by Kate Stewart
I slid my thumb over the top of his hand. “I mean, we are all just extras sipping coffee in the background of someone else’s life. But that could change at any second. If I wanted to, I could put my coffee down and become responsible for you. We are all responsible. We could all choose to take responsibility, couldn’t we? Human compassion. What the hell happened to that?”
Ian pressed his brows together while I got lost in my thoughts.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed before I finally snapped out of it and slowly pulled my hand away. Ian’s twisted face was a thing of beauty. I felt the blush creep through my cheeks at my rant and then even more so by his close scrutiny.
“Never mind, I’m talking nonsense to you. Goodnight.”
He opened his mouth to speak, maybe to address one of the hundred questions I saw in his eyes but kept them to himself and instead responded with a curt, “Goodnight.”
Great, Koti, way to go. You sounded like a philosophical moron.
Taking my leave, I walked across the sand and back to solitude where I felt safer with my own ramblings. I felt his watchful eyes on me from where he stood on his porch. Maybe I should have been more embarrassed and a little more careful with the words I spoke. But in the last year of my life, I’d recognized my flaws and the depth of my narcissism while I licked my own wounds. After a hard look, I didn’t like a tenth of what I’d become. I saw my flaws, my differences and discovered a few of my strengths too. I was done with certain parts of myself that were a product of expectation. And what was left was a woman who embraced vulnerability, her idiosyncrasies, her ticking clock, and treacherous body.
In a way, I was proud for speaking up, especially to a man who was afraid to show his own defeat and weakness. If I had to write the story of my life post-apocalyptic Koti Vaughn, it would be of a story of hope.
It would be human. And that’s all I wanted to be. Striving for perfection had cost me enough sanity.
THERE’S A NAME FOR HUMAN awareness and it’s called Sonder.
The definition: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground. It’s a pocket in time, where you may redefine life by the idea of the struggle of others.
My time in my own purgatory, battling my anxiety and the crumble of my planned future had taught me to reflect not only on my own mess but on the life of my parents and their triumphs and failures. And after that in-depth analysis where I had to forgive them and myself, I paid close attention to everyone I came in contact with. It changed me in a way I couldn’t ignore. It was a deep, emotional cleansing and one that I could never take lightly.
Everyone, at some point in their life, gets lost in their own head, whether it be a low or high point where they are looking down at the path they’d chosen. This type of reflection led me to the train of thought that brought me to revisit my first substantial memory.
My first foggy recollection as a child was getting stung by a wasp. I remembered being too small to open the door of my parents’ Hamptons house and the relief I felt when my mother rescued me. I remembered her quieting my cries as she looked down at me with tender eyes and a soothing voice while she sprinkled powder on my bite to get the sting out. And I remembered very little after, just the lingering feeling that I was safe.
In searching through those memories, I remembered a bike ride on top of the handlebars and somewhere between that, a string of nights spent with my mother in bed when I got the flu. She’d kicked my father out of their room and slept with me. I could still feel her cold hands on my hot back. A few childhood friends drifted through my memories as well, not exact memories but words and gestures, indistinct moments in places I couldn’t remember. One of my classmates had died of pneumonia. She had blonde curly hair and big dimples. When she passed, I was observed by the adults around me in such a way I knew I was expected to grieve. Because of that expectation, I pretended to cry, but the concept of death was lost on me. I recall feeling bad as the casket was lowered to the ground because I felt nothing and everyone around me wasn’t pretending. Their tears were real. It was the first time I felt guilty.
Everyone had those moments, where those bits and pieces surfaced, and memories were triggered, some of them more significant than others. Some of them a mystery as to why they stood out from the rest. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year, twenty-four hours in a day. What would I remember when I was forty?
It seemed incomprehensible no matter how well you know another person, that you could never fully understand them, and what memories they kept and why they were significant. I had no idea what my friend’s name was that passed away, no idea whose handlebars I was riding on, but I do know the most vivid childhood memory I held was the day I met Ian Kemp.
“Good morning.”
Ian greeted me as I stood on my back porch sipping a cup of coffee in light cotton sleep shorts and the same cami I had on the night before. The waves rolled in and crashed against the rocky shore in front of me. I was far too deep in my reverie to do anything more than lift my cup and give him a low reply. “Morning.”
“Listen,” Ian said, stepping off his porch and making his way toward me, forcing me back into the moment. Delighted that his shirt was inevitably off, his newly tanned feet made good time between our houses. He stood on the bottom step of my porch, his back to the rail as he followed my line of sight and studied the waves with me. “Last night. You took me by surprise, but I want you to know I understood what you were saying.”
“Okay.” I rolled my eyes as I wrapped my arms around myself, still holding my cup as a buffer between us. No matter how determined I was to be unapologetic about my newly adopted philosophies, I still felt a bit self-conscious about sharing that new part of myself, about voicing my thoughts to those who might not be so receptive or understanding.
“There’s no reason to get defensive.”
I shrugged, looking down at my cup. “Sorry.” I didn’t want to reveal more than I already had, but I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t slightly embarrassed. “I haven’t ever really said those things out loud. But if you are thinking I’m the weirdo hippie with healing crystals, who is walking around concerned about higher consciousness, you are barking up the right tree.”
“You have no idea what I’m thinking,” he said softly.
Unable to believe his sincerity, I defended myself. “I’m not some quack, you know. I lived years out there, in that world.” I gestured toward the ocean. “And I decided to unplug. A lot of people are doing it and we all have our reasons.”
“Again,” he said, taking another step up. “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“I’m pretty sure you’ve labeled me the crazy lady next door.”
“No,” he said, taking another step and taking my cup away from me. “I don’t think you’re crazy at all. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing a little soul-searching.”
Soul-searching?
Soul-searching.
I’d spent the last year inside myself, and at times questioned if I was losing my mind.
In mere seconds he had simplified it so… perfectly.
Soul-searching!
I chuckled at how naïve I’d been to expect that no one else would understand what I was going through and felt a weight lift from my shoulders. Ian had just put it all into perspective in seconds.
In that moment, I wanted to throw my arms around him in gratitude. Instead, I watched him as he took a sip of my coffee. “Oh, man this brew could kill a horse.”
“Like it?”
“Hell yes.”
I grinned, and he grinned back keeping my cup in his hand. He glanced at me over the lifted cup before he spoke. “In my creative writing class, I deal with a lot of saturated minds and half of their problem is they want to expand those minds past the walls they built
around themselves to become better people, better writers, but how do they do that? What tools could I give them?”
“You can’t, right? They have to experience things for themselves, figure out how to open their own minds.”
He nodded. “And that’s exactly what I tell them. Unless they want their intellectual palate to be the size of the box of knowledge they already possess, they have to get out there and gain some real-life experience to add to that imagination. It’s what makes the writing authentic and original.”
“Can’t write about a broken heart as well as a broken heart can?”
“Precisely. How do you ever really know true living if you do it vicariously?” He looked at me attentively. “And what if… what if that person sipping coffee in the background of your life, what if they,” he said pausing to take another sip, “are the next chapter?”
My heart galloped as I stuttered through my next sentence. “So, w-what you’re saying,” I managed to mutter keeping my door opened for his invitation, “is that you get what I was saying.”
He chuckled as he followed me into the house, and I pulled another mug from my cabinet pouring us both a fresh cup. We sat there wordlessly sipping for a few minutes. I glanced over at him, but his eyes remained fixed on the sea.
“This place,” he said low before shifting his gaze to mine, “I never really appreciated how beautiful it was until now.”
Heart hammering, I made quick work of changing the subject. Some part of me knew that I was seconds away from offering Ian more than coffee and small talk. The way he undressed me with his eyes, not only to my bare skin but deeper, had me squirming where I stood.
“You know, Ian, you said something to me when we were kids that stuck with me.”
“Oh?” The twinkle in his eye was gratification enough, but I still paid him the compliment.
“You were only, what, fourteen?”
He nodded.
“You told me even if I was mad, or humiliated, or scared to have fun anyway.”
He grinned at the thought, surprised. “I did?”
I nodded. “You did. Pretty insightful for a kid who told me I didn’t have tits big enough to be called a miss.” Ian chuckled and it made my stomach flutter.
“You made a bit of an impression on me,” I confessed, my back to him while I dug through my cabinet and threw the ingredients on the counter. Turning back to him satisfied, I saw his face light up in recognition.
“You’re an addict,” he commented as he saw the mass amounts of chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers I kept on hand.
“I told you, you didn’t give yourself enough credit, Professor Kemp. You taught me well.”
He gawked at the massive pile of chocolate on my multi-colored tile island. “So, are we dining on s’mores for breakfast, then?”
Disco chose that moment to raise the Devil’s hell from her box in his living room. “Guess not,” he said with the shake of his head.
“I would go get her, but I’m allergic.”
“And full of shit. You are a terrible liar and that’s a wonderful thing, Koti.”
Ian put his empty cup on the counter and moved to free Disco from her box of shackles. He paused at my back door. “How about tonight? I’ll set up one of our bonfires for old times’ sake?”
“I was beginning to think you forgot.”
His grin took my breath. “Quite the opposite.”
My chest filled with warmth. “Okay, but how about you use regular wood this time?”
He gave me a guilty smile. “Agreed.” He glanced around the room and then back to me. “There are no crystals in here.”
“Made you look though,” I retorted playfully.
“Koti?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for asking me.” Penetrating silver eyes stared me down and I had to force myself to speak.
“You really do get it, don’t you, Ian?”
“I really do. I’ll see you tonight?”
“See you, professor.”
I SPENT THE DAY RUNNING around like a mad woman with Jasmine by my side. Her car had been vandalized at the grocery store where she had left it the night before to meet her date.
“Okay, I’m going to tell you about last night,” she said with a sigh.
“You banged a bag boy?” I asked, glancing toward the grocery store.
She turned to me, her dark hair tied up in a bun on top of her head, clad in an electric blue dress. She was rummaging through her thirty-gallon purse. “Me and the captain’s love affair is officially over.”
“So soon?”
“You’re judging me,” she snapped as she searched through the massive purse in her lap.
“Do you check for dead mice in there from time to time?” Jasmine thumped my shoulder and I gripped it with a shriek. “Oww, that shit hurt.”
“So did last night,” she said, wincing.
“Oh Lord. The freak came out of him?”
She nodded, managing to pry three pairs of shades out of her bright red bag. She picked through them as I started the Jeep. “That’s exactly what happened.”
“Jasmine, it’s nine in the morning. Can’t I be spared until at least noon?”
“I promise not to show you my ass.”
“That’s your idea of mercy?” I glanced at her as I turned out of the parking lot and she pushed out her bottom lip. “Okay, tell me.”
“The captain decided he wanted to role play.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, and you know me, I’m down with that.”
“Right up your backhoe,” I said with a grin.
“Are you ever going to let me live that down?”
“Not likely, please continue.”
“So, I’m expecting like dirty French maid and millionaire boss or something juicy like that.”
“Okay.”
“And I was right.”
“Sounds good.”
“Except what the captain really meant was a role reversal.”
My eyes widened. “Oh?”
Her lips were trembling as she fessed up. “He came out in heels and a frilly frock.”
“Oh, my God!” We both burst into hysterical laughter as Jasmine shook her head with her hands covering her face. “I had no idea what to do. I just stood there while his crooked penis poked out of the apron. I’m telling you as blunt as I am, I lost it. I completely lost the ability to speak.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran. I picked up my purse and RAN!”
I pulled over at a gas station and face planted into my steering wheel. “You have got to be kidding me!”
“Nope. I walked it off until I could think to call a cab and went straight to the wine bar. There I met Mark and only let him get to first base before I passed out in his hot tub.”
I couldn’t contain myself, tears were pouring from my eyes as she wiped her own away.
I sighed, my laughter subsiding slightly. “Poor baby,” I said, leaning over to hug her to me. “You are something else, lady. And you should have called me. I would have come to get you.”
“I’ll never be the same,” she said mournfully.
“It’s probably for the best.”
“This is weird,” Jasmine said, noticing the missing key from the lockbox at the Harper rental. “They should have left it at checkout.”
She knocked on the front door and when she got no answer, she looked at me with a shrug.
“You don’t have the master?”
“I haven’t been home,” she said sheepishly. “Or to the office, remember?”
“That’s right, you were up late watching the Discovery Channel.”
“Shut up, or you’re fired,” she snapped. “Crap. Let me see if I can hop the deck. This is my bad.” We walked the side of the cliff house and I stood in the driveway as she made her way toward the upper deck. There was only a narrow margin for her to get her footing on the ledge.
“Don’t! Not smart, lady!”
&nbs
p; “I’ve got this.” She tucked her cotton dress between her legs and scaled the deck like a pro.
“I give it a six at best. Sloppy landing,” I piped as I saw her head pop up behind it.
She shot me the bird.
“Hurry up, it’s hot out here!” I ordered. The sun was beating down on the top of my head and I moved to step into the shade when I heard Jasmine’s blood-curdling scream.
“What’s wrong?!” I yelled loud enough for the street to hear.
“Koti, oh, my GOD! KOTI!”
“What’s wrong? What is it?!” I scrambled to the deck and tried to peek over.
“KOTI!”
“Open the front door, JASMINE! Please!”
“OH, MY GOD! Koti! Don’t come in!”
Fearing for her life, I risked my own and leaped to the ledge of the deck holding on for dear life. My execution was far less graceful, I went over like an old maid clinging to the top of the railing before I landed on my ass. Jasmine was still screaming as I jumped to my feet, ran around the side of the house and came to a screeching halt at her back. “OH, MY GOD!”
Eighty-three-year-old John Harper lay in a deck chair spread eagle and naked as the day he was born, his dick standing at attention for all the world to see. I covered Jasmine’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, sir. I apologize. We must have had our schedules mixed up.” I turned Jasmine back the way we came as she ripped my arms away.
“What are you doing?” I bulged my eyes. “He’s naked, come on.”
With her next words, her voice got eerily calm. “I’ll meet you out front, okay?”
“Ugh, the man obviously needs some privacy.”
“Koti,” she took my shoulders in her hands. “Honey, he’s dead.”
“Dead?” I glanced over my shoulder and saw his mouth was wide open.
“Oh, my God.”
Jasmine was nodding slowly, weighing my reaction as my scrambled brain tried to process the sight before us.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, honey, he’s gone. I’ll call an ambulance and meet you out front, okay?”