “We can decide later. But Justin, it doesn’t look like you have anything going on around here, could you meet us at our hotel, in the bar say, and then join us for dinner?”

  Justin looked about at the outside tables and then looked through the window into the interior of the tavern, “You’re right it’s dead, just the usual town drunks will start going inside to tip back a few later tonight. Let me go ask my manager. Where is your hotel by the way?” He asked as he stood from his chair.

  “We are both at the Rosewood, on Tucker’s Point.” Sammy answered, excited at the prospect of making a new friend.

  Justin furrowed his brow, “I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t have enough wallet to even buy us one round of drinks in that place.”

  I think it was me that invited you. You’re our guest, don’t worry about paying for anything. We both like you and I have a feeling your story is a lot like ours,” Kinsey said, looking over at Sammy across the table from her.

  Sammy was nodding his head, almost vigorously, and smiling up at Justin.

  Justin shook his head, “So is this like a broken-heart’s club you guys are forming?”

  “Has your heart been broken?” Kinsey asked, then she added, “My guess is yes.”

  Justin looked into Kinsey’s eyes for a long moment and then he nodded. “Let me ask my boss but I’m sure I can do it. What say I be there in two hours?”

  “Perfect!” Sammy stood from his chair and wrapped his arms around a surprised Justin.

  Both of Justin’s arms were pinned to his side by Sammy’s hug so he looked over Sammy’s shoulder to Kinsey and raised his eyebrows. He smiled when Kinsey flashed her beautiful teeth and nodded her head, yes, to him.

  “It’s all good,” Justin said, as Sammy released him from his hug.

  When Kinsey stepped back into her hotel room there was a note on the floor. It was written in the same script as the previous ones that had been slid under the door on the prior evenings.

  It read: I went for a drink in a bar overlooking a beach in St. George’s today and I was amazed and ecstatic to see you with your friend on the beach below me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the human form look as captivating and beautiful as when I saw you in your swimsuit. My! Overwhelmed was my heart, my soul, my eyes, and, dare I say, my loins. I’m nervous at the thought of speaking to you, so beautiful are you, but I hope, within these quickly passing days, to get my courage up and ask you out to a fine dinner. I shall spare no expense in seeing to the needs of your comfort. I’d love to watch the sunset light up your eyes as we share a bottle of wine at a table near the sea and I will work on making it happen. Keep your heart open to my advances, please. please? please! Yours.

  Whoever he was, this mysterious and shy man, he was writing all the things that Kinsey found herself, as she’d grown from a young girl and into a woman, to be drawn toward in a man. But sadly for the man writing them, it only made her think of Tanner.

  Kinsey had an hour and a half to get ready and get to the bar to meet Sam and Justin.

  They had decided to keep things simple and eat in the hotel restaurant, The Point. It was highly recommended and it adjoined the bar where they planned to meet.

  Kinsey started the shower and stepped out of her tunic and her bathing suit. She hung the suit on the towel rack and took a look at herself in the mirror. She’d gotten the perfect amount of sun. And Sammy, being an expert in skin care, had rubbed more lotions than she could count on her body as they’d spent the afternoon on the beach and whatever he’d used had worked – her skin, even to her, as sad as she’d been feeling about herself – looked radiant.

  Kinsey turned herself to see how her back and legs looked from behind and she felt a jolt in her womb at the thought of Tanner seeing her naked. She wanted him to see her naked. She had not felt like that since the babies were born.

  Kinsey stepped into the shower and realized that her heart, her mind, her womb and her body were aching at the emptiness that she was feeling. She embraced the emptiness within her. She knew what she needed. She knew her cure and she knew she was getting better. She needed her family, her friends, her babies – her dear babies! – and she needed her husband to let her apologize to them all and then she needed their forgiveness. If she could get herself well enough to go home and ask for them to take her back she knew she’d be right again and not as empty as a blank canvas sitting on an easel in a dark and forgotten room of a deserted art gallery.

  She let the cool water of the shower take the heat out of her skin and she found herself thinking about blank canvases. She’d had no thought or inspiration to painting for a very long time but now she had two paintings she wanted to do, both of them portraits, and she planned to ask her modeling candidates tonight at dinner if they’d consider sitting for her.

  Once out of the shower Kinsey considered what to wear. She looked through her things and found that Tanner had asked Jessica to pack some of her nicer outfits and Jessica had slipped them into her luggage. Now, feeling better than she’d ever thought she might when she’d stepped onto the plane two days before, Kinsey was, again, thankful for her husband and her best friend. They had made sure she had the tools (okay, in this case it was clothing) to get herself better. She realized that if they’d not packed some of her things, she’d be thinking to not going out with her new friends because she wouldn’t feel like she looked attractive enough to be seen by anyone.

  She decided to wear a small tight fitting royal blue dress with white heels and she even considered putting her hair up but she knew Sammy wouldn’t approve. The only way she could put her hair up around him was to let him style it and do it himself. She blew it dry and combed it out to its longest and straightest length. A quick round of make-up, applied very lightly just to accent her tanned face, and she was good to go.

  She was ready early and didn’t know what to do with herself so she went to the stereo and connected her phone and looked through her artist playlist, and, thinking of her husban
d and wanting to be in his arms, she chose the music of the artist that he’d played on their wedding night.

  As Diana Krall played her piano and sang, The Look of Love, Kinsey decided to visit her terrace and watch the sun set and think. Maybe say a prayer as well.

  She all but gasped as she stepped out into the evening light. The colors of the clouds, piled thick and high over the sea, were white like a sugary milk and they were melting in the orange rays of the sun’s fading light and producing a translucent, creamsicle sunset over the far horizon. The scene called to Kinsey to pull out her canvas and make a go of it with her brushes and paint. She opened her heart to the music sounding out from the doors to her room behind her and to the gentle evening light and let it fill her up; she let it push out from her heart the black emptiness that she’d been feeling the past months and she prayed she’d hold on to the sustenance of the beauty before her and be able to keep its memory deep inside her heart.

  This evening reminded her of many years ago, in Charleston, on another beautiful evening when she’d brought into existence the gift of herself, who she was, and put it on a canvas for her, as yet, unknown husband. She’d been twenty-one years of age and it’d taken her three years to finish the painting and finally meet that man. And then she’d lost him, or so she’d thought, only to find him again four years later. Tanner. He was that man. He was her love, her soulmate and he was the one whose name she’d called out late in the night when he was driving himself into her with his deepest love and connecting himself to her in the most sacramental of ways.

  She pictured him, his gorgeous face, and where he might be right now. Then she thought about her babies, little Bark and Jessie, and she felt sad. She looked back to the sky, to the light, and the eternal evocation that she knew all men and women experienced when they looked to the evening lights and she thanked God for this chance to get better and for the beautiful backdrop of light and color that he was showing both her and anyone else who only had to look up and see, and then she told herself to heal and get better. She’d make sure tonight was a good night – a healing night.

  She called out to Tanner, quietly, yet loudly, from the heart of her soul, her physical lips never moving, “I’m coming home to you and I will make us right. Wait for me.” She closed her eyes for a moment then stepped back into her room to find her small handbag, knowing that Tanner was somehow listening, and she stepped from her hotel room, closing the door softly behind her, and she set herself to making it happen.

  Sammy and Justin were waiting in the bar, Sammy sitting at a corner chair, his phone on the bar, and Justin standing next to him. They were ordering drinks as Kinsey approached them and Sammy said to the bartender, “She’ll have a mojito and go ahead and start me up a tab. On my room, number 322.”

  “Yes sir,” said the bartender as he turned to make the drinks.

  “Hi guys. How long have you been here?” Kinsey asked.

  “Just long enough to get ourselves situated so we could watch you come through that door. And I have to say – ‘But you dahling, hmmm, you look mahvelous! Absolutely mahvelous!’” Sammy said, in what sounded, to Kinsey, like an effeminate impersonation of Billy Crystal.

  Justin laughed and surprised Kinsey when he said, “I saw that on Saturday Night Live, is that Billy Crystal?” Justin was young and she didn’t think he’d have seen something like that from so many years before.

  Sammy was in his element and he was beaming. He reached out to Kinsey and pulled her into a hug. “We are going to have fun tonight. You almost look good enough to make me go straight.”

  “Perhaps a make-over and I’d look good enough to swing you to our side.” Kinsey answered.

  “I’ve spoken to the manager of the spa and he said I can have free reign of the facility.”

  “Really?” Kinsey was surprised.

  “For a price of course, but I’ll pay anything to show you to the world as a Sammy Goodstar Re-creation. Just tell me the time and I’ll set it up.”

  The bartender handed them their drinks as the maître-de approached and announced that their table was ready for them and they could walk over to the adjoining restaurant whenever they were ready.

  Sammy held his drink up and said, “Let’s drink these drinks before we go into dinner and I have an idea, a toast if you will.”

  Justin held his drink up, Kinsey followed with hers and Sammy said, “I think we each need to get our stories off our chest this evening, over dinner, and then the three of us will make a plan, as a team, for a new start for each one of us. Here’s to all of us leaving dinner tonight with new goals and new friends.”

  They clinked glasses, toasted, and a few minutes later they were being seated at their table inside the restaurant.

  The restaurant was full and Kinsey and her new friends had a corner table that allowed them to see everyone in the dining room.

  They ordered their dinners and began to talk about what had brought them together.

  As they finished their meals Sam invited Justin to tell his story and Kinsey watched Justin as he took a deep breath and began to speak. As he spoke she noticed that he’d eaten every bite of his food. Kinsey knew dinner in a five star restaurant wasn’t something he got to experience very often and she could tell he had loved the exquisite taste of each of the different courses that had been served. He had all but sighed with each bite of his striped bass and he looked disappointed as he brought his last bite of it up to his mouth on his fork.

  Kinsey listened as he began his story.

  “I met Trisha in Maine during the late summer three years ago. I was working as a fisherman on a trawler that had come to port in Portland. Our boat was in need of repairs and the parts needed had to be ordered. It was three days until delivery and then they’d need two days for the mechanics to work on the engine.

  I’m nothing if not a wanderer and I used the time to travel. I bought a bus ticket and headed north along the coast of Maine wanting to see some of the beautiful seascape and eat some fresh lobster. Our boat, and I as well, hailed from Virginia so super fresh lobster wasn’t something I was able to eat very often.”

  “You like seafood don’t you?” Sammy asked, interrupting his story with a smile.

  Justin nodded, “I love seafood. I miss working on a fishing boat and always having the freshest seafood to eat. If Trisha doesn’t come back to me soon I’m going to have to get back on a boat. I can’t stand being trapped on land like this, even if it is Bermuda.”

  “I get that. My husband, Tanner, and you are a lot alike. I bet you have to always be near the ocean don’t you?”

  Justin nodded his head yes and continued with his story, “I didn’t get far in my travels though. On the first day, and I remember this like it happened five minutes ago, the bus I was heading up the coast on pulled into this quaint fishing town. It was beautiful, with breathtaking views, and I just had to step off and take a look around. I didn’t even know the name of the town; I just knew I had to see it.

  As I walked, the town was spread out below me on the rocky coast and I could see small islands dotting the water, up, down, and out, along the horizon. My stomach started to growl and I found myself craving a lobster biscuit, so I found a lobster restaurant, more of a shack really, just inside the town and I stepped inside to place an order.

  I had the best feeling as I walked to the counter to order. I was looking at this girl in the back who was working and even before my mind could take her in and process just how beautiful she was it was like I was already touching her soul with mine; like we were supposed to be connected from the moment of our conception into this world. She stepped away from my view into the back of the restaurant as I placed my order so I still wasn’t able to get a good look at her.

  I was given my food and as I sat at this little table in the corner to eat she came out into the dining area to clean the tables. I got a good look at her that time. I couldn’t take my eyes off her and as she worked I tried not to stare at her but it was n
o use – I stared.

  She walked by my table and it was like she knew I was looking at her. She gave me the biggest smile and I was overwhelmed by it. I almost choked on my biscuit. I managed to swallow the bite I was chewing and I smiled back. She kept walking and went back inside the restaurant’s kitchen and I lost sight of her again.

  I was unable to think. She’d blown every circuit between my heart and my brain and I felt nonfunctional as I finished the biscuit and left the shack. I stepped out into the parking lot and there she was again.

  She was helping this elderly couple with a to-go order. She’d walked out the back of the restaurant and met them at their car and she had just handed the bags of food to them through their car window and when she turned she looked immediately in my direction and asked, “So are you going down to the docks?”

  I had no idea where I was going. I wasn’t even sure what town I was in much less where anything was located in it, but I answered, “Sure,” like that’d been my plan since I’d been born into the world.

  “That sounds good,” she said. “Can I come buy you a beer when I get off work? Should be in like an hour.”

  She was so pretty. She had pulled her hair back for work but some of it was hanging loose over her face and that is how I always think of her – gorgeous, beautiful and dynamic with a few loose ends, cute loose ends, that find their way out. She wears her personality on the outside if that makes sense.”

  Both Kinsey and Sam nodded as the busboy reached around them and took their plates from the table.

  Justin continued, “So I think I said yes to the beer. I was on autopilot and I have no recollection in my mind of what my mouth was saying to her in those moments.

  I must have said something about her offer of a beer being a good thing because she said, “Really? Then how about I blow your mind and buy you two beers?”