Someone Else's Ocean

by Kate Stewart

“So, I had sex in a tractor last night.” With a raised brow, I paused my hand on the number pad and looked above my screen at her. “A… tractor. How is that even possible? How many tractors are on St. Thomas that you could have sex on?” “At least one,” she said, sitting back in her seat. “I feel a little dirty about this one, I will admit.” “Really?” She stood and walked over to the coffee pot to refill her cup. “No, not at all. No regrets, my friend. And now that I think about it, I’m sure it was a backhoe.” I shrugged. “Well, as long as it was a backhoe.”

“Mad? Humiliated? Scared? That’s when you should do things anyway. It will always piss the other guy off.”

Life was funny like that. For a moment in time, a few weeks in the summer when we were both just a couple of naïve kids, I called Ian Kemp a friend. Earlier that day he had treated me as a stranger. It was the summers after that turned us into nothing more than a few memories. But those few memories turned significant.

“Before I came here, I had a really shitty thing happen, the kind of thing that breaks people. I think you’re familiar with that.” He slowly nodded. “Well, I was alone—alone in a way no human should ever be—and I needed just one person to ask me that question. I was surrounded by thousands of people, but I just needed one. And I decided I wanted to be that person for you. Because I do want to know. Because I am worried for you and about you. Because you deserve to have that question asked. So, Ian, are you okay?”

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?”

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.”

“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?”

Her shoulders slumped. “I’m not dealing with you, I’m being your friend.”

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.

“Whatever’s wrong now, will make sense later. I hope you believe that.”

“Don’t invite me into your life, Koti, or your heart, or your bed because I’m a selfish man right now and I’ll take you up on it without a second thought. If you move a single inch closer to me, I’m going to fuck you. And as much as we both want that, we both don’t need it. I will use you and it’s not because I don’t think you’re beautiful, or intelligent or worth more. It’s because right now, I’m incapable of being anything other than the man that uses you. And because I do think you are worthy of better, I’m not going to let it happen. So, goodnight.”

Everything felt heavy and I succumbed under his potent gaze. What lay beneath was hellfire and I couldn’t wait to tango with his demons.

“And I see today we’re getting educational,” Toby chimed in from the door of our office before he chuckled and looked over at me. “And I guess congratulations are in order?”

“You know, I was just thinking that the other day. I looked in the mirror at the woman who used to run a 5k in twenty minutes and asked myself—what if there comes a time when I only have twenty minutes left. The answer was so simple.” “And what was it?” “Be simple and do whatever the hell it is you have to do to make yourself happy.”

“It’s sex and no one tops me in the bedroom, Koti, ever.” He wiped the tip of his dick with a finger and held it out for me. “Come here.”

“Everyone is a glass house, it’s up to you to decide who to give the rocks to.”

I’d already decided to roll the dice with Ian. There was no decision to make. He was worth it and so I nodded, giving him permission to break my heart.

“Look, I know this,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’ve been through this before, so I know this mystery, the need, the goddamn ache in my chest.”

“You really are the most…” his voice turned hoarse, “what’s inside of you is a heart that is dying to live, and your head is too afraid to let you do it fully, the way you deserve. It’s the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. You’re a prisoner of your own making.”

“But what your mind won’t let you understand is you can’t control a single fucking thing. Control is an illusion and all your home remedies for coping aren’t ever going to change that.”

His ability to make me feel everything with a single look was unparalleled by any before him. I was weeks away from thirty years old and had just found my first love. And my soulmate. But not my forever.