by Kate Stewart
“Some pressure, huh?” Ian grinned. “I guess since my parents adopted I lucked out.”
“Trust me, in regards to your mother, there is no disappointment in the slightest when it comes to you. Rowan is wonderful and thinks the world of you.” I said with a smile. “We caught up briefly last summer, but I don’t remember much of her when we were kids, but I do remember her banana pops. God, what was in those?”
Ian grinned. “I’ll teach you.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said as he filled our glasses again. “If you fancy them that much.”
“I definitely fancy them. I’ve been dreaming of those for years.” I twisted in my seat and tucked my legs underneath me. “She was always smiling, I do remember that.”
“She’s an amazing woman. Both my parents are great people,” he said fondly.
“Call her. She’s worried. Okay?”
“I did.”
“Oh? Good.”
Ian chuckled, and I looked to him in question.
“Are you feeling a little loose then, Koti?”
I realized then I was rocking back and forth to the beat of the music. And I don’t mean casually, I mean shoulders and head into it like the guys from Night at the Roxbury.
“Oh, crap.” I pressed an embarrassed hand to my forehead. “I do it at the store too. It’s in my genes.”
“Your father is a musician, right?”
“No, he was a sound engineer, mostly for reunion concerts. He was the guy with the big soundboard in the middle of the crowd. He did a lot of reunion tours for seventies and eighties rock bands.”
“Oh,” he said perking up a bit in his lazy seat. “Anyone I would know?”
“All of them,” I said without missing a beat. “I’m not kidding. All of them.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, my favorite was Stevie Nicks. She is incredible.”
“So, your father knew rock stars and your mother was a model. Some childhood you must’ve had.”
“Yeah, their life.” I shrank in my seat. “Not mine.”
He smirked at me. “And you are the castaway.”
“And loving it.”
He raised a brow. “Right,” he said as he lifted his glass, “to the castaways.”
“To the black sheep.”
“Baaaa,” Ian belted out and we both burst into laughter.
“You look like you’re shedding a little wool,” I noted, glancing at his rapidly slimming physique.
“Yeah, and it’s hell,” he said, patting his stomach. “While you’re clearing naked dead men from rentals, I’m hauling my ass down the beach regretting about a thousand fast meals I ate during my divorce.”
“That bad?” I asked.
“That bad,” he muttered tonelessly as he studied the fire.
I picked up the wine this time. “But it didn’t kill you.”
“No, no it didn’t.”
So, what did?
Just on the tip of my tongue lay the intrusive words but there was no way I was breaking up the carefree vibe. I needed a reprieve from my own shit, just as much if not more than Ian did from anything that had to do with his hurts and I wasn’t about to stir things up. I’d watched him tax his troubles for weeks. And I considered every smile, every laugh that erupted out of him a small miracle.
“You know, professor, every day I woke up when I got here… I was just numb. I’d been blindsided. It took me weeks to truly see the ocean and feel the sun on my face.”
“I’m there.” We exchanged a long look before he spoke. “It’s a shame it wasn’t the flying sand ball that did the trick.” He smirked before he took a sip of wine.
“Yeah,” I winced. “Not my finest moment. I’m sorry.”
“I deserved it.” He hesitated. “I have to admit, I was a bit resentful toward you when I arrived.”
I gawked at him. “What in the world for?”
He leaned in toward me. “You know.”
“No clue. My great taste in music?”
“No, I kind of like your nightly concerts,” he said pensively. “You just…”
“Yes?” I drew out the word.
“You were all sunshine and smiles, just so fucking happy,” he said with slight humor. “I wanted no part of it, still don’t. I’m allergic.”
“How inconsiderate of me.” Still, his words stunned me and inwardly I beamed at his confession.
He gauged my repressed elation. “I don’t expect you to apologize for being happy, Koti.”
“Ha!” I said remembering my episode earlier that day. “Please don’t take this the wrong way but you have no idea what you’re saying.”
“I’m pretty sure I may sneeze if you smile any wider. I can count your teeth.”
“It’s the wine.”
“You’re happy here,” he said looking back at our matching houses. “And I want some of that for myself.”
I sat up in my seat, leaned over and gripped his hand. He flinched and turned to face me. “It’s already yours.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “You’re so sure.”
“I am. Trust me, okay?”
He pushed the hair that stuck to my gloss away from my lips. And it took every bit of strength I had not to lean into his touch.
“You sure about everything, Koti?”
Buzzed, I willed myself away from his lingering fingers. “Lord, no. I had an anxiety attack today when I saw a dead man on a sun chair. I’m afraid of my own shadow some days and I blur out the bad parts as quick as they come, but I know this island and it’s magical healing powers. This has nothing to do with me. I don’t have the answer to anything. But here, this place is where everything wrong can be made right.”
“I’ll just choose to believe you.”
“Hmmm, you’re a skeptic.”
“Realist.”
“Okay, tell me this. Of all the places in the world you could have fled to, why did you come here?”
Ian sat back and harrumphed. “I never thought about it.”
“Because you remember being happy here.”
“I guess so.”
“Me too. I hadn’t been back since I was seventeen. And now onto s’mores.”
Ian chuckled. “Well, that’s random.”
“No, I’m buzzing, and this is s’mores. I take them seriously.” I grabbed the metal skewers from my bag and divided the ingredients between our laps. With practiced precision, I loaded a skewer with marshmallows and stuck it in the fire. Ian waited with a loaded cracker.
“Here, spread that on one of the crackers.”
“Nutella?”
“Yep, and chocolate. If I’m feeling wild, I’ll use Ferrero Rocher.”
“You do take this seriously.”
I placed a bubbling marshmallow on his cracker and pushed it toward his mouth.
“Ladies first,” he said pushing it my way.
“That one’s yours.”
I put my own s’more together in seconds and shoveled it into my mouth. I was ravenous because I’d missed lunch and dinner.
“Holy shit,” he said with a mouth full of goodness, “that’s delicious.”
I waggled my brows with my own mouth full and chewed.
His full smile had my heart pounding.
I’d told Jasmine he was handsome.
I was such a liar.
Ian Kemp was beautiful at fourteen. He was gorgeous when he was twenty-five and stood on his parents’ porch waving at me before he left me with a crush. At thirty-eight, he was devastating, sitting next to me watching me inhale my dessert.
“More wine to wash that down?”
“Please,” I said extending my glass.
The breeze kicked up at that moment and neither of us saw the tide had come in until a rogue wave came through and wiped out our fire.
Ian leapt to his feet and swept me out of the chair just before the gasping flames licked my dress.
His hands were all over me as he checked to make sure I was u
nharmed. I squirmed beneath him as I saw the bag with my dinner began to wash out to sea.
“Damnit!” I dropped my shoulders, helpless as we both watched the tide’s greedy retreat and I managed to reclaim my soaked bag.
Ian gripped the corked wine and brushed it off before he presented it to me with a wry smile.
“Well, grapes are in a food group,” I sighed nodding at his offering. “Come on, I have more of them.”
“You sure love your wine,” he said following me up the stairs into my house.
“My only vice.”
Inside my house, I lit candles and turned down the music. Ian stood unsure at my kitchen counter.
“What?”
“I hope I haven’t given you the wrong impression.” He glanced at the candles and then back at me.
It had been an eternity since I’d entertained a man sexually, it took me a second to catch on. “Yeah, uh, I light candles every day of my life.” I clicked on a lamp. “It’s an anxiety thing.” I turned to face him head-on. “But, should I be pissed you don’t want to make love to me with all this highly romantic ambiance?” I lifted my hands, palms up.
He sheepishly put the bottle on the counter and moved to find glasses.
“That’s right, go hide behind the cabinets. I’m pretty sure they can’t shield that inflated head of yours.”
“You sure do know how to bust a man’s balls,” he muttered lifting two glasses from the cabinet.
“You shouldn’t be so quick to assume I wanted your balls or any other part of your anatomy, professor. Besides,” I said as I stood on the other side of the island while he poured more wine, “I’m sure your students are all too eager to play teacher’s pet.”
He grinned down at his wine glass. “Never went there. Had a few chances.”
“Ah, that’s right. You chose to break your gentlemen’s virtue on the side of my house.”
His head snapped up and my smile vanished as something passed between us. Three or four heartbeats later, he looked over my shoulder.
“You know you’re living in a time capsule. No TV, no computer, what gives?”
“My sanity. Do you even remember life without cell phones?”
“I do. Barely.”
“Well, I use them only when I have to. Do you have any idea how much time I got back in my day from putting that damn thing down?”
Still smiling he answered, “I can only imagine.”
“So much time. So. Much. Time.”
“I want to be you when I grow up,” he said softly.
“I don’t want to grow up,” I whispered back.
“Suits me.”
An hour later, we sat on my porch love seat after finishing another bottle of wine and listened to my latest mix as Neil Diamond sang “Love on the Rocks.”
Throwing myself into the song I mouthed the words, using my fist as my microphone and he chuckled and shook his head. A few minutes later, we were back to comfortable silence before he spoke up.
“God, this is so true,” Ian whispered.
“What?”
“This song. It’s so true. Every bit of it. You get so high off love and then it all turns to shit.”
I laughed inappropriately at his bluntness and glossy eyes before I saw brief emotion flicker over his face. I sat up and winced. “Sorry.”
He pulled up to sit and clasped his hands between his legs. “Don’t be. I haven’t been upset about my wife in years.” He stood and looked over at me. “This was truly a great time, Koti.”
“It was a unicorn type of night, right?”
“Most definitely.”
He looked over to me with a warm smile. “Goodnight, puffer fish.”
“Goodnight, crocky.”
I stood and leaned over to blow out the first candle.
“Koti.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
I bit my lip and nodded before he disappeared out the door.
HOURS LATER, FLESH BURNING FROM the wine, alcohol-induced insomnia had set in. I rose from bed still in my dress and washed my face in the bathroom. I cranked my AC unit up high and spent a few minutes in front of it, cooling my skin from burning thoughts.
Ian’s eyes haunted me, and in being honest with myself, they were what kept me awake. His eyes, his voice, the way I felt at ease with him. He looked at me like I had something he needed. I wondered briefly if he saw the mess inside of me would he look at me that same way. I loved the heat of his stare when he thought I didn’t notice, and in my wine-induced haze, I felt sexy when I remembered catching that gaze before it flitted away. I opened my porch door in the pitch-black night and shut it softly instead of letting it snap close.
As I tread across the sand, I glanced at the Kemp house where Ian slept. In the past few days, he unknowingly revealed so many truths about me and accepted them like no man in my life ever had. We’d been at odds a majority of his time on the island and in just a matter of days, he’d unearthed so much. I should have felt uncomfortable, instead all I felt was relief.
Holding my dress to my thighs, I walked through the cool water in a daze, splashing around to cool the inferno that was building inside with thoughts of him. Finally able to feel some relief from my Ian-induced heat wave, I was taken by surprise when an unexpected wave had me scrambling to keep on my feet. Over the breeze, I could have sworn I heard his chuckle and narrowed my eyes in the direction of his house. I couldn’t see past his porch stairs, but I had the distinct feeling I was being watched. Before I had a chance to investigate, another rogue wave smashed into me and leveled me flat onto my back.
Choking, I snapped to my feet before I was yanked in by the undertow. Freshly sober and trying my best to clear my throat, I heard Ian’s porch door and in seconds he stood in front of me as I made it to shore.
“I’m trying—really, really trying hard not to laugh. Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I answered, shaking off the pain like a wet dog before I looked at him accusingly. “You were watching me?!”
Shirt-free, tousled and deadly sexy, Ian stood in front of me, his eyes hooded.
Wiping my hands on my chest, I discovered one of my breasts was peeking through the shoulder of my dress. I twisted my body and righted it as Ian’s breath hit my face. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I was hot!”
“Fucking right you were, until you wiped out,” he said playfully as he pushed a heavy wad of hair off my forehead. “It was a good start, shitty finish. If someone put a gun to my head, I’d give it a six out of ten!”
“What is it with the freakish waves today? That came out of nowhere!”
“Just obeying the moon, I suppose,” he said with a chuckle as I righted my dress while his eyes lingered on my bare shoulder.
“Or their muse,” I whispered inaudibly, but he caught it.
“Muse?”
“I have a thing for Greek mythology,” I said defensively. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“So that’s it? That’s why you walk around dressed like Aphrodite?”
I rolled my eyes though I wasn’t sure he could see.
“Old habits die hard I suppose,” he said before lifting the strap of my dress back to my shoulder. “You are a right mess, Miss Vaughn. I suppose it’s good fate we ended up on this island together.”
“Agreed. But you must admit, you’re the victor of the mess this month.”
“Not arguing with that,” he said softly.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Not tonight.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, I don’t. So please don’t ask.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t get a chance to blink before he turned the tables. “You tell me. What brought you here?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not.” He took a seat on one of the smaller boulders nearby. “But you did offer.”
“I did, didn’t I?” I stood silent for several moments. It
was hard to convey what happened to me, why I was there because it seemed so trivial to some. A few really bad days was the gist of it. A few really bad days was the sum of it. For a long time, so much of me believed my issues were trivial because I was told they were. I was told my attacks were just temporary setbacks. But they just kept coming. It had always seemed impossible to explain my circumstances to anyone other than my therapist. No one in my life, especially my mother, who heard about my condition gathered that my disorder wasn’t anything other than someone trying to seek attention. Even my ex-boyfriend, Trevor, had downplayed my attacks and told me I just needed to relax.
I hated that word. As if it could really be so easily executed by a person with generalized anxiety disorder on demand. As if it was that simplistic. Relax.
That word was a hundred percent of the reason why I left him holding the bag of our new relationship in New York. It took me a few months to start liking Trevor enough to commit to him and only minutes for me to decide that commitment was a mistake.
“Trevor, I need you.”
“Relax, Koti. Can this wait? I have a meeting in an hour and I need to concentrate. I’ll call you back.”
Everyone close to me in New York, even the best of my friends never could grasp the reality of the hell I went through just to be present for them. Ginger, my friend since grade school, had dismissed my anxiety the way my mother had. Anger surfaced every time I thought about the day I left New York and the last time I’d reached out to her. She’d answered the phone while entertaining a few of our mutual friends and before I could get a word out, I heard her excuse for taking my phone call. “It’s Koti, she’s having one of her episodes.” I hadn’t spoken to her since. And I probably never would again. So much of my life I’d left behind, the day I boarded that plane. Everything. I’d left everything. And though it had taken me some time to open up to Jasmine, I didn’t have to force the words out for Ian.
I’d watched him implode when he knew I was his audience. His breakdown, though not the same as mine, had been just as unavoidable. We were both matches on an island of fire and couldn’t be helped. For us, our ashes were all there was left to work with. But I wanted him to know there was something to be said for those ashes.